Review: HP df300 Portable Digital Picture Frame

Written on Nov 12, 2008 by Brian and filed under HP, Reviews

The HP df300 fills a spot in the recently popular portable digital picture frame market. The 3.5” frame comes with a leather carrying case and a battery that gives you about 2 hours of usage to show off your pictures. Even though the main feature is portability, this little frame can surely find a spot on a desk or nook about the house and is priced well for gift giving.

HP df300 Quick Specs

• 3.5” display
• 4:3 aspect ratio
• 320×240 resolution
• Single SD card slot
• Internal battery (2 hours of battery life)
• Auto-shutoff

Design and Build

It’s odd, but the design of this tiny frame is some of the best we’ve seen. What we generally see with larger frames is manufacturers try to jam so much in, the end result is a mish-mash of ports and buttons that hampers usability. There’s just something about the simplicity of the df300 that we love. Four buttons, a single card slot and a mini-USB port that’s used for charging and file transfer.

The front of the frame is sleek with a mirror-like finish around the border. Aside from the fingerprints, this design is perfect for a portable frame. It even comes with a black leather pouch, complete with two slots for memory cards.

The back of the unit is rubberized, making it each to grab a hold of. A small stand is integrated into the back and sits flush when not in use. The stand works in either portrait or landscape, but pictures do not re-orient automatically.

Since there’s no remote, the four buttons accomplish everything in terms of frame management. They manage pretty well, with a press and hold at times to activate menus. Once you spend a few minutes with the frame though, it’s pretty intuitive.

Out of the box, this is a great looking frame that’s not only built well, but conceived well. Heck, the box even has a green bow on it, so HP hopes the df300 will be a popular gift. It’s hard to argue with their assumption, the frame is so well put together, from a hardware perspective it will be hard to disappoint.

Memory/Picture Sources

HP has included a few MB of memory in the df300, enough to store 45 resized images. To augment this, they’ve also included an SD card reader, which is the best option for storing photos. The internal memory is a bit difficult to work with anyway and is best used for the tutorial images they’ve included with the frame.

The df300 includes a mini USB port which is used for two things. First is for charging the frame, which is convenient because it will charge over USB connection from a PC, or with the included AC adaptor. The second thing is does is allow access to the SD card from your PC. The frame in this case acts just like a card reader. While you cannot access the internal memory of the frame via PC, the option to access the SD card is helpful if for some reason you don’t have a card reader on your computer. The frame must be put into card reader mode manually though, each time you want to connect to a computer. So while the mini USB card access is a feature, it probably won’t get a lot of use.

Display Modes

HP has included a pretty reasonable set of slideshow and photo display features in the df300. The frame has a 4:3 aspect ratio that does not auto-rotate images. HP has included an image resizing software though, which will make sure the screen is always filled with an image. If you have a few portrait or oddly cropped images in the mix, the frame will zoom to fill the entire screen. This actually worked pretty well on our test image set.

From a slideshow perspective HP has included a base set of 6 transitions and speeds of 5, 10 or 30 seconds. The df300 also includes an auto shutoff that can be set to 5, 10 or 30 minutes. It makes a lot of sense for such a feature in a device with a battery, we’re glad to see it here.

Otherwise the frame is pretty straightforward. There aren’t a bunch of customizations or extra slideshow features like playlists, but for what it is, the df300 is sufficiently outfitted with display options.

Menu System

It doesn’t get a lot easier to work with than the menu system included with the HP df300. There are four buttons, all of which are used to navigate the menus. When t eh frame is turned on, you can select to view images from the internal memory or via SD card if one is inserted. After selecting the source the frame defaults into a slideshow.

There are two places to access frame/picture options, but both are done the same way. From the main menu pressing and holding the options button will bring up the core set of options. From a slideshow, the same button press gives you options specific to that picture, along with screen settings. It takes a few times through to get the proper use of the options and power button when navigating the menus, but it’s easy to pick up.

The menus and options are well laid out, leading to a pretty good interface. Again, the simplicity of design really helps make the df300 easy to work with.

Display

For a 3.5” 320×240 pixel display, we’re pretty happy with the quality. Horizontal viewing angles are pretty good, which is important if you’re trying to jam several faces around this little frame. But what we weren’t expecting were any display controls.

Like the df820 we recently reviewed, HP has included controls for brightness, contrast, tint and color. These four options are more than most full-featured frames offer, forget about this new class of portable frames. Out of the box contrast and colors are accurate, but you can tweak these settings as you like to get the results you like.

We expected the display to be a hindrance on the df300, but ended up pleasantly surprised. It’s common in a frame of this size for the manufacturer to skimp in an effort to keep the price down. That doesn’t appear to be the case with this HP model.

Battery

The HP df300 includes an internal batter that charges via the mini USB port. The manual claims roughly 2 hours of battery life. In our test we disabled auto shutoff, enabled photo optimization, enabled transitions and started a slideshow with 5 second transitions. Essentially we wanted to prove the minimum possible battery life, with default screen settings. We saw 2 hours and 22 minutes in our test, surprisingly better than what HP quotes. With more conservative usage, you should be able to top 3 hours.

Bottom Line

The HP df300 does what it intends to do. It offers a portable photo viewing experience with design and build that is very good. We can into the review with low expectations, so to say HP surpassed them isn’t entirely fair. They really vastly exceeded everything we thought we’d get with the df300. While it’s hard to gush over a 3.5” frame that doesn’t jam in dozens of high-tech features, HP did what you’re supposed to do – execute well on the basics. Sometimes we get so wrapped up in the latest and greatest we forget that clean and simple has its place.

Pros:

• Excellent design and build
• Reasonable feature set
• Good display
• Better than advertised battery life

Cons:

• Limited internal memory

4.5 out of 5 stars – Editor’s Choice

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