Review: HANNspree SD80M4MB

Written on Dec 31, 2008 by Adama Brown and filed under HANNspree, Reviews

The inartfully named HANNspree SD80M4MB (referred to hereinafter as the SD80) is an 8″ widescreen frame features 800×480 resolution and high-end 500:1 contrast ratio. The unit also comes with seasonal frames and other accessories but stays under the $100 price point.

HANNspree SD80M4MB Specs

• 8″ display
• 16:9 aspect ratio (widescreen)
• 800×480 resolution
• 256MB internal memory
• MP3, AVI, MPEG-4 playback
• SD, MMC, CF, MS, mini-USB
• Speakers

Design and Build

The frame comes with several faceplates that can be used, or not, with a few seasons. The Christmas, Valentines, and candy-themed faceplates all struck me as being pretty too dramatic, so I simply left the frame bare. In that condition it’s an attractive flat black. Unremarkable yes, but suitable to almost any decor.

Mounting options consist of wall hangings or a simple single-prop stand that can be rotated to support either a landscape or portrait style orientation. If you rotate the SD80 to portrait, it automatically senses this and flip all your photos.

The interface, as far as it goes, is relatively simple. The frame defaults to its internal memory, but it can be ordered to read photos off of an SD or CompactFlash memory card, or even a USB hard drive via the (included) USB Host adapter.

Display Modes

Once you’ve got a lineup, you can “play” all the photos in a long slideshow, or pick and choose which ones; designate how long to wait before flipping to the next; what type of transitions to use; manually skipping forward, back, and pausing; and a bunch of other options to let you choose exactly what you want to see, and how. While you can get away with using the buttons behind the edge of the frame itself, the best and easiest way is with the included infrared remote control.

It’s a very simple and reliable little unit, I must say, with great buttons and a compact design.

Curiously, despite all those options, the SD80 lacks a couple things that one would imagine to be obvious: a simple shuffle feature, and any ability to organize photos into categories. It’ll only play in standard order, and if you want it to play certain groups of photos you need to either manually select them every time or maintain separate memory cards. Personally though I never really missed these while I was trialing the frame, I realize I might feel different if I were trying to organize hundreds or even thousands of photos, or if I had the thing running its cycle for weeks.

Multimedia

One of the SD80’s advertised features is the ability to play video. Presumably, this is aimed at the simple digital video files produced by some cameras, but in theory it supports a decent range of common formats.

Just as a random test, I grabbed a large-format XviD file and dropped it on the memory card. My expectation was that it would choke on the size and quality of the video, but that it might give me an idea where the performance ceiling was.

So it was very much to my shock that I pushed the play button and was greeted by glassy-smooth DVD-quality playback, in about the same quality you’d get showing it on a typical laptop screen. I was rather impressed–I’ve had computers that haven’t been able to do that. The standard speaker is a bit quiet, but if you’re really interested in the video features, it has a 3.5mm audio out jack, suitable for alternate speakers or even a pair of headphones. I’m not suggesting that you toss your DVD player by any means, but for a device not designed primarily to play video, the SD80 does it pretty well.

There’s a variety of other small, relatively standard features on the frame such as the ability to play back music, either in and of itself or as a backdrop while presenting its slideshow. An ability, in my opinion, very much wasted with the default speaker. Don’t bother, though with added speakers the right tunes might enhance your memories of that trip to the Grand Canyon.

It also offers a desktop calendar/clock mode, displaying the time and date in one of two views, alongside your photos, or superimposing the time on one corner of the screen during the slideshow. Nothing exotic, but useful.

The biggest disadvantage to the SD80 its aspect ratio. Although widescreen may be the standard for video and an increasing number of laptops, digital photos are still 4:3 by default. That being the case, you’re probably going to want to resize your photos so that they don’t have wasted space on the sides.

The more discriminating photo guru would want to process and crop their photos before loading them anyway, even on a 4:3 frame, for maximum use of the available space. But for the casual user, it just adds a layer of complexity that they shouldn’t be obligated to deal with, and it’s annoying if you have hundreds of photos you want to display.

Pros

• Nice screen
• Audio/video playback
• Multiple storage options

Cons

• Widescreen not ideal for most photos

Bottom Line

With the ability to a half dozen different things, the SD80 goes beyond simply being a picture frame and approaches the realm of being a digital appliance, while still being easy enough to figure out without needing to touch the manual. Combine that with a very reasonable price compared to similarly equipped frames, and the it’s relatively easy to forget the small blemishes of aspect ratio and a couple of missing sort options.

4 out of 5 stars

Have a comment about this article? Leave a comment in the DigitalPictureFrameReview.com forums.