Review: Aequitas Technologies iGala

Written on Jan 26, 2009 by MKowalski and filed under Aequitas Technologies, Reviews

Never heard of Aequitas Technologies? Until my review sample of the iGala – a brand new 8″ digital picture frame with Wi-Fi, a touch screen, and a few other unique widgets and gizmos – showed up a few weeks back, I hadn’t either. “Aequitas,” name of the Virginia-based parent company behind the iGala, comes from the Latin word for “justice.” We’re not sure what that means in the context of digital picture frames, but Aequitas’s ability to get noticed in a crowded market full of manufacturers you’ve never heard of by offering features like a touch screen and slick Internet integrations makes them seem like a company worth checking out.

Aequitas iGala Specs

• 8″ LCD (800×600, 4:3 aspect ratio) touch screen
• 1GB internal memory
• Supports SD/SDHC external memory
• USB connection for flash drive hosting
• WiFi (802.11b/g) with Gmail, Flickr, and Windows Live FrameIt integration
• Built-in speaker for MP3 playback

Build and Design

Before I ever fired up the iGala, this frame didn’t exactly get off to a good start with me. In my mind, the only thing more obnoxious than Apple’s smugly marketed line of “i”-prefixed lifestyle gadgets are the millions of knock-offs that they’ve spawned. A new product from an unknown manufacturer with a name like iGala really didn’t bode well for this frame in my mind.

Taking the iGala out of its (rather unattractive) packaging, the frame itself did little to dispel this idea. Although rival frames from Samsung and Sony may not pack in the well-integrated Internet features found in the iGala, they take this frame out back and beat it senseless on design and construction quality.

The real shame in the iGala’s construction is Aequitas’s choice to put a thick, cheap feeling clear plastic bezel around the outside of the frame’s display. Had they left the inner black surround alone and called it a day, this would have looked like an anonymous but inoffensive desktop frame. As it stands, I’m afraid that many people may not be willing to take a chance on the iGala as a home or office decor item simply because it looks so low-budget (never mind that it’s impossible to get fingerprints off of that clear surround). And given how much neat stuff the iGala has going for it once you get past its looks, it’s a shame.

On the reverse, the iGala keeps things simple. You’ll find nail sockets for hanging the frame in landscape or portrait orientation and a flimsy but serviceable “kick stand” for desktop support. Again, build quality is a little thin here as well, but on a positive note, the iGala is appreciably thinner than most frames of this size that we’ve looked at.

Inputs are basic as well, with an SD card reader, a USB host connection, and a headphones jack sitting on top of the frame. The positioning of the USB port means that most thumb drives will visibly extend well beyond the frame’s bezel, and there’s no connection for hooking the iGala directly to your computer for batch file transfers. I also would have liked to see readers for other card types, but while no Memory Stick or CF slots may turn off some potential customers, if Aequitas had to pick one format to support I’m glad it’s SD.

Since the entire interface is handled through on-screen menus using the iGala’s touch screen, the only button you’ll find on the entire frame is the power switch, which sits next to the power supply connection on the frame’s left side.

Memory/Picture Sources

With both 1GB of built-in memory and wireless Internet access, the iGala is well stocked for getting photos either directly from the web, or for viewing or saving entire libraries of your images from memory cards or flash drives.

Well, I should say that the iGala pulls photos from flash drives in theory. In practice, I was one for two in making flash drives work with this frame. Using two identical 512MB sticks with images loaded onto each, the iGala found the images on one, but couldn’t locate shots from the same camera on the other. All in all, it seems like a one-time glitch involving this particular flash drive, but if you’re considering the iGala, it’s worth keeping in mind that it may be finicky where flash drives are concerned.

SD cards were a bit more forgiving, with the iGala successfully and reasonably quickly finding images in multiple folders on my memory card. In order to pull files over to the iGala’s built-in memory, simply select the image and click Save at the bottom of the screen. In order to save space on the internal memory and speed up the saving process (which can take up to a minute per image with a high-res file), I’d recommend resizing your photos and resaving them to your SD card before putting them onto the iGala. Also, it’s frustrating that while you can select more than one image on the screen for simultaneous copying, there’s no option for batch copying the entire contents of a card.

So the process for getting photos to the iGala from local memory leaves something to be desired. But what may be more important for many users is how easily the iGala makes use of its wireless Internet connection (for more on Wi-Fi setup with this frame, see the next section) and integrations with Flickr, Gmail, and FrameIt. Forget the confusing processes for adding Flickr photos that other frames with this integration use. This one’s done right on the iGala’s screen, and requires only that you know the Flickr user name of the person whose photos you’re trying to add. Punch it in using the on-screen touch keyboard, select which photo sets (or all of them) you want to see, jump into slideshow mode for a few minutes to let the iGala start caching images, and the frame will automatically throw photos from Flickr into the mix with those on internal and external memory sources.

It’s not often that we get to say this with digital picture frames, but this function really is so easy to use that even your Grandma (yep, the same one who thinks TV remotes are high-tech) could handle it. If Grandma wants to see photos of the grandkids in real time, all she’ll need to know is what to put in when the iGala asks for your Flickr ID – you won’t even have to try to explain what Flickr is to send family photos her way.

Ditto the “photos from email” function. The iGala can sort through current emails to your Gmail account, assuming you have one, and download any attached images directly to a special cache in its internal memory and adding them automatically to your slideshow rotation. If your friends are like mine, enabling this feature may mean that you spend a lot of time deleting ostensibly cute pictures from forwarded joke emails and chain letters, but it sure makes it easy to shoot small batches of one or two images over to your frame from another computer or to keep Gmail-connected family members up to date with your latest vacation photos while you’re away.

While the iGala provides direct access into photo sharing and emailed images through Flickr and Gmail integrations, respectively, what it doesn’t offer is direct RSS feed reading/image downloads. For that, you’ll have to work through the iGala’s third web-based integration: Windows Live FrameIt. I’ve looked at enough FrameIt-enabled frames at this point to have a pretty clear sense of how it works, and while it will definitely get the job done for compiling and distributing your RSS feeds (and do better than the FrameChannel alternative, in my opinion), having to work through FrameIt’s clunky, buggy web interface is a bit of a downer. In typical Microsoft fashion, FrameIt keeps getting better by degrees, but in order to make the iGala a true all-in-one news and media center for your kitchen or office desk, let’s hope for direct RSS access in iGala v.2.0.

Display Modes

In spite of all its high-tech abilities to pull photos from the web, the iGala really only has one display mode: slideshow. And with just a couple of options, it is, depending on your perspective, either the most refreshing simple or the most incredibly crippled slideshow mode on the planet.

Basically, the iGala automatically randomizes image playback from all of its sources (SD/USB, internal memory, cached Internet sources, RSS feeds), meaning there’s no way to tell it to stick to one type of media short of physically removing the pictures from the frame – either by deleting them from the cache if they’re Internet-sourced, or by removing the card or USB stick in question.

The full extent of your options for customizing the iGala’s slideshow can be found under the Setup tab in the main menu, within the Display submenu.

Basically, you have five options for how long each image holds on the screen during playback. Sadly, with this abbreviated list, I think many users may miss the ability to have their frame change images more slowly: once an hour, or once a day even. The only other display option specifies whether the frame is oriented in landscape or portrait mode – important, as the iGala auto-rotates any image with orientation info in the EXIF data to fit the orientation you’ve selected.

Besides more timing controls for the slideshow, what’s really missing here is the ability to specify slide-to-slide transitions. The iGala’s default (and apparently unchangeable) setup is to automatically use a different effect for each transition, randomly selected from a list of four or five. The transition effects are not particularly graceful (the fade, for instance, is slow and stuttering), and some are pretty cheesy. It would be nice to be able to specify a consistent slide-to-slide transition effect for use each time, but even just the ability to turn effects on or off altogether would be an improvement.

Finally, you can also add MP3s into the mix for background music. Other than a volume control and the ability to pause/stop music playback, the user has little control over MP3 audio either. Put your favorite tunes onto the iGala, add some photos, and you have an instant multimedia slideshow with no need to “build” one as on some other frames. But without a sophisticated slideshow interface, there’s also no way to make sure that your favorite Turkish pop music always plays behind photos from your recent vacation in Istanbul.

Having used a lot of frames with complex or confusing mode controls, I can see both sides of this coin. On the one hand, users who are more gadget-savvy will probably miss being able to control exactly what’s going on in slideshow mode; not to mention that the iGala doesn’t support video playback. If you’re a little more wary of technology, however, the iGala makes seeing your photos in a slideshow – with background music, no less! – as easy as putting your SD card into the frame or emailing them to your Gmail account.

Menu System

The iGala features a two-layer menu system, driven entirely by touching icons that appear on its touch-sensitive display. Tap the display once and the basic control menu pops up.

The icons used in this two-row menu aren’t particularly clear at first, but it’s easy enough to figure out with a little exploration (and without resorting to the manual). Basically, the top row of icons provides access to the main and picture sources menus, and gives controls for jumping forward or backward in the slideshow, removing an image, or manually rotating a picture that doesn’t have in-file orientation data.

The bottom row allows you to pause either the slideshow or just the music, adjust the music volume, safely disconnected attached cards or USB drives, or call up information about the device’s firmware and build.

Call up the main menu from the control screen and you get an on-screen pop up with six labeled icons. Most of the choices are self-explanatory. For instance, the Photos and Music tabs provide access to lists of picture and music sources, while the FrameIt button lets you set up you associate the frame to your Windows Live account. Slide Show takes you directly back to the rolling slideshow playback.

The setup menu is simple as well, providing a series of touch-tabs for setting up Wi-Fi, configuring Gmail and Flickr access, changing the display settings as seen above, or configuring the auto power-on/power-off function.

Wireless Internet access might just be the iGala’s biggest selling point, and when it comes to Wi-Fi setup on a photo frame, you really never know what you’re going to get. We’ve had some real winners in this category, that made waltzing through getting wirelessly connected easier than it’s ever been on your computer. At the same time, we’ve also seen some setup processes that are so arcane and involved, they make me wonder if anyone who doesn’t review frames for a living is ever actually willing to spend the time it takes to figure out the steps involved.

Although its firmware was an unknown, the iGala’s wireless setup sits closer to the “extremely easy” end of this continuum. There are frames that are easier to setup for Wi-Fi access, but not many. Basically, the process – accessed under the Setup area of the main menu – is just like what you’re probably used to from a computer: select your network from a list of the ones detected by the frame, type in your security key (which, using the on-screen keyboard, is much easier here than on any frame without a touch screen), and you should be good to go.

The only slightly technical hitch is that you’ll need to know in advance which security protocol your network uses. Ask your teenager, or that kid from down the block, to check for you if that last question went right over your head, but beyond this, if you can use a microwave, you can get the iGala connected to your home network.

Display

The iGala’s 8″, 800×600 display is of average quality. Colors are fine if not particularly strong. Contrast is a little subpar as well, and viewing angles really aren’t that great either – though they’re better from the sides than from the top. At this price, I would have liked to see some controls for color, contrast, and brightness as well, but there are none to be found on the iGala.

The touch screen works flawlessly, with large icons that are simple to press without overlap. Touching the screen directly, however, leads to an obvious problem: fingerprints. Additionally, the screen’s top layer has the slightly dull, slightly rippled finished common to touch screens on other electronic devices.

Extra Features

In addition to the wireless-driven features outlined above, the iGala provides a few other special tools and options. My personal favorite might just be the auto power-on/power-off function, which allows you to specify a certain time of day for the frame to come on or go off – so you can set up the iGala to only be on while you’re home in the evenings, for instance, without ever having to touch the frame’s power switch. Why every frame doesn’t offer this option is truly beyond me.

For bedside or desktop use, the inclusion of a simple alarm clock is also handy. I only wish that there was a calendar or clock mode to go with it.

Pros

• Simplest wireless system in a digital picture frame
• Gmail, Flickr integrations work seamlessly
• Touch screen means clean lines, no buttons
• Slideshow couldn’t be easier to manage

Cons

• Build quality not in line with price
• Touch screen means lots of fingerprints on the display
• Copying images from SD/USB sources not smooth
• No direct access to RSS feeds

Bottom Line

In reviewing digital photo frames, it’s typically pretty easy to come to a decision as to whether a frame is recommended or not. The iGala goes against all of this, being at once one of the better (quite possibly the best) internet-integrated frame I’ve looked at while simultaneously performing poorly for basic functions like pulling pictures from a USB drive or SD card to the frame’s internal memory. There’s a lot that’s not so well sorted about the iGala, but when it comes to getting content from the web to your frame, this one checks all the right boxes. Could some of the iGala’s functions, and especially its design, use a bit (ok, a lot) more of the old spit and shine? Absolutely. But Aequitas has been good on providing firmware updates to smooth out the interface, and with the iGala generating a lot of buzz in the photo frame world, maybe a redesign won’t be far behind.

With a steep asking price for an 8″ display of $239.95 directly from the manufacturer, I would be inclined to pass on the first-generation iGala and see what else Aequitas is up to. They deserve commendation for making wireless frame interaction as clear and straightforward as it should be, and I hope that other manufacturers will sit up and take note – as the iGala is in basically every respect a model device when it comes to Wi-Fi integration. With some design clean-up, a few bug fixes, and just the slightest few more controls and options, the iGala easily go from a good wireless frame to one of the best all-around frames out there.

3.5 out of 5 stars

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