Review: ViewSonic TrueView VFD820 (VFD720, VFD1020)

Written on Jul 11, 2009 by MKowalski and filed under Reviews, ViewSonic

In the process of reviewing digital photo frames, it feels like I spend a lot of time these days fighting with the latest features. Over the past year, I’ve reviewed some great frames with innovative features: the ability to read news feeds, display shared images, even check weather and traffic for you. But there have been a lot of growing pains associated with bringing web technologies to photo frames, and even the most well-designed and well-integrated devices all too often to lose sight of the fact that photo frames should, first and foremost, display photos without complications or headaches.

If you’re among those who share this sentiment, who feel like digital photo frames have been running away from where you’d like them to be–in terms of price, features, and level of complexity–in the last year, you’re exactly the kind of user ViewSonic is hoping to reach out to with their new simple and affordable TrueView series. A familiar name among display manufacturers with a growing presence in digital picture frames as well, ViewSonic announced nine new frames at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show. Along with its 7- and 10.4-inch siblings (the VFD720 and VFD1020, respectively), the Viewsonic TrueView VFD820 represents the manufacturer’s new TrueView line–a series of no-frills frames designed to offer high-quality picture playback with easier operation and a lower price point than many current multi-function displays provide.

Build and Design

The core of the TrueView VFD820′s design and purpose can be summed up in one sentence: This is a frame designed to store and display your photos. That’s really all there is to it. Which is to say, if you were hoping to watch home movies, stream RSS feeds from the web, or pull pictures from your friends’ Flickr accounts, the TrueView frames aren’t the ticket.

Built around an 8-inch, 800×600 display, the VFD820 also eschews modern styling in favor of a classic, matted-photo look that should blend in well in home or office settings. This discreet design seeks to minimize the space-age, “high tech” often associated with digital frames, and with a dark wood surround (the VFD820′s frame comes in either black or dark brown) and a plate of glass over the actual display, the VFD820 is one of the more visually handsome and unassuming frames we’ve reviewed.

Incidentally, the VFD820 is also one of the more solidly constructed devices we’ve tested, especially considering its sub-$100 price point. Construction is dense and feels robust, and the VFD820′s relatively thin build (the display only extends about half an inch beyond the back of the frame surround) makes the device ideally suited for wall hanging. To this end, the TrueView is equipped with a pair of nail recesses, allowing the frame to be wall-mounted in portrait orientation only–which makes sense, given that there’s no automatic orientation sensor in this display.

The VFD820′s desktop stand is reasonably solid as well, attaching into a twist-and-rotate socket on the back of the frame. Getting the stand locked in was a little difficult the first time around, requiring more force than might be expected to twist the prop into position. Once you’re locked in, though, the stand provides solid support for desktop use (although the addition of some rubber pads to keep the VFD820 from sliding on slick table surfaces would have been appreciated).

Connections and controls include a pair of USB ports (a full-size one for flash drives, and a mini-USB socket for connecting the frame to a computer) and a power jack on one side, a single shared-slot SD and Memory Stick card reader on the other, and an array of seven menu navigation buttons on the back panel.

A slim wireless remote–which proved to be more useful than the clearly marked but hard-to-reach panel controls–as well as a mini to full-size USB cable, are included in the box as well.

Memory/Picture Sources

In keeping with its minimalist overall design philosophy, the VFD820 cuts to the chase on memory media support. Out back, you’ll find slots for common SD/SDHC/MMC as well as Sony MemoryStick formats; photographers who capture images to flagging xD format, or who use older or high-end cameras that still shoot on Compact Flash cards, however, will have to transfer files via the USB connection instead.

Per its specs, the VFD820 is capable of both host and slave USB connectivity (via the aforementioned full-size and mini-USB ports), meaning that you can pull images directly from flash drives in addition to transferring them from a computer using the supplied cable. In both cases, the TrueView’s performance was flawless: Images were pulled from several different USB flash drives without incident, and the VFD820 shows up as a basic mass storage device when connected to a PC, making computer-side management of the frame’s internal memory a snap for savvier users.

The VFD820 sports an impressive 2GB of internal memory, providing plenty of space for storing your photos. Images stored in the frame’s memory can be browsed from a thumbnail-display screen, and although the frame doesn’t automatically resize images that stored in its memory (note that it does, however, play back images at screen size rather than full resolution by default; this can be changed via a menu option), 2GB provides plenty of room for storing even your full-size JPEGs–easily more than 500 shots from your typical 12-megapixel digital camera.

Display Modes

The VFD820 is primarily a slideshow device. Power on the frame and it will immediately begin displaying images loaded into the memory if no card or flash drive is inserted. Plug in one of these external memory sources and after a few seconds of buffering (depending on the file sizes of your shots) the frame will jump to a slideshow of these images instead. By default, shots are shown in the sort order they appear on the card, but a “Shuffle” menu option seems to do a nice job of mixing things up.

Viewers can opt to manual pause, advance, or reverse the slideshow by pressing the appropriate navigational button, either on the back of the frame or on the remote. Additionally, a zoom button on the remote provides two steps of additional zooming that can be cycled through by pressing the button.

Like most frames these days, the VFD820 lets you dial in several parameters related to the slideshow. Viewers can select a per-image display time ranging from three seconds to a full hour. Similarly, the VFD820 supports a fairly typical list of nine “Powerpoint style” shot-to-shot transitions; a menu option lets you lock in a specific transition style (scroll from left for every transition, for instance), present a different randomly selected transition each time, or disable transitions altogether.

As mentioned previously, users can also turn on an image shuffle mode as well as set shots to display at full-resolution (rather than scaling to fit the screen) in the same menu. All in all, the options presented here are simple and straightforward. My only complaint is that you have to dig several layers down into the device’s menu to get to these basic slideshow presentation options.

As noted, users can also browse photos in either the internal memory or any inserted external source by selecting “Memory” (or “SD/MMC/MS” or “USB” for external sources) from the frame’s main menu. In addition to the previously mentioned thumbnail view, a complete list of all files found on each memory source can also be called up in this mode. Incidentally, this view is, as far as I can tell, the only one that allows you to copy files from external to internal memory; more on this process in the next section.

Menu System

The VFD820′s menu system is, like the frame itself, simple and generally well-designed. Options are organized into four main groups (Memory, Clock, Calendar, and Setup), though you’ll spend most of your time in either the memory or setup areas.

The VFD820′s submenus are equally streamlined and well-organized, though at times the labeling of options is (to put it politely) less than self-explanatory. My personal favorite? The mysterious “Auto Run” function, which provides a list of options (Main Menu, Clock, etc.), but doesn’t appear to do anything when selected. Unfortunately, the manual is often equally unhelpful–although it does amusingly warn users that the VFD820 doesn’t support certain “unpopular” memory card types. Take that, you holdout xD users!

On the whole, while the menus could probably be a little better thought out, everything is simple enough that even tech novices should latch on to accessing basic functions in no time. The one exception to this rule, it seems, is the great difficultly and lack of transparency involved in transferring files from USB drives or memory cards to the VFD820′s internal memory. In order to accomplish this task, you have to enter the somewhat daunting file-list view, and then press the right arrow to select each file you want to copy. Again, as best we can tell, there’s no way to batch copy an entire card’s worth of files.

Once the file is selected–and this is where things get interesting–you’ll have to reach to the back of the frame and press the “M” button (no, pressing the seemingly redundant “Menu” button on the remote will not, in this case, suffice), and then navigate a few more-confusing-than-they-should-be pop-up menus to get the file from point A to point B.

For transferring lots of files, this slow and unintuitive process simply doesn’t work, and I quickly resorted to connecting the frame to my computer when moving more than a handful of files. To ViewSonic’s credit, I like that you can not only move files from external to internal memory, but can go the other way as well–great for throwing a few shots stored on your frame onto a thumb drive to share with friends or family. It certainly would have been nice, though, if the whole process weren’t so laborious, and even more than that, hadn’t required a trip to the manual to figure out how to transfer files in the first place.

Display

An 8-inch, 800×600 display certainly isn’t anything unique to ViewSonic, as most frames in this class will get you these sorts of specs (though, it should be noted, the 10.4 VDF1020 steps up to a 1024×768 display). But the manufacturer’s experience in developing other LCD technologies has clearly paid off here. The display is bright and colorful with impressively wide viewing angles and very little loss of contrast until you get to the extremes of the viewable range.

A series of menu options also allow you to fine-tune the display’s saturation, hue, and contrast, and while the interface isn’t intuitive (it’s buried deep in a menu, and you can’t see the effects of these changes on the screen in real time), being able to make these sorts of tweaks is a nice bonus feature.

Extra Features

In addition to its basic slideshow function, the TrueView includes both clock and calendar modes. Both are extremely basic in their implementation; the only real “option” in each mode involves turning on or off the image display in these modes (and if you disable it, the VDF820 just leaves an empty black box in its place). Good enough for an office desk, I suppose, but not exactly thrilling stuff.

One truly useful inclusion is the frame’s auto power-on and power-off functions. While a motion sensor that powers on the frame only when people are around would have been even slicker, the ability to set up the frame to only display images for part of the day (in the evenings when you’re likely to be at home, for instance) is an obvious power-saving addition.

Conclusion

Okay, so the VDF820 didn’t exactly bowl us over with its features, and even given this simplicity, some aspects of the frame’s interface design and overall functionality could have been executed more cleanly. Even so, after spending time with a whole lot of multi-function frames that never quite live up to the hype of their whiz-bang features sets–and an equal number of budget single-function frames that leave a lot to be desired in the way of fit, finish, and functionality–the VDF820 is a breath of fresh air: stylish, simple, affordable, and functional. It’s certainly not the best frame–even the best single-function frame–we’ve ever reviewed, but given the VDF820′s nice construction, low price, and (generally) dead simple operation, it’s a solid choice if your sole interest is displaying photos.

Pros:

• Simple operation
• Excellent, vibrant display
• Low price

Cons:

• Few extra features
• Some menus and options can be clunky

4 out of 5 stars

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