Review: Sungale Cyberus ID700WTA

Written on Dec 21, 2009 by Thomas S. and filed under Reviews, Sungale

At the moment Sungale isn’t exactly a household name when it comes to digital picture frames, but they have started to ship some new and very interesting models. The Cyberus ID700WTA is a 7” digital picture frame that also pulls double-duty as a full-function internet-enabled media player. With features including YouTube movie playback, Gmail integration, RSS news readers, and IP radio support it has the potential to be one of the coolest frames I have seen to date.

Sungale Cyberus ID700WTA Specs

• 16:9 Widesreen LED-Backlit Touchscreen Display
• Resolution: 800×480
• Supported File Formats: JPG, TIF, PNG, BMP, WMA, AVI, TXT, PDF
• Online Features: YouTube, RSS News, IP Radio, Gmail, Picasa, Weather
• Connectivity: Wi-Fi B/G, PC Connection
• Internal Memory: 1GB
• Supported Memory Formats: SDHC
• Speaker, Headphone Output
• 2-Hours Battery Life
• MSRP: $229.99

Build and Design

I knew the Sungale Cyberus ID700WTA was going to special when I opened up the box and was presented with a picture frame that included its own leather slipcase. Most frames I see are models that are placed on a desk surface; not something with its own battery and travel case. Inside its leather holster the Cyberus ID700WTA looks pretty nice. The entire frame is covered by a thick leather border, leaving only an opening for the LCD and page controls. The sides are trimmed with leather as well, with openings for the memory slot, power button, and connectors on top. From a design standpoint the picture frame looks very nice with good attention to detail.

The frame feels pretty solid in your hands and the leather case seems to protect the body just in case you accidentally drop it. The top cover has magnets on the edges to keep it secure in storage and it has either cardboard or plastic inside the leather that keeps it pretty stiff. The frame itself feels durable when removed from the case and has no plastic creaking or flexing.

Controls

Controls on the Cyberus ID700WTA are limited to page transition buttons on the front cover and an on/off switch on the top. The power switch and page buttons require deliberate action to use so they shouldn’t be accidentally triggered in your briefcase or backpack. The main way to handle user input and device navigation is using the touchscreen itself. The screen is responsive using your fingertip to tap the onscreen keyboard and pop through the menus. If you don’t want to put smudges on the screen the frame also has a small pen inside the bottom corner. The main controls are all sized appropriately for a pointer finger so the input pen never really has to be used.

Display

The high resolution display is average compared to other frames I have reviewed. Colors and contrast seem pretty good, although with the resistive layer over the LCD, it does have a “muted” look to the display. This is common for most touchscreen devices. On this review model I did notice something weird with the backlight, where one perfect band of the screen was darker than the surrounding sections. It is hard to show in a picture, but if the screen was divided into four segments from bottom to top, it would be the one right below middle. You could only notice this on black screens and it wasn’t a problem in other display modes. The backlight level was fixed with no adjustment in the settings area. The display setting was limited to how images were rendered (optimal and original) and nothing else. If you let the frame sit idle it would dim until you pressed the screen but you have no direct control over that.

Memory Sources

This frame included 1GB of internal storage for loading images off a computer as well as an SDHC card slot to view images directly from a camera. Both memory sources were easy to navigate to when viewing images or trying to load movies. The menu layout made it appear that you could copy images to move them between memory sources, but no matter how I tried it, clicking anything loaded the file instead of just selecting it.

Display Modes

The Cyberus ID700WTA is limited to a basic slideshow for viewing images. You have three basic settings to adjust the way images are shown; display mode, slideshow mode, and slideshow time. The display mode lets you change how the images are shown on screen; either full-size or zoomed in. The slideshow mode adjustment gives you photo transition options. The slideshow time let you adjust how long each image was displayed; 5, 10, or 15 seconds. When viewing images, including the sample photos, the time to load each image was 5 to 10 seconds. Even with no special transition between pictures it still look a long time to render each one. Some of my larger uncompressed photos directly out of the camera look over of 10 seconds to load. The only way to really navigate photos is if you remembered the name of each one, since going through one by one would take forever with a large folder. No option to rotate the screen was given in the menu, so rotated the frame by hand for each picture.

Menu System

The Cyberus ID700WTA had lots of potential on paper but you find yourself letdown once you turn it on and start playing with it. When you first power the frame on it has a very modern look and feel with the boot screen, but once that finishes it drops you into something that looks very mid-90’s Prodigy-era. The interface could use a great deal of refining and it was frustrating at times since it required you to repeat the same steps each time it was powered on. On every boot it prompts you to enter the main menu or to connect to the Internet. With most network-enabled devices after the first time you connect to a network it doesn’t prompt you again. The ID700WTA goes through this entire process each time, which takes about 30 seconds going through each prompt. After doing this a few times I tried to see what would happen if you just skipped the process and it turned out it actually did save the information, but it never says that anywhere.

Almost every application is text based with very few images or artwork. In many ways it reminded me of stepping back in time to DOS-based computer. Once inside an application it was confusing to get back to the main menu. Each new screen would load up on top of the previous and to move back you clicked the X at the top corner until you reached the main menu again. If an application opened 10 new windows, you had to close each one to get back to where you started.

The flow of each internet-enabled application felt awkward with a “network loading” popup each time you opened one. After a few seconds the application would load into its very minimalistic interface. The YouTube app for example was frustrating as you could only view lists of top videos, but you couldn’t search for anything even though the frame uses an onscreen keyboard elsewhere.

Conclusion

The Sungale Cyberus ID700WTA looked great on paper but once you sit down and try to use it, it leaves you frustrated and disappointed. From a design standpoint the frame is compact like an eReader and feels very well built. The leather slipcase is a nice freebie since it protects the screen and gives it a professional appearance. All of this changes though after you power it on. The interface feels very dated and clunky with endless menus and no simple transitions between programs. Closing out of each application is a lengthy process depending on how far in you are, as each transition screen needs to be closed by clicking the X at the top. Overall I think the frame has a great deal of potential with the features it supports but it really needs a software overhaul to become useful.

Pros

• Nice design
• Good build quality
• Nice leather slipcase

Cons

• Prodigy-era interface
• Clunky navigation
• Slow image loading

Rating – 2 out of 5 stars

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