The Photo Book addresses the growing market of portable digital frames. To this point the sweet spot has been in the smaller sizes, but this 8″ model is full-featured and brings a lot of flexibility to the table. In addition to the 4GB of storage space, the Photo Book also supports USB flash drives, CF, SD, SDHC, MMC, xD and Memory Stick. The portable frame also offers a mini-USB connection for direct link to a PC to transfer images or other files directly to the unit.

For easy image sharing, the Photo Book does something most frames don’t, it allows for playlisting. Users can use what Digital Foci calls “Photo Album View” to view each folder as a separate photo album or playlist. The frame also supports traditional slideshows with transitions and support for music playback in the background. While viewing images they’re automatically rotated to their correct orientation based on the EXIF data captured by the camera, and can also be zoomed, panned, and rotated manually. The Photo Book also hopes to appeal to professional shooters and it supports RAW image format along with JPEG, BMP, GIF, and TIF. From the multimedia side, the frame supports MP3, AAC, WMA, MJPEG, MPEG-1 and MPEG-4. Audio is piped through an internal 1.4 watt speaker.

The Digital Foci Photo Book includes a leather-like case and will be available this May for a suggested retail price of $189.

The Image Moments 6 digital photo frame from Digital Foci is one of three in the Image Moments family. In addition to the Image Moments 6, which is incidentally a 5.7” display, Digital Foci offers an 8” and 15” model (due out 2009). The IM6 includes a few unique features, including most notably a very high pixel density for a frame this size, along with a classic design that’s being pitched for the executive desktop.

Digital Foci Image Moments 6 IMT-063 Quick Specs

• 5.7″ color digital TFT LCD screen
• Resolution – 640 x 480 pixels (VGA)
• Picture aspect ratio – 4:3
• Contrast ratio – 300:1
• Brightness – 220 nits
• Onboard memory 450 MB
• Memory cards supported  – CompactFlash, xD, SD, MMC, Memory Stick
• USB 2.0 Device (for computer connection)
• Dimensions – 6.5“ (W) x 5.4” (H) x 1.7” (D)
• Weight – 0.9 lbs

Design and Build

Digital Foci is pitching the Image Moments 6 as an executive frame. What that means exactly is a little unclear, but the aluminum frame design is more appropriate for a desk than most kitchen counters. Still, the frame looks nice and would fit in nicely with a desk or more modern home designs.

Digital Foci has done a nice job with the stand too. It’s integrated with the back of the unit instead of an extra piece that screws, snaps or otherwise bolts on. The only downside is that while it’s plenty sturdy in horizontal mode, the stand isn’t reliable vertically; the frame is very easy to tip over to the left. Aside from the stand, the back of the frame houses a power button, dual speakers, power adaptor and the somewhat unusual headphone jack.

Memory card access is stowed on the right side of the frame, and the Image Moments 6 accounts for just about everything, except USB drives. They do support the usual suspects though of SD, MMC, MS and even CF.  Not that it matters, but Digital Foci included a separate Memory Stick reader, so there are three in total. We only note that fact because it’s a bit unusual, most frames have a single card reader for the non-CF formats. They’ve also included the much desired mini-USB connection on the right side of the frame for quickly moving files from your computer to the frame’s internal memory.

The top of the frame houses navigation buttons and a handy 5-way navigational joystick. The net result is a set of on-frame hardware buttons that make the frame largely usable even without the remote.

The only thing that we struggle with in terms of build is that the frame feels cheap. It’s all plastic and for this price, we just want something that feels more sturdy, especially if the audience is the executive crowd who are often in tune with things like material quality.

Memory/Picture Sources

As noted, the Image Moments 6 does a good job of accommodating for all memory cards, including CF, which is a surprise in a frame of this size. The only negative on this front is the lack of support for USB drives, which is becoming increasingly common even in smaller frames.

Aside from the card reader, Digital Foci has included 450MB of RAM, which is better than average for this class of frame. The memory can be accessed directly by copying images from a PC over USB connection. You can also move files from external memory into the frame’s onboard RAM, but that’s a bit easier said than done.

When you go into the file copy menu, even with external memory inserted, the default view shows the source and destination as the internal memory. I don’t know why anyone would want to start by copying files from the internal memory to the internal memory, but okay. You can select the entire SD card, which in my test case was larger than the frame’s internal memory. To pick individual files to copy, you have to hit the + button on the remote which increases volume and apparently gets you into sub-folders of the external memory card (incidentally the play button starts a file transfer). To Digital Foci’s credit, they do provide tiny thumbnails next to the image file names so it’s easier to tell what you’ve moving, but the entire process is so onerous I gave up and went to the direct cable connection to a PC. Users just shouldn’t have to read the manual to find that there are nine buttons they’ll need to move files to their frame.

Display Modes

The Image Moments 6 is pretty stacked when it comes to playback options, even with the only default auto-play option being internal memory. The frame offers plenty of management options including 16 slideshow interval options and the ability to play photos, videos or both when the frame is powered on.

Digital Foci has also done some work around playlists, not unlike what you’d set up to listen to music. This is actually an important differentiating factor as we haven’t seen much on this front. Most frames will play a slideshow, and the Image Moments 6 does the same, with random intervals, transitions, music and the like. But the frame also supports user-created playlists, which gives more control over how photos, videos and music are presented.

Setting up and managing playlists is a bit of a hassle, but it’s still a great option and one that we’d like to see more frames bring to the table. Incidentally you can replace the default playlist with one of your own, so on startup you get your own cheesy presentation instead of the one included with the frame.

It is worth making clear that the Image Moments 6 handles both video and audio files pretty well, which is not common in frames this size. Two speakers are also integrated into the back of the frame which are adequate to play background music, but certainly not good enough to really enjoy background music. The frame also has an external audio jack to connecting to speakers or headphones.

Menu System

Upon pressing the home button on the remote or the top of the frame, the user is presented with what appears to be an easy to understand interface for working with their frame. Unfortunately the frame misses on so many fronts, the entire experience is painful.

Just moving around between browse modes, sources and device management is a problem. The default is browse mode and pressing down gets you to playback sources. You might press right to move the selector to device management, but that’s not how it works, you need to press down again. Copying files to internal memory from external storage suffers similar usability flaws. In fact they’re prevalent throughout the frame, making it difficult to use and frankly, annoying.

Even allowing for the occasional navigation gaffe, the Image Moments 6 suffers from a troublesome flaw. It doesn’t remember what you were watching last. It’s like the movie Groundhog Day, every time you turn on the frame it starts with the internal memory, which is loaded with cheesy music and stock photos. It takes 5 button presses to get back to playing a slideshow off the SD card for instance. Sure, if you delete the included files and load your own onto internal memory, you work around it, but that assumes you want to always see the internal files first, rather than those on external memory.

The included remote control is certainly not short on buttons and functions. Of course that’s not always a good thing, and here it’s pretty hit or miss. For instance, it’s fine that there’s a button just for transitions. But when you’re watching a slideshow, the button doesn’t do anything. To change the transitions, you have to go into settings and manage from there. And from there, you have to go back home to get the slideshow started over again.

As is seemingly a constant, frame manufacturers generally aren’t spending enough time making their products easy to use, because they almost all use one of two basic operating systems. The problem is, they’re both awful. Cagic has put a lot of effort into interface and Kodak is making improvements, but unfortunately the larger base of manufacturers isn’t moving in the right direction here, unfortunately Digital Foci is lumped into this group.

Display

Digital Foci has an interesting sales pitch with the display. They’re going with pixel density, which is to say this is a higher resolution display (640×480) than is common for this size frame. The net result is more pixels per inch. Does it matter? Yes. Images look more sharp on this frame than any other we’ve seen in this size. The colors are vibrant and the contrast is well above average. But the display isn’t perfect.

The main drawback is lack of good viewing angles. Head on, the display looks very good, definitely better than other 6” models. But as you move off center, things get bad quickly. You effectively end up with a viewing range of about 45 degrees horizontally before you totally lose the image. And since this is intended to be a desk unit, you’d want the vertical viewing angles to be good too, but they aren’t.

In the end the screen is going to be great for whoever the primary viewer is, but for anyone else, unless you get head-on with it, the pictures are going to look bad or won’t be viewable at all.

Extra Features

While the Image Moments 6 is pretty vanilla in terms of features, the frame does offer an audio out jack, to let users plug in external speakers or headphones. We don’t see a lot of utility in this feature and certainly don’t expect the target audience to use it much, however it’s worth mentioning since this is a unique feature for a frame in this class.

Pros

• High-resolution gives photos a lot of detail

Cons

• Frame is almost entirely plastic
• Bad user interface
• Expensive for this category of frame

Bottom Line

We were excited about the high-res display, but that one feature only goes so far. The usability issues, bad viewing angles and cheap build make this frame one to avoid, especially with the $150 MSRP, which is probably $50 too high for this model.

2.5 out of 5 stars

Image Moments 8 (IMT-083) is priced at $199 retail and is available immediately at Digital Foci’s online store at www.digitalfoci.com. Image Moments ships with a standard black frame with 3 interchangeable mats (cream, gray, and black), an AC power adapter, USB cable, remote control, User’s Guide, and Quick Start Guide. PPFA members receive a free Adapter Ring Kit with their Image Moments 8 purchase. For more information, visit: http://www.digitalfoci.com. For inquiries about Custom Framer Program and wholesale opportunities, contact Digital Foci at 1-888-NOW-FOCI or sales@digitalfoci.com

The SXVGA resolution (800×600) screen is larger and bright, with a 500:1 contrast ratio. An LED backlight provides bright white backlighting.

The Image Moments 8 frame is priced at $199 and is available direct from Digital Foci through their web site: http://www.digitalfoci.com