The problem with Smartparts, the way we see it, is their product line was too confusing and they couldn’t get retail penetration. The product line issue is a big problem and could partly be blamed for lack of retail interest. It’s down right confusing for consumers to be comparing products and be presented with a company like Smartparts that offers over 25 current digital picture frames. The differentiation between them is so small in many cases that it’s simply not clear.

While we liked their 8″ wireless model, it’s difficult for something like that to stand out not only in a crowd, but in the Smartparts product lineup. It didn’t help that their website was difficult to navigate and their off product naming scheme probably did some damage too. All in all, we’re sad to see them go, but if maybe some good will come out of it. The industry has to find a way to regroup, simplify and remember how to offer innovative products.

Smartparts SPX10WF & SPX19WF

Smartparts SPX19WF

This 10″ and 19″ Wi-Fi models fills a gap in the Smartparts wireless digital picture frame portfolio that currently only has models in the 8″ and 32″ sizes. The new SPX10WF and SPX19WF are all about ease-of-use and feature a one push Internet setup, automatic image correction, and on-frame photo album organization.

Smartparts SPX10WF

Like the 8″ Wi-Fi frame, the SPX10WF and SPX19WF feature photo email capability, enabling users to automatically receive emailed photos directly on their frame from friends and family. They also support Windows FrameIt, which offers customized content and photo sharing. Users may also consume photo feeds from online services like Flickr and Picasa. 

The SPX10WF features an espresso wood frame and features a 10″ 800×600 pixel standard aspect ratio LCD panel. The SPX19WF, which comes with a brown wood frame has a 1448×880 pixel panel, which is somewhere between standard and traditional widescreen aspect. Even though the resolution is a bit off, we did find the display to be vibrant and overall very impressive. 

Both frames have 512MB of internal memory and support SD, MS, xD, MMC, and Compact Flash memory cards, as well as a USB port. 

The SPX10WF has an MSRP of $199.99 and the SPX19WF an MSRP of $299.99. Both will be available in March. Smartparts also announced a small update to their 32″ wireless digital frame that gives it access to Windows FrameIt. 

Smartparts SP24PC & SP35PC

Smartparts also announced two touch-sensitive portable digital picture viewers, the 2.4″ SP24PC and 3.5″ SP35PC. Users can transfer images directly to the frame’s internal memory via USB connection to a PC. The USB cable also charges the internal battery in each frame. The battery should last up to three hours while continuously playing a slideshow.

Both frames feature a 320×240 pixel touch-sensitive display panel. When photos are resized for the displays, the SP24PC can hold up to 50 images and the SP35PC holds up to 100. 

The SP24PC and SP35PC come with a USB cable and a micro-fiber carrying pouch. Both will be available in March at a retail of $29.99 for the SP24PC and $39.99 for the SP35PC.

SmartParts SPX8WF Specs

• 8” LCD (4:3 aspect ratio, 800×600 resolution)
• 512MB internal memory
• Supports SD, MMC, MS, xD, CF external memory
• USB connections for photos stored on thumb drives
• 802.11B/G Wi-Fi for Windows FrameIt, RSS Feeds, and Picture Email
• Built-in stereo speakers
• MSRP: $149.99

Design and Build

The SPX8WF looks like a traditional picture frame with a thick black border, inner white cardboard trim, and a smooth glass cover over the picture (or in this case the screen). For the standard tabletop with an assortment of pictures the SmartParts frame blends in well, if not slightly larger than normal with the bigger screen. Cable management is not a problem since the power cord hides behind the border of the frame and with careful routing you can hide the power cable all the way off the desk. The supplied AC adapter could be slightly longer, for tables that might not have a wall outlet directly behind them.

The construction of the frame is in line with other models in the same price range. The paint on the frame takes mild abuse well, without chipping paint off. Smudges from fingerprints wipe away without discoloring the surface, and the glass cover over the display helps protect the LCD from wandering fingers.

The stand could be designed better since it doesn’t take much to push it off balance. The leg has a rounded foot, so if you knock it back slightly it has enough wiggle room to topple over. A flat tab might provide a more solid footing. The stand also lacks a wide range of tilt adjustment which prevents it from leaning back as far as other models.

Display

I am a fan of the 4:3 screen format since almost all digital cameras shoot images in that aspect ratio. Widescreen may be nice for movies, but on a picture frame that just means large black borders if the images are not properly cropped for the screen.

The display looks very nice with saturated colors and a bright backlight to overcome glare from open windows or lots of overhead lighting. Backlight evenness is average with some brighter sections near the edges, but this is only noticeable when viewing solid colors like the menu system, not when viewing pictures. Viewing angles were good with a broad horizontal range before the image was overcome with glare off the glass screen cover. Vertical viewing angles were more limited, with the screen starting to distort colors on steep lower angles. In normal use this would not be a problem unless your eye level was well below the height of the picture frame. Viewing from a very steep angle above the frame showed little color inversion, which is a plus if you normally have seven or eight foot tall guests in your home.

Memory/Picture Sources

The SmartParts SPX8WF offers a wide range of picture sources, including internal memory, USB flash drives, memory cards, online photo galleries, and emails sent to it from friends and family. Each source can be chosen from the menu in either the photo or music sub-category.

The internal memory is useful to store images sent through email, as well as loading on images from a computer. With this picture frame supporting email, the main use of the internal memory went to storing those incoming pictures. With 512MB of internal storage this frame can handle thousands of standard camera phone sized images.

A full-size USB port is included to read pictures off of a thumb drive, which is great if you want to take advantage of the low price of high capacity drives that are being sold today. Some sticks as large as 32GB are being sold for under $100, which can easily store every picture you have probably ever taken.
The memory card slots are used for viewing pictures directly from a digital camera, taking the need for a computer out of the equation.

The coolest picture source on this digital picture frame is the wireless connection that can be used to display Microsoft Live photo galleries, RSS feeds, and receive images sent by email. Each of these frames offer a unique email address that is used to send pictures directly to the frame. I gave the address out to a few of my friends and my family during the review and just had the send in random pictures. Being able to see pictures of household pets, holiday preparations, or even travel experiences really has a way of connecting you even if you live on the other side of the country. Only approved senders can email the frame though, so don’t fear frame SPAM.

Display modes

This frame only has a few basic display modes, including the basic slideshow, a screen saver clock and calendar, and an RSS feed mode which might display weather, traffic, or news feeds.

The slideshow is customizable, letting you change the length of time between pictures, then type of transition between pictures, and what order you want the pictures to display. The transition times span from 5 seconds to 60 seconds, with my preferred time at 30 seconds. The transition mode type lets you customize the type of transition between pictures, such as certain sweeping modes or other effects. I kept it set to “random all” to keep mixing it up.

This frame supports basic music playing capabilities during slideshows and in the background of other activities. Audio performance is good enough to fill a small room, but easily out powered by a small boombox. Bass and midrange are completely lacking with the small speaker size, leaving only high frequency tones. The best use is playing light music during a slideshow.

The clock and calendar come on as a screensaver option, where after a certain period of inactivity the mode turns on. I could not find any other way to display this mode outside of the screensaver option.

The RSS feed mode changes greatly depending on what the source is. The frame offers some presets which include a weather location for monitoring local forecasts, traffic conditions for certain regions, and local news clips. Of course there’s the integration with Microsoft’s FrameIt service as well, which offers customizable news, weather, traffic and other content.

Menu system

The menu system was very polished looking, with more thought put into it than some frames like the HP df1000. The layout was simple to follow with clearly labeled buttons and descriptions which led you to the correct area even if it was your first time setting the frame up. To access the menu you could use both the buttons on top of the frame or the remote, which is a step above some frames which require the remote to handle any setting adjustment.

Navigating the menu worked well enough under most circumstances, but if the frame started to lag you might find yourself stuck in an area you didn’t want to go into. This meant backing out of certain areas frequently if you were in a rush to change a setting.

The wireless connection setup was painless, with a simple process to find available networks. Once you chose the network you want to connect to it detects the type of encryption automatically if it is enabled, and gives you a full keyboard to entire the passkey. I was connected onto my home network within about a minute of powering it up for the first time.

Pros

• Great screen
• Can view pictures sent through email with the Wi-Fi connection
• Support for RSS streams to bring in weather, traffic, and news
• Support for Windows Live Photo Gallery

Cons

• Frame stand doesn’t provide that much support or adjustment range
• Menu system can feel laggy at times

Bottom Line

The SmartParts SPX8WF has a bright and vibrant 8” screen, a wide range of memory input options, and a wireless connection which opens up countless extra features. Without even attaching this frame to a computer it can accept pictures sent from a cellphone and save them to internal memory. For older loved ones who might not own a digital camera or use a computer, this enables them to enjoy pictures from family even if they are located across the country. The Windows Live support also lets this frame view weather or traffic conditions and stream the latest news headlines. With a retail price of $150, this frame is priced to fit into many budgets.

4 out of 5 stars

Smartparts SPX8WF – 8″ Wireless Digital Picture Frame

Smartparts SPX8WF

The Smartparts SPX8WF is an 8″ frame with Wi-Fi that boasts a pre-assigned email address, one-touch Internet setup, automatic image correction, and on-frame photo album organization. The 800×600 4:3 aspect ratio display is surrounded by an ”espresso” colored wood frame.

The SPX8WF features photo email capability, enabling users to automatically receive photos on their frame from friends and family. Each frame is assigned a unique email address which is hosted on Smartparts servers. Upon receipt of an image, Smartparts applies its image correction technology, which automatically resizes, enhances and crops photos to maximize appearance and storage capacity on the frame. The best part is Smartparts wisely offers this service at no charge, something that’s not as common as it should be in this industry.

In addition to the email capabilities, the SPX8WF takes advantage of the Internet connection by integrating with Windows Live Photo Gallery, a photo sharing service.

The SPX8WF also features support for SD, MS, xD, MMC and Compact Flash memory cards, and offers a USB port and 512MB of internal memory, enough for 5,000 photos when the image enhancement features are applied.

The SPX8WF will be available in November for an MSRP of $149.99.

Smartparts SP3200WF – 32″ Wireless Digital Picture Frame

Smartparts SP3200WF

The Smartparts SP3200WF is essentially the same as their current 32″ frame, with the addition of Wi-Fi. Like the SPX8WF, this model also works with Windows Live Photo Gallery, but it does not get the ability to receive photos via email. 

The SP3200WF features a 16:9 widescreen with a resolution of 1366×768. The LCD is surrounded by a beige mat and natural wood frame with an “espresso” finish. The frame can also playback video with sound, including Motion JPEG AVI and WMA files.

The SP3200WF will be available soon through specialty retailers. No price was announced, but the current non-wireless version retails for $900, so expect as much or more for this new version.

The Smartparts SP8PRT is an interesting combination of printer and digital picture frame. Not intended to replace serious photo printers, this model is geared toward the occasional one-off print. So next time Grandma is admiring pictures of the kids on this frame, with a push of a button you can print off a copy for her.

Smartparts SP8PRT Quick Specs

• 8” LCD Display
• 800×600 pixels
• Supports SD, MMC, Memory Stick and xD memory cards
• 128MB internal memory
• USB port
• Printer – 4×6 prints, 36 per cartridge

Design and Build

Front on, the Smartparts frame looks very nice and clean. An actual wooden frame surrounds a beige mat that leads to the LCD panel. The mat and panel are under glass, which seems to lend a more professional look to the frame. At the least, you have almost no risk of damaging the display panel, since it’s behind glass. It also makes cleaning easier, since cleaning products should never touch an LCD panel.

The SP8PRT  has an attractive design

One thing you can’t ignore though is the beefy backside. Thanks to the built-in printer, the SP8PRT is very thick, which may limit the places where you can display the unit. The printer hump serves as the stand too, there’s no extra kickstand to support the frame.

The printer adds a little depth to the body of the frame

On the left side of the printer bump, there are a few buttons that make navigation without the remote possible. There’s also a print button that perpetually blinks blue, I suppose so that you can always find it easily. We did notice odd behavior from the navigation buttons on the frame, the forward and review buttons, at least during slideshows, are mapped backwards. Not exactly critical, but small flaws like this are somewhat apparent throughout the device.

Memory slots and menu buttons

The back of the unit houses the power switch; there is no remote button to power on the unit. It also contains the USB drive slot and the memory card slot. The power switch is placed poorly, it’s difficult to find without looking, especially if you have a USB drive and memory card installed. Something around the side, or power via remote would have been better.

Underneath is the printer cartridge access door. Prints are fed out the right side of the hump.
Generally, it’s a good looking unit that would fit with home and office environments. The wood frame gives it a clean professional look. It is very thick and heavy though, so that may limit the places where it can live.

Memory/Picture Sources

The SP8PRT offers a single multi-card reader that covers SD, MMC, MS and xD. They’ve also included a USB port. Both are on the back of the unit. This is one of the few frames we’ve seen where the USB drive won’t stick out the side, marring the look of the frame. A USB drive will add depth though, to an already thick design. Probably a fair tradeoff in the end however; as it drives us nuts to have USB drives hanging out the side of a frame.

One issue we noticed is that the USB drive we use to test with all of our frames didn’t work real well with this Smartparts unit. The SP8PRT couldn’t find images in sub-folders and MP3’s that were in the root went completely undiscovered. It took a tour of the manual to find that for some reason the frame only supports WMA files.

The frame also comes with 128MB of internal storage, which can hold about 140 resized images. That’s not much memory to work with, and worse, there’s not an easy way to manage the pictures or files stored internally. It would have been nice to have a mini-USB port for connection to a PC for file transfer. You can copy images one at a time, or in bulk, from an external source, but it’s slow.

Display Modes

When the frame is powered on, it starts right into a slideshow. It looks like it picks up the memory card first, so if you want another source, you have to manually make that selection; it does not remember which you had selected last. There are plenty of slideshow options though, including ten transition types and control over transition speed (3, 5, 10, 30 and 60 seconds). There’s also a shuffle option that prevents you from viewing pictures in the same loop.

Smartparts included a speaker in the SP8PRT, so it’s possible to add a soundtrack to your slideshow, though it must be a WMA file as noted above. The frame plays video too, in AVI format, though our test files didn’t play properly.

At the end of the day it feels like this frame has over-promised on the multi-media front. The MP3 issue alone is a bit infuriating and the fact that we can’t play AVI movies when we should be able to is concerning.

Menu System

One of the things that’s perpetually an issue with most frames is a user interface that’s confusing. We have the same problems here with Smartparts. For example, which watching a slideshow say you decide you want to change the transition from fade to something else. To accomplish this you might hit setup on the remote, but that won’t do anything. You have to hit exit, then setup. The interface struggles with issues like this in many places, forcing the user to learn the intricacies to get a proper handle on using the frame.

As noted in the beginning, there are several buttons on the side of the frame, but not all the functions are there, so you’ll still need the remote for things like rotating a picture, controlling the volume and a few other assorted functions.

On the remote front though, I do give Smartparts credit for designing one that we can understand without a key. All of their buttons are properly identified with text labels; to make this remote one of the most intuitive we’ve seen.

Display

We were actually pleasantly surprised with the quality of the display. That’s a good thing though, because if you’re going to call this a digital picture frame that has a printer as a convenience feature, the frame better be pretty darn good. And largely it is, offering crisp images and loads of color controls, something missing from most frames.

The SP8PRT in an office setting

Smartparts includes several display settings that users can toy with on the SP8PRT. Controls for brightness, contrast, tint and color are all included. The only downside is that you can’t adjust these controls while viewing an image, which makes it more trouble than it should be to adjust the display. The only other real point of contention is that because there is glass over the panel, there will be some glare in direct sunlight.

Noticeable glare in a sunlit room

Printer

Of course one of the most compelling features of the Smartparts SP8PRT is the integrated photo printer. It’s attached to the back of the frame, and with a single button press, it quickly spits out a 4×6 print. The frame uses a cartridge that contains both the ink and photo paper required to create 36 prints. Replacement frames can be purchased directly from Smartparts for $19.99 each, or .56/print. Of course that number is higher than what you’d pay with an online service or a photo kiosk at your local drugstore, but there is a definite convenience factor. And that convenience is really what Smartparts is banking on with the included printer. It’s their hope that when Grandma comes over and is looking at your frame and comments as to how good Junior looks at the zoo, within seconds you can print a copy for her to put on the refrigerator. To somewhat validate their idea, just last week a competing frame and printer combo was announced out of Asia, so this could be a trend that picks up steam.

Printer cartridge – loaded in the bottom of the frame

At the end of the day though, the printer has to be at least reasonably good to be effective. It’s not fair to expect professional quality, or really even dedicated home photo printer quality. What you want is a reasonable replica of the image on the screen. Largely, the SP8PRT delivers on that goal, with a few caveats.

The first thing is that pictures that have been resized to 800×600 to fit the frame resolution print at worse quality than those left in their original resolution. This means that if you intend to use the printer, don’t resize your images. This also means that you’ll need to use an external storage card or USB drive to show the images, because there isn’t enough internal memory to store many 4-5 MB files. If you print the lower resolution files, you’ll notice a lot of jagged edges and issues around any detailed parts.

Assuming you print full sized images, the quality is generally reasonable. The printer does struggle with skin tones, so expect people to come out more red than they look in the frame. We also found some prints looked a bit hazy. But in the end, the results were acceptable. So long as your expectations are reasonable going in, the printer does what it’s supposed to do.

Extra Features

Aside from the printer, this frame is pretty light on extra features. Smartparts does include nice color controls, as noted above, but there’s no auto-shutoff feature, image correction or other such goodies.

Pros

• Printer does its job
• Frame is visually appealing

Cons

• User Interface needs work
• Plays WMA files but not MP3

Bottom Line

We’re not sure how many people will see the utility in being able to instantly shoot out decent prints from their digital picture frame. If however this is something you think would be fun, in a similar way the Polaroid cameras were fun, then this frame is right for you. We don’t love the menus and think Smartparts has some work to do to tighten up the next version, but at the end of the day, it’s good enough for what it aims to accomplish.

3 out of 5 stars