First Thoughts: Kodak 7.6″ OLED Digital Picture Frame

Written on Sep 26, 2008 by MKowalski and filed under Kodak, News, Reviews

 

Kodak is giving the world a first look at the actual hardware of its premium OLED photo frame during the Photokina imaging trade show going on in Germany this week. The Kodak OLED Wireless Frame features Wi-Fi with the ability to auto-source files from the web, multimedia capabilities,  and a touch interface, but its most impressive spec is its 7.6 inch, 800×480 display using OLED technology.

 

Organic light-emitting diode, or OLED, screen technology has several clear advantages over LCD designs that are easy to see in the new frame. Sharper, more vivid images? Check.

 

With no backlighting to wash out images (unlike LCDs, OLED displays don’t need backlighting), there’s simply nothing that does saturated colors like this frame does them. You’ve never seen reds like this from a digital frame.

 

What about an extremely slim display panel?

 

 

Yep, the OLED has that too.

 

 

Plus Kodak is one of the only photo frame companies at the moment that has spent lots of time developing a new interface for a frame. The OLED’s touch-frame control system, in which an array of touch sensitive soft buttons light up and allow you to manipulate on-screen menus, makes no apologies for being that much more visually interesting and easy to use than basically everything else out there.

 

Maybe the interface design will trickle down to some of Kodak’s more fiscally responsible frames, because with a thousand-dollar price tag for the OLED, it’s still not clear if there’s anyone out there ready to fork over that kind of money, even for what may be the world’s nicest tabletop photo frame.

 

Related News:

 

Kodak OLED Digital Picture Frame Announced