Review: GiiNii 8″ Ultra-Thin Digital Picture Frame (080DSB01)

Written on Aug 11, 2008 by Brian and filed under GiiNii, Reviews

GiiNii is relatively new on the digital frame scene, but they’ve already managed distribution with Walmart, Walgreens and other retailers. Their latest frame is an 8” ultra-thin model that is stylish and even looks great from the back. GiiNii has all the basics and adds in goodies like smart sleep mode, speakers, movie playback and an integrated light sensor to adjust brightness based on room conditions.

GiiNii 8” Ultra-Thin Quick Specs

• 8” LCD
• 4:3 aspect ratio, 800×600 resolution
• 128MB internal memory
• Supports SD, Memory Stick, MMC, CF, xD and USB
• Mini USB for file transfer
• Removable faceplate
• Remote control
• Light sensor that adjusts brightness based on room conditions
• Integrated Speakers
• Video playback
• Smart sleep mode

Design and Build

I was actually pretty surprised by the GiiNii frame upon unboxing. Sure, the box says it’s ultra-thin, but then again, most digital picture frames aren’t noticeably thick. At .78 inches deep, this frame is about half as thick as other models. And it’s not just thin; the back is actually surprisingly well-designed. I know, it’s a little weird to be excited about the back of the frame, but really, a nice back may give you more flexibility in finding a location for the frame.

Attractive looking frame

The back also houses a full set of menu buttons, which is nice. The remote isn’t always handy, so being able to still work with the frame sans remote, is good. The back also houses the speaker and wall hanging slots. The biggest problem we have with the back of the frame is the stand. It actually screws into the frame. If you don’t over tighten, which is easy, you can still rotate the stand to re-orient, but it doesn’t sound good. It’s plenty sturdy, but hopefully GiiNii can find a more elegant stand solution the next time around.

Giinii 8″ Ultra Thin Back

Moving around to the front, the 8” display has a thin white border around it, then a brushed aluminum finish followed by a laminate wood frame. The presentation is traditional, with a bit of trendiness thanks to the metal accent. If you want a more contemporary look, the spring loaded wooden outer frame comes off with little effort. The frame is less stable without the exterior frame though and angles down more to make straight-on viewing more difficult.

GiiNii 8″ Without Wooden Frame

Overall the GiiNii 8” Ultra Thin is well designed and with the removable outer-frame, it has a lot of flexibility to fit with different decorating styles.

Memory/Picture Sources

GiiNii has included two card readers with this frame. One is for CF, the other is a multi-reader for the smaller cards, including SD, MMC, MS and even xD. Additionally, there’s a USB port on the right side that can be used to show pictures. The USB port is pretty close to the edge though, so even the smallest USB drives will hang out past the frame’s edge some.

USB drive protruding from the frame

The frame also includes 128MB of internal memory. That means you can get roughly 140 properly sized images on the frame, which in this price class ($120 MSRP), is a little below average. We would have liked to see at least 256MB if not more for a full-featured frame like this. GiiNii does offer versions with more RAM with certain retailers, but the price will also be higher.

Memory card slots/mini-USB port

Even though it’s lacking RAM, at least GiiNii includes the mini-USB port so you can connect the frame to a PC to transfer images over in bulk. That’s a feature we had taken for granted, until we reviewed the new wireless D-Link model that omitted this port.

Display Modes

The frame will immediately start into a slideshow, either from internal memory or external source, once it’s turned on. By default the frame plays your photos in order, though you may switch it to random, or set it on single view to just show a single image. The fun thing with single view though is that it still plays the transitions as if it’s moving from slide to slide, so the presentation is pretty disjointed. If you want to view a single picture, it’s best to just pause the slideshow on the image you want while it’s playing. Speaking of transitions, you can set to random, or select one of seven options, or turn them off entirely.

GiiNii offers several other options for the slideshows as well. Users may set the intervals; 5 seconds, 10 seconds, 20 seconds, half hour or hourly. Slideshows may also be set to music, the main benefit of having a speaker on the frame. Of course the music may be muted as well. The frame can also be put in collage mode, which offers four different scenes, where pictures are inserted. The frame does a fair job of picking out the subject of each picture to insert it into one of four vignettes (Mother’s day, golf, fishing and baseball), but the end result is a little goofy and the four options are pretty limited. The collage mode is a nice effort, but not entirely useful as it is.

As mentioned, the frame has a speaker and thus can be used as an MP3 player, or it can store music to be used as background for your slideshows. The frame supports MP3 and WMA file formats which leaves out the obvious, downloads from iTunes which are MPEG files. I moved over a few MP3’s though to use as background music for my slideshow. The speaker actually does a surprisingly good job playing music. Of course it’s not going to blow out table-thumping bass, but the songs I loaded up played quite enjoyably, which is as good as it gets with integrated speakers like this. The only thing that bothers me with the music playback on is it shows a timer at the bottom left of the screen that can’t be disabled as far as I can tell. The audio playback is a net positive though, a nice option that you won’t use every day, but great for showing off memories to friends and family.

The GiiNii frame also has the ability to play videos. The frame supports AVI and MOV files and recommends a 320×240 resolution at 30 frames per second. I ran a few at 320×240 and also the 640×480 that my digital camera can record at. Both actually ran pretty well, with a little stuttering during active sequences. Playback isn’t perfect, but pretty reasonable given limited computing horsepower.

Menu System

GiiNii’s menu system is pretty easy to get along with once you learn certain nuances. The first being that you have to hit the exit button during a slideshow to get at some settings, while you have to hit the menu button to get at others. The differentiation is that the exit button leads you to more general frame options, like selecting movie, music or pictures, while the menu button is really slideshow specific. GiiNii could have spent more time to get the menu system tightened up.

Back Menu Buttons

The frame also comes with a remote to manage the menus. The remote is pretty good, but requires a little education on the icons, as most of them do. The remote’s main failing is that it doesn’t include a power button, so the frame must be turned on in the back. Given the placement of the power button, this is a problem is using the wall-mount.

Remote Control

Thankfully GiiNii included navigation buttons on the back of the frame as well, so most functions can be accessed without the remote.

Light Sensor

On the front of the frame is a little light sensor that is used for auto-brightness adjustments and the smart sleep mode. At first I thought the auto brightness adjustments weren’t working. It appears they probably were, but the moves are very subtle. It’s hard to tell what impact, if any, there really is either in power savings or enjoyment of the pictures. This one goes down as a nice idea, but not very noticeable.

On the sleep mode front, the news is not so good. Auto-shutoff is a big deal with digital picture frames since they’re generally not used for large portions of the day. A frame that can turn itself off at night or during the day when everyone’s at work, is a great idea. GiiNii claims a smart sleep mode on their 8” ultra thin frame, but the execution is confusing. You can set a specific time for the frame to turn off and on, which I suppose is fine for a commercial application, but not something most buyers will use. You can also set it to use the sensor to turn off. There are two problems though. First, the sleep mode leaves a barely visible clock and date on the screen, which makes no sense. You can’t read it; just turn the display off and save the power. Second, when sleep mode is turned on, GiiNii puts a series of three Z’s on the screen the entire time. It’s just silly and makes the pictures all look as if they’ve been oddly watermarked. It’s invasive enough where I wouldn’t use the sleep feature at all, which of course defeats the purpose. It also takes the frame a few minutes to wake back up in sensor mode, where other frames, like the D-Link DSM-210, are nearly instant.

I give GiiNii decent marks for trying to do the right thing here, but the execution is pretty bad. Making the sensor bar work a little better and cleaning up the sleep mode would certainly elevate our view of this frame by at least a full star. As it is, these features that aren’t very well done, and are a significant drag on our review of this frame.

Display

The 8” LCD panel that GiiNii uses for this frame is average. Colors run true and viewing angles are reasonable, but it’s not as bright as we’d like to see. Within the frame settings you may edit brightness and contrast levels. We found that bumping the brightness to full and leaving contrast at default yielded the best results. The display is 800×600 pixels, which provides crisp images in a frame of this size. It’s also standard aspect (4:3) which means standard digital camera shots won’t have to be cropped to fit properly on the display.

Extra Features

This frame includes a clock/date setting along with an alarm option. The clock can be added as an overlay to your pictures, so you get the time and date at all times. If you want, you can also add a calendar overlay which really adds no value. An alarm can also be set up, through a too-long process that ads another icon to the screen in the top left corner. The alarm works as advertised, but with the bell icon plastered on all pictures, I’m not sure if having it on is worth the effort.

Calendar view turned on

Pros

• Appealing product design
• Deep feature set – pictures, video, MP3
• Good speaker

Cons

• Less than expected internal memory
• Poorly done sleep mode

Bottom Line

For a $120 MSRP, we’re left wanting more - more memory, better sleep mode and a more intuitive menu interface for starters. The frame is nicely designed though and will go with a lot of different rooms, but unless you really want the speaker and video playback, there are a lot of other options on the market at this price point.

3 out of 5 stars