Review: Smartparts SP8PRT 8″ Digital Picture Frame and Printer
Written on Sep 5, 2008 by Brian and filed under News, Reviews, Smartparts
Smartparts SP8PRT Digital Picture Frame and Printer
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