Researched Consumer Reports to see which digital photo frames they rated highly and SmartParts frames did well. After reading several reviews, I decided I definitely wanted one with at least 800×600 resolution (higher the better). Drew the picture size on a piece of paper for 7 inch, 8 inch, 9 inch, 10 inch and 15 inch frames and decided that the 10 inch frame was the right size – the 7 and 8 inch ones are not much better than a 3×5 and 4×6 inch prints, respectively so they aren’t that big. This was a gift for an 85 year old so we needed something big but not huge. The 15 inch frames were just too big and finding a spot to place them would be difficult.

The frame functions very well – picture quality is excellent and loading it was very easy; however, I recommend you not bother using the software that was bundled with it – that does not work well at all. I simply hooked it up to my PC using the enclosed USB cable and copied photos from my PC directly to the memory in the frame (drag and drop). I have Windows XP and had previously downloaded from MicroSoft, a program that resizes photos into one of four selectable sizes. I used this ImageResizer to resize all the photos I was moving to the frame to save space on the memory card. One piece of advice, do not resize all the way down to 800×600. I found that using 1028×768 made the pictures look better. If you install an additional memory card in the frame then you really do not need to resize the photos.

I have not yet tried to use all the additional features like adding music to go with the slideshow or viewing video clips. For viewing photos, this product works great – you can replace all your photo albums with it.

SmartParts SP102E 10.2 Photo Frame SHIP FREE US $89.00 End Date: Thursday Jul-29-2010 18:36:53 PDT

SmartParts SP15MW 15in Picture Frame SHIP FREE US $130.00 End Date: Thursday Jul-29-2010 18:36:58 PDT

SmartParts SP35P 3.5in Photo Frame SHIP FREE US $29.99 End Date: Thursday Jul-29-2010 18:37:00 PDT

SmartParts SP56 5.6in Photo Frame SHIP FREE US $33.00 End Date: Thursday Jul-29-2010 18:37:02 PDT