There's also an option to set and display the frame's clock, alarm, and calendar. The clock and date are semitransparent overlays, but turning on the alarm sticks an obtrusive yellow alarm bell graphic in the top left corner. Lastly, this screen is where you enter the Setup menu for control over language, storage, contrast, brightness, system info and reset, and the frame's Smart Sleep function. In general, this is a nice feature, as it lets you set specific times you want to turn the frame on and off or you can take advantage of the built-in light sensor that puts the frame to sleep when the room goes dark. However, activating this puts yet another unsightly graphic in the left corner--in this case a series of three Zs in increasing size.
But back to the menus. While pictures display, pressing the Menu button brings up all the viewing/slide show options. This includes things such as transition effects (16 choices including random and off), picture-to-screen ratio (actual size or full frame), slide show speed, musical accompaniment options, and collage. The transitions work well enough, but adding music to a slide show puts an ugly, useless track-length indicator on the screen. If it displayed artist, album, or song title information it would at least be helpful, but it's just a countdown timer. The collage option is also pretty worthless as you get four random themed background templates (Mother's Day, Baseball, Golf, and Fishing) with cutouts in them for pictures. There's no option to display a collage without the template.
In the end, despite having a seemingly large feature set, only a few of those features are well implemented; for example, slide show transitions were good. Music sounded decent considering the single, tiny speaker, and video playback was OK, but the last thing I want to see when trying to enjoy my photos and music is a cheesy graphic and useless information. And digging through all the menus--with the remote or the controls on the frame--is just a pain.
Buyers only get a 90-day warranty from GiiNii with sales receipt from an authorized retailer, which is acceptable when a frame costs well under $100, but this one doesn't. The company gets points for its customer support as there are how-to videos, an 800 number and e-mail listed should you need help or a repair, and you can participate in a live chat Webinar with GiiNii technical teams once a week.
The GiiNii 8-inch Ultra-thin Digital Picture Frame's saving grace is letting you quickly view pictures directly from a memory card. The frame itself is agreeable looking, even with it being mostly plastic, and the ability to easily clip on a wood frame is a nice add. But GiiNii really needs to work on polishing its features. Its price isn't quite low enough to excuse its faults.
What You'll Pay
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