Entered CNET Catalog: 10/02/2008
SKU: 041778594797
Manufacturer: Eastman Kodak Co.
Manufacturer description
PRODUCT FEATURES: 10 in. (25.4 cm) high-quality display Wi-Fi enabled Kodak's Quick Touch Border Access the latest news, weather, sports, and more Automatically send and receive pictures from Kodak Gallery members right on your frame with the Picture Mail featureProduct summary
The good: Relatively large screen area; solid display quality; built-in Wi-Fi; zippy performance; easy to set up; supports MP3 and video playback.
The bad: Cheap plastic frame; no remote; Mac owners can't wirelessly connect to their computers.
The bottom line: Kodak may have cut some corners on the build quality of the EasyShare W1020 Wireless Digital Frame, but it offers decent image quality, performance, and a strong feature set for the money.
Editors' review
- Editors' Choice: No
- Reviewed on: 12/15/2008
We recently reviewed Kodak's cutting-edge OLED Wireless Frame, which costs a whopping $1,000. That model has a 7.6-inch screen; it's pretty spectacular, but for $800 less you can step down to the more reasonable 8.2-inch EasyShare W820 or the 10.2-inch EasyShare W1020. While these models use standard LCD screens and don't have the slick cosmetics--or impressive build quality--of the OLED frame, their feature sets are virtually identical, plus they offer support for all memory cards, not just SD cards.
Some digital photo frames have real wood or metal finishes, but this is strictly a plastic affair. With its simple black border, the frame looks elegant enough from afar and comes with a red and a silver stick-on matte that allow you to customize the frame's look. The kickstand on the back swivels, giving you the option of locking the frame into landscape (horizontal) or portrait (vertical) orientation. On the back of the frame there are keyhole slots for mounting the frame to a wall with screws, along with a threaded tripod mount if you want to prop it up with a tripod.
The frame is loaded with features. For starters, it comes with 512MB of internal memory and built-in Wi-Fi. That 512MB allows you to store about 4,000 images resized to the frame's 800x480 resolution (the images will automatically resize when you copy them to the frame if you select that option from the settings menu). But if you want to show off more photos, the frame accepts all memory cards, including CompactFlash, MemoryStick, SD/SDHC, and xD-Picture cards. There's also a USB connector for plugging in thumbdrives (or your camera).
This frame, like several other new frames, uses a Touch Border interface; you touch the bezel to access menus and settings. With this frame, the various touch points along the bottom and right side of the frame light up when you touch the bezel. We're not sure about the whole touch-panel concept, but Kodak's is one of the best implementations we've seen, particularly because the touch points are sensitive and the frame is very responsive.
That's another one of the frame's strong points: the performance is quite good. Even photos with large file sizes load quickly, and menus open and close with limited lag. This is a zippy frame.
Obviously the wireless connectivity plays a key role. Once you connect to your Wi-Fi network (you input any security keys through a virtual keyboard) and install the Kodak EasyShare desktop software on your Windows PC, you can wirelessly transfer photos from your computer to the frame. You can also access photos you've stored on your online Kodak Gallery account, as well as access friends' albums that are linked to your account. You can also tap into Flickr and FrameChannel and subscribe to Photo RSS feeds. FrameChannel also provides RSS feeds for news, weather, and sports scores. Mac users can't transfer photos from their PCs to the frame wirelessly, but they can take advantage of all the online services. The interface isn't quite Apple-like, but it is pretty easy to use. No major complaints there.
The more standard features such as slide show transitions and the aforementioned automatic image resizing are also present and accounted for, and this model, like all of Kodak's wireless frames, plays back most videos (MOV, AVI, MPEG-1, and MPEG-4) shot with popular digital still cameras. However, the frame will not display video from Flip Video cameras.
We did experience some glitchy, frustrating behavior, though. For example, despite setting the entire slide show transition to Fade or Wipe, the frame continued to randomly mix in other transitions. Furthermore, when we tried to delete the current movie, it displayed the name of the previous image, and we had to delete the image in order to get the movie name to display.
As for image quality, no, this LCD can't deliver the same eye-popping color and contrast of the OLED frame, but it's quite good. At 800x480, the image may not be razor sharp and you'll see some slight stair-stepping on curved edges and diagonal lines, like on leaves. The colors look pretty natural, and though blacks may not be terribly deep, there's enough dynamic range in the midtones to render sufficient detail in shadows. While the sound quality from the tinny internal speakers isn't great--you can play MP3 files as background music for your slide shows--it's passable.
All in all, we liked this frame, and think it strikes a good balance between performance, image quality, features, and cost. If you want to save a little dough, you can step down to the smaller W820, but for a lot of people, the extra real-estate of the Kodak EasyShare W1020's screen will be worth the extra cost.
User opinions
Select a User Opinion to view: 1 2 3 4 5 6out of 6 user reviews
cute, but woefully inadequate for viewing online photos
Pros: wireless set-up and computer connectivity was remarkably simple (non-Mac, of course).
Cons: Flickr and RSS Feed access is sketchy and inconsistent.
*VERY HARD* to navigate Flickr and Photo RSS options
Didn't auto-update the slideshow feeds without restarting the feed (fairly complex process)
Although it does access Photo RSS feeds, we also found it does so with varying picture quality. The same picture viewed via a Flickr account (ie, "Favorites," which we would have to set-up on their account) versus viewing on an RSS Feed had very different image quality. Of course, neither a Flickr slideshow nor an RSS slideshow is very easy to set-up on the frame.
After moving the frame and plugging it in, it never returned to the setting it had been on most recently, and instead used a mish-mash of images captured from Flickr feeds ... again rendering it useless as a way of sharing pictures with whose who are technologically reticent.
We never tried displaying pictures with a chip or via direct PC transfer ... You wouldn't need Wi-Fi for that. It seems to me that the whole point of a wi-fi frame is to have easy, consistent access to online images. That is not the case with this frame.
*NOT* a good buy for folks who are not very tech-savvy.
out of 6 user reviews
Great frame, horrible software
Pros: Frame is perfect size and crystal clear. Beautiful display.
Cons: Software is horrible. First time is OK, but if you want to edit or add more pictures, it takes HOURS of deleting from both the software and frame, restarting both, recreating the slideshows, many many times before it finally works. Super frustrating.
out of 6 user reviews
Outstanding pic quality, easy to use, quality materials
Pros: + Picture quality is bright, clear and crisp
+ Wireless features are easy to use, and offer some interesting content
+ Excellent build quality
+ User interface is intuitive
+ Performance, even with 1000's of pictures on SD card, is relatively quick.
Cons: - Off axis viewing could be better
With iPhoto '09 and the Flickr support, this frame becomes a no-brainer for the Mac user looking for a very high quality product. (It goes without saying that the PC users are well accommodated as well).
This is the frame to get.
out of 6 user reviews
Good picture, Difficult Internet Setup, Mom Loves It
Pros: Overall satisfied; Basic capabilities are easy to use; Reasonably good image quality; Good resolution; Mom loves it!
Cons: Setting up for internet update was complex; Panel button interface is clunky when entering data; Some colors not rendered well - extremely bright and oversaturated; Manual could be better; No upload from my Mac PowerBook; Poor sound.
Set up out of the box was easy. If I was just using it for local display, it is a no brainer (but then why have the wifi capability). Turning on the wifi was pretty easy too, except for using the slide motion on the "keyboard" to enter the 26 char password. There's got to be a better way. I couldn't upload any pics directly from my Mac, but was planning to set up an internet capability anyway.
I haven't been a web photo site user, so I had to set up an account for me, an account for her, and tie them together somehow. There were so many options that it was quite confusing (FrameChannel, Flickr, EasyShare, .Mac, etc.). I tried a bunch of different things and finally got Flickr to work, but never did get anything else to work right. FrameChannel seems like a good idea, but it always told me I had 0 photos in the channel.
I set up my Flickr acct with a single folder that I can add photos to. I shared the folder with her and added it to her account. I added the userid and pw for the Flickr acct - again a pain using the blasted keyboard - and it showed up on the W1020 under <myusername>'s Sets. I couldn't get the <myusername>'s photostream to work. Not sure why. I also could not select more than one set. The way its set up now, I can add photos to the folder and when the frame is powered off and on again it will update to load the new photos. Sometimes it seemed to forget the setting, so I wrote my Mom instructions for reconnecting to the Flickr set. I hope she can follow them.
The picture quality was good, although some of the brighter pictures seemed over saturated. It may be color profile issue with Mac, where my pics originated. Most color images looked OK. B&W oldies looked very good. Did not try video. Sound was very poor, coming from tiny speakers in the back. But then again I wasn't buying it for sound, anyway, so I turned off the volume. I set up the automatic on-off timer, but it didn't seem to work. Not sure why.
Overall, I'm pretty satisfied with it. Initial setup was easy, but it took me the better part of a day to try and get something working with the on-line thing. Some of that is poor documentation for the on-line services, which could be remedied by better instructions with the frame. Someone who is already a Flickr or FrameChannel user would probably find it easier. I imagine that there are plenty of folks like me who want to set it and forget it for their non-techie parents or grandparents. You can't expect them to be navigating hard to understand buttons and poorly implemented sliding interfaces. I was able to get it up and hope it keeps working well.
Free suggestion to Frame Developers: Make one that connects to the internet and can be controlled completely remotely via a web page. I would be able add or delete photos, change the set or sets being displayed, etc., all from my home.
out of 6 user reviews
16:9 aspect ratio a deal-breaker
Pros: Great display quality
I got to like the fact that no remote is needed
Cons: 16:9 aspect ratio...read on
out of 6 user reviews
Good Frame, Not so good net configuration
Pros: - Nice Display; Excellent screen size and brightness
- Easy to use navigation on the frame
Cons: - Even with the latest firware and software update, unable to configure RSS feed, Flickr; kodak gallery photos to show up
- Not so tech savvy folks will have difficulty in configuring the wireless part of the app
