Like many manufacturers of digital photo frames, Smartparts (www.smartpartsproducts.com) has several frames in its product line. For our review, we selected the Portable Picture and Video Player. A less-expensive version is available, lacking some of the advanced features found on our review unit.

Product Tour

Front view of the Smartparts Portable Picture and Video Player

The Smartparts digital frame, like three other products in this roundup, features a 7" (diagonal) screen with a 16:9 widescreen format. Included with the frame is an 11-button remote control. The remote is significantly simpler than the remote on the Kodak EasyShare, and many functions, such as rotating images, require the use of an on-screen menu combined with button pushes on either the remote on the frame. We found this to be somewhat more confusing than the Kodak EasyShare menu, and it took us longer to feel comfortable with all of the products functions.

Rear view of the Smartparts portable picture and video player

The Smartparts player has seven buttons mounted on the top of the frame. This is a much more convenient location than rear-mounted buttons found on some frames. The stand folds out and rotates so that you can position the frame either horizontally or vertically. The player can be powered either by the included AC adapter, or by six AA batteries.

Portability is a nice feature for those family picnics or a day at the beach. The battery door on the rear snaps off to reveal the battery compartment. There are two rows, each of which accommodates three batteries. You can use rechargeable batteries, but you’ll need an external charger - you can’t charge the batteries in the unit. Interestingly, there are no holes for wall mounting - most likely because the battery compartment makes for an irregular profile that wouldn’t fit flat against a wall.

The Smartparts player has several unique features. First, there is a clock mode. This mode shows the current time in large digits along with the date and the alarm setting in smaller digits. Unfortunately, you can’t change the background wall paper or the small image below the time. The player also has a calendar mode that displays the month along with the time, time zone and alarm settings. You can scroll through the months, but as with the clock mode, you can’t change the calendar picture.

Hands On

The Smartparts frame allows you to configure the default startup mode. You can choose either Time, Calendar, Picture Music, Movie or Playlist. To change modes, or to access the setup menu, you press the menu button either on the remote or on the top of the frame. An on-screen menu appears with icons for the frame’s basic operating modes. Those modes are Time, Calendar, pictures, music, movies, music with pictures, memory card/folder view and setup.

As with other frames, you can choose to either fit your images to the frame, or to resize images to fill the frame. We tend to prefer "fit image" as that setting maintains the original aspect ratio. The slide transition delay only had three settings: Slow, Middle and Fast.

During a slide show, if you press the enter key, another menu appears that allows you to pause the show, rotate images, zoom in/out or enter the thumbnail mode. I noticed several anomalies. First, though you could rotate images when paused, the frame, lacking internal memory, doesn’t remember that you’ve rotated the image, and will display it in its original orientation during the slide show. Second, though the thumbnail view has a nice 12-image display, you have to scroll through the images using the left and right buttons. The up/down buttons don’t work for navigation in thumbnail mode, nor can you select images to include in your slideshow - all images in a directory are played.

A nice feature is the AV output jack that allows you to connect the Smartparts player to your TV. A button on your remote toggles between the LCD and the TV. The feature works well, but of course, your images are cropped differently on a normal TV screen.

The movie player had the same problem as the Kodak EasyShare did when playing back a 640 X 480 30-FPS clip. It did fine with a 320 X 240 clip at 30 FPS, though.

Image quality was good, but if you don’t like the default settings, you can change the brightness, contrast and saturation in the setup menu.

The Smartparts portable picture and video player has a nice assortment of features, including battery power and AV output, but the menus and navigation take some effort to learn.