Just like buses, photo viewers seem to come in pairs. Barely a week has passed since I checked out the 9-inch Philips photo frame and while I admired the features and quality, you had to pay a premium to enjoy them.
Today we’re showing a 7-inch Bluetooth photo viewer from Parrot, and late last year Benny tested the original Parrot Bluetooth photo viewer. It was a commendable effort at the time, but it came at a prohibitively high price and lacked a number of fundamental features. Has Parrot learned from its mistakes?
First impressions are that the 7-inch version is very close to the original aesthetically. It may be considerably larger – the original had a tiny 3.5-inch screen – but for all intents and purposes it looks exactly the same. Parrot sells the viewer in a number of finishes including: Natural Oak, Alezan, Black Salamander, Brown Salamander, Black Ivory, Cardinal Red and, for the absolutely tasteless, Zebra.
Our test sample has the Black Ivory finish, which seems to be the least offensive of all the paint finishes. It’s by no means as stylish as the Philips, but the white stitching on black leather has a homely feel that’s not uncomfortable. In terms of looks, I’d still go with Philips every time – and that goes for all the different styles available too.
Dimensionally, this 7-inch version is certainly larger, although the screen isn’t quite as big as advertised, as it’s actually 6.5-inches diagonal. The overall dimensions are 222 x 176 x 22mm and the device weighs 490g.
The Parrot has a screen with a resolution of 720 x 480 and can display up to 262,144 colors. There’s also a motion sensor internally, and the viewer automatically adjusts the images to portrait or landscape orientation.
Viewing angles, which are certainly important in these types of products, aren’t too much to write home about. Horizontal viewing angles are acceptable in landscape mode, but they are particularly poor vertically, which is a problem in portrait mode.
Fortunately, average viewing angles aside, it’s a fairly decent screen that looks bright and sharp even when sitting next to the Philips photo frame.
Unlike the Philips, which has a built-in stand that rotates, the Parrot Photo Viewer relies on a metal rod that screws into the back of the device. As this is tactically placed in a corner, it can be set up in both landscape and portrait modes, but it’s not a particularly stable solution and the viewer is easily knocked over by a slight bump or hit.
Just like its predecessor, this is a Bluetooth-enabled photo viewer, and it’s certainly a feature worth praising. Like many others, I enjoy taking photos with my mobile phone – often snagging amusing headlines from newspapers while buying lunch at Sainsbury’s – and transferring photos to the Photo Viewer is a very simple process.
After finding the photo viewer, all you need to do is enter 0000 as your PIN and you can start sending pictures to the device. The Photo Viewer uses Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR and has a range of ten meters, so you shouldn’t have too many range issues.
Of course, you can transfer photos with almost any Bluetooth-enabled device, regardless of whether it is a mobile phone, PDA, notebook or PC. Unfortunately, Parrot didn’t have the foresight to include a USB Bluetooth module for those with PCs or notebooks without built-in Bluetooth, and this would certainly benefit PC users who are less likely to have Bluetooth.
Of course, you could buy one separately – and Parrot is just one company that makes things like that – but a bundled Bluetooth adapter wouldn’t have increased the cost all that much, and it would add a lot of value right out of the box.
This isn’t the only oversight either, as Parrot has – once again – decided not to include memory card slots. Its dedication to all things Bluetooth is admirable, but there are several very strong arguments for having memory card slots on a device like this.
It’s not hard to imagine that the vast majority of people would simply want to snap photos from their camera’s memory card and place them straight onto a photo viewer. Since Bluetooth is the only available connection, you have no choice but to transfer photos to another device first. an unnecessary impertinence.
It’s not all bad for the Parrot Photo Viewer, however, and it has at least addressed one problem common in this market – stingy internal storage. There is 128MB of internal memory that can store about 500 photos at a time.
This is a significant improvement over the Philips Photo Frame range, which only has 18MB of internal storage – although the Philips memory card reader certainly mitigates this problem considerably.
For most purposes, however, 128MB is probably sufficient, so you don’t have to worry too much about running out of space for your photos.
However, the Parrot Photo Viewer’s main saving grace is its user interface. There are three navigation buttons on the back, including two triangular movement buttons and a circular menu button. These are nicely located and it’s very easy to tell each button apart just by touching it.
The menu button displays a series of icons at the bottom of the screen that you can use to rotate and select images, adjust slideshow options, arrange and delete images, or make other settings.
It’s not as feature-rich as the Philips, but that makes it easy to use and is certainly a factor worth considering. Unfortunately, one very useful feature is missing: albums. While you can arrange the order your photos appear in, you can’t organize them into albums, and that’s a disappointing flaw.
It retains a few more features you’d normally expect, with a standby mode to turn the device on and off automatically – of course there’s a clock for this feature to work, too.
With all this ease of use, however, it’s hard to resist the fact that you can get the 7-inch version of the Philips Photo Frame for £120 – only slightly more than this 7-inch Parrot Photo Viewer. And for that money you get all the features of the 9-inch photo frame, including the memory card reader, which the Parrot lacks.
“‘Verdict”‘
While the Parrot Bluetooth Photo Frame has its perks, the lack of a memory card reader and less appealing design pale in comparison to the more stylish, better-equipped Philips Photo Frame. Bluetooth is a fun handy feature, but you’ll have to want a photo viewer specifically with Bluetooth to pick this over the Philips.