| Brand: | Kodak | ||
| Average Rating |
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The Kodak Easyshare EX-811 digital picture frame plays vibrant slideshows of your favorite pictures and video set to music. The frames are color-tuned to Kodak standards and use Kodak Color Science for vibrant colors and pleasing skin tones – displaying pictures in brilliant color and crisp detail. Set up is a snap, and you can enjoy any JPEG picture, most video types (MPEG 1 and 4, MOV, AVI) and MP3 music using all the popular memory card formats (CF, SD, MMC, xD and MS). You can also source digital files from any digital still camera, home PC, Jump Drive and Flash Drive via USB 2.0. Stereo speakers are built into the frames for dramatic sound accompaniment to your slide shows. The 8-inch (diagonal) 800 x 480 high resolution digital display features a 16:9 aspect ratio, as well as wireless access of pictures, videos and music from your home PC or online at KODAK Gallery over a standard wireless home network. The frame has 128 MB of built-in memory for storing pictures and videos, built-in stereo speakers, and headphone jack for music. more info
{ 25 comments… read them below or add one }
gift for daughter
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
I purchased this digital picture frame after searching for the best one for the money. My daughter loves it – she said it was easy to upload her pictures and loves it.
Nice start – now finish the product
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
Nice clear display and has great features, but some features are incomplete. No additional charges required to use the wireless feature with the Kodak Gallery which is nice. Overall, I can recommend this frame at least at the price I paid for it, but beware that this frame has been thrown on the market before all of its features have been implemented.
Two biggest complaints :
1) The setup works fine and is pretty intuitive, although if you want to or need to manually enter your network information, it could take you hours if you make a mistake in using the remote to enter the information; one mistake, and you have to start all over pushing lots of buttons on the remote to navigate through menus and enter data. Took me over two hours to configure wireless capability, but most people may just use the auto setup which may work fine and be much faster. And I had to re-enter all the setup information again after I updated the firmware.
2) The auto-on/off feature is a GREAT idea except it has not been fully implemented. The frame turns on alright, but it displays the setup screen which requires user intervention to navigate through menus to get the frame to display actual pictures. Maybe this scenario occurs only if there is no media card in the frame, but the frame should be configurable to go to the Kodak Gallery when no card is detected and start displaying images from there. Duh! I am not even going to mention the fact that you will get nice little icons burned into your display if the frame always turns on to the same set up menu and sits there for hours. Well, I guess I did mention it.
I hope Kodak is working on updating the firmware and completing what they have started. I bought this frame for my parents for Christmas hoping to set it up to turn on automatically and display recent family pictures from the Kodak Gallery. Sounded like a good idea at the time. Still waiting for a firmware update…
Kodak Easyshare Digital Picture Frame
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
It was a gift that I sent. They said it was easy to set up and use.
Wireless Won’t Work
Rating:3 out of 5 stars
I bought this for my wife. We are very happy with the resolution and the video capability.
However, we were unable to make the wireless feature work at all.
Do not purchase!
Rating:1 out of 5 stars
It is really unbelievable to me what a terrible product this is. I am on my second frame because I thought the first one was defective, but I am having the same issues with this one as well. It is EXTREMELY slow, many times not responding to the remote at all. Either the frame freezes or the screen turns black. The only button that works 100% of the time is the on/off button. It takes at least 10 tries to actually connect with kodak gallery to display pictures I have online. I really wanted this frame in particular because I have TONS of photos on kodak gallery, but it is much more effort to get it to work than it’s worth. It’s a nice idea, but Kodak needs to go back to the drawing board on this one . . . .
Good Product, Needs Some Tweaking
Rating:3 out of 5 stars
Great color & clarity. Some problems with the wireless connectivity. Initially slideshow would not show pics faster than one per minute! After contacting Kodak customer service, performed firmware upgrade and improved to approximately 5 seconds. However, the slideshow still “chokes” frequently. Also, bottom of picture gets cropped off.
Wish it was easier for Mac users
Rating:3 out of 5 stars
Overall, the Kodak product is not a bad frame, but I wish it would work better with a Mac.
Last year, I bought three Panvision frames as gifts. I had to exchange 2 immediately because they did not work, then 1 of those replacements had to be re-replaced. They were only $70. I was able to get the 3 set up, but when I went to change out the pictures, all 3 failed so I took back the gifts from the recipients and returned all 3, vowing to replace them for Christmas. I then did as much research as I could and settled on the Kodak frame, knowing there would be issues, but it seemed better than other frames.
I tried the wireless, but as others reported, no luck.The other thing that didn’t work for me was the iPhoto interface and I spent a lot of time on it. There is supposed to be a plug-in, but I ultimately found out it doesn’t work with Intel Macs. Also, the card seemed to fill up much faster than I expected and I don’t know why. It’s a 2GB card, the Finder shows less than 100MB used, but the software says the card is full. A minor issue is that there were a few files that for no reason seem to say “bad” on the frame. The frame stand is surprisingly not steady and that has nothing to do with technology – just a frame stand. The pictures look pretty good.
Won’t someone make an easy to use frame that works with the Mac? After getting so much good info from the Amazon reviews, I thought I’d offer some of my experiences.
What do you mean, ‘bad image’?
Rating:2 out of 5 stars
This product works pretty well except for the fact that any photo I try to upload, it complains that it’s ‘bad’. After scorging the net, I found that if I bring it in to Photoshop and Save for Web, then it all works fine….but what if I didn’t have Photoshop? That single issue is enough for me to only give this 2 stars. After all, for those non-graphically inclined, it would render the product useless.
Also, the language options, leave much to be desired (what’s with no East Asian character support?)
The Kodak brand is now a liability
Rating:1 out of 5 stars
Many digital frames are now available. In searching for a frame as a gift for elderly parents, I decided to purchase a “reliable” brand rather than a newer entrant into the market. I wanted to minimize any problems and was more than willing to pay pay a premium to ensure low-effort, high-enjoyment for my parents. Granted, George Eastman’s legacy is film, not electronics – but this is the 21st century, isn’t it?
If you simply want an frame to display digital pictures from a flash memory card, this unit will work fine. The picture quality is certainly acceptable. However, you will be overpaying by about 2x. The wireless connectivy with the Kodak Gallery is absolutely unreliable and unusable. You could get a frame without wireless capability with 2x the display area for the same cost.
I wanted a frame that would allow me to send pictures electronically (didn’t care how: web based, email, etc.) to my parents living on the opposite coast for immediate display (or even “almost-immediate” – within 24 hours – refresh). Kodak claims that with their Kodak Gallery web site, with proper setup one can upload pictures to private/shared areas and the frame will automatically be notified and download and display the pictures. And (at the time) there were no fees or subscription required (compared to the original Ceiva frame, for example, which required yearly fees). Of course, I expected that this would function without a full-time IT support staff.
As it turned out, the frame’s wireless capability is terrible. I am a computer/network professional. I had no problem setting up the frame to connect to the wireless network. Upgrading the firmware was simple. Pictures from the SD memory card displayed correctly on the screen. However, the wireless connection is totally unreliable. It is not the wireless network as it is stable and the WAP is 10 feet from the frame. I contacted Kodak support, and it was a terrible experience. After going through the scripted questions and rote responses, struggling to educate the 3rd-world support personnel, waiting for return calls that were promised and didn’t happen, and interminable hold times, I was finally “allowed” to call a “technical specialist” in the US. At that time I was told that unless I was using a wireless router from an approved list, I would not be supported – so I purchased an approved router. Still the same problem. Then the “specialist” said there was a problem with the Kodak web site and I’d have to wait a week for it to be repaired. Two weeks later and still the same problems. I was finally given a RMA number to return the frame for repair. Three weeks later I received the frame, with a note from the “authorized repair facility”. Along with the (same) frame there was a note included stating that they had tested the unit with a memory card, checked the display, and tested to be sure the unit would establish a wireless connection. No malfunction found. They had not even tested the ability to automatically view pictures uploaded remotely to the Kodak Gallery. I don’t know if they bothered to read the very specific description I included with the frame, but I doubt it.
I’ve given up with this item. It is now functioning as a 2x overpriced flash-memory reader with 1/2 the display size. I send a new SD card through USPS Mail every so often with new pictures. Kodak has also now changed their policies regarding storage space on the Kodak Gallery – you have to purchase a minimum amount of product from the site to avoid having your pictures deleted.
Bottom line: the Kodak brand, in my experience and opinion, is a liablity, not something that warrants a premium price. Support is terrible, product does not function as advertised, and this was a waste of my time. I can’t think of any reason to purchase this item and highly recommend against it. If you want wireless picture display this will not work; if you want flash-memory picture display many other, larger, less expensive options abound.
Quite good overall….
Rating:3 out of 5 stars
Bought the frame a month ago…..overall I liked it.
These are the good and bad things in my opinion:
Good:
- Easy to start-up.
- Being able to connect it straight to a flash drive and play pictures from there. No cables to the PC required.
- Can see the photo from all angles.
Bad:
- Black frame is too wide compared to the LCD screen inside. Was going to put the 10″ one but I felt like I was going to put another monitor on my desk next to my computer monitor.
- The frame plays the pictures in the same order everytime. Makes it kinda boring after going through them a few times.
- If you’re looking for a frame to put in your living room, go for the 10″ one.
- Unless you have a huge collection of photos, you might get quite bored with it after awhile.
- Would be good if we could add a text or description on the photo while being played.
Excellent Frame
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
This frame has a high quality images, and is extremely easy to use. On our Mac there was zero setup… just plugged it into the USB port and dragged and dropped pictures from iPhoto. It even scaled down the high-res pictures to its resolution to save space.
Our only issue is the strange dimensions of the frame… they’re not the same as your standard digital camera image, so you’re forced to crop all images.
Great product!!!
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
Great product! Excellent picture quality! Many nice features! However, the quality of pictures pulled over wifi from the Kodak Gallery is something to be desired. This is a result of settings on Kodak Gallery, not the frame. I don’t regret the purchase, but did anticipate equal picture quality from all sources.
Unfulfilled Potential
Rating:2 out of 5 stars
The concept of a wireless photo frame (EX811) has the potential to simplify the process of refreshing the pictures on a photo frame. Most people already upload pictures from a digital camera onto a computer. What if you could simply drag the pictures into a folder on your computer where the frame is “watching” via WiFi. Nice!! No fumbling with memory cards and waiting for the files to transfer. So what’s the problem? Well apparently the picture frame couldn’t be made smart enough to remember what computer and share drive you want it to view when you power on the frame. I mean it remembers your network name and encryption keys but they couldn’t afford one extra bit of data to say “start” here. Instead it reads pictures from internal memory at start-up. So I’ll just leave it on all the time. Right? Wrong!! You see it grabs all the picture at the start of the slideshow and it doesn’t appear to ever go back for more. In addition, it struggles if the folder has a large number of photos. They couldn’t grab some at random periodically. It restarts on its own periodically when it drops its network connection. After mashing on the remote for a couple of hours, I decided that it would be easier and more reliable to fumble with a memory card. In conclussion, my advice is to skip the WiFi features for now. Eventually a manufacturer will focus on how people will try to use the frame. For now they seem content to just stamp “WiFi” on the front of the box.
Terrible Photo Frame; Shockingly Low-Quality
Rating:1 out of 5 stars
I can’t begin to tell you how awful this product is.
First off, a bit of background on your humble reviewer. I’m a self-taught geek who does computer tech support as one of my jobs. I’ve never met a computer problem I couldn’t fix, and I do it on a daily basis, sometimes simply for fun.
So you can imagine my frustration when I purchased this product for my wife’s birthday back in June, only to discover that the networking functionality is essentially broken, even with the newest firmware (which is from October 2007, and ships on Amazon’s stock of the frames). I was able to get things up and running fairly quickly. The frame connects to the network with WPA encryption and successfully sees the computer. I can even begin playing a pictures slideshow from my Windows Media Player server (which is how you have to set it up to work with a wireless network).
However–and it never fails–the frame inevitably will freeze after so long. Well, it doesn’t even freeze; half the time it simply reboots itself and begins playing its built-in collection of stock photos, right in the middle of your network slideshow. I have ruled out networking problems by trying two different routers. Firewalls are not an issue. To make matters worse, sometimes the frame will not pick up on the Playlists you have configured… meaning, they’ll simply not show up in the listings. That leaves you to choose “All Pictures”, which are then displayed sequentially each and every time. A quick call to product support quickly revealed that they are completely inept and simply reading from a punch list of troubleshooting options (“Sir, I must now suggest that you check to see if the frame is too far from the router.”) Eck.
Perhaps this all wouldn’t be so bad if there were some way to get the frame to shuffle playback. YOU CAN’T. THERE IS NO RANDOM/SHUFFLE OPTION on this frame. The only way to shuffle your playback is to configure a playlist that is preshuffled via Windows Media Player and then load the playlist onto your frame–if you have so much luck, as many times, as previously mentioned, you can’t even get the playlists to show up.
This product is, quite simply put, a piece of plastic trash that hardly even performs its basic functions. The quality control and, perhaps equally disturbing, product support for these frames is bottom-of-the-barrel. I advise you to avoid this product at all costs, as well as any future frames by Kodak. (Their newest line of updated frames still doesn’t support shuffle playback by the way.)
I will be headed to CES this week to see what else is available and upcoming in the photo frame market. I am already strongly considering a purchase of a Sony frame to replace this junk. Its ratings are much higher, it reportedly never freezes, and it does include the elusive shuffle function.
CLIFF’S NOTES: YOUR TECHNOLOGICAL PROWESS IS IRRELEVANT; THIS FRAME IS BROKEN. STAY FAR, FAR AWAY.
Misleading description.
Rating:2 out of 5 stars
We returned the frame without even trying to load it. Very disappointed to see the frame opening was 8″ on the diagonal which makes it much smaller than a regular 8″ frame.
Junk!
Rating:1 out of 5 stars
I expected more from Kodak. The stand on the back of the frame is flimsy and the frame keeps falling over. Also, its operation was quirky out of the box.
I own some off brands that are better than this.
Stay away.
OK frame – Bad Service with Kodak Gallery wifi
Rating:1 out of 5 stars
This was a good frame until kodakgallery started charging for photo storage. If you plan on using the wifi feature, skip this frame and go with one that syncs with flickr.
1) The Ex-811 will let you connect ONLY to kodakgallery.com
2) kodakgallery.com now charges $5 per year to store photos.
I bought this & set it up at a relatives house out of state. Whenever & where ever I, or other family members, feel compelled, we upload photos to kodakgallery.com & then, like magic, they show up on the frame. Its a great way to connect our family members & share photos with people who live all over the country. I realize $5 isn’t much, however I feel the photo storage should be included as a part of the purchase price of the frame – for this reason alone I gave it 1 star.
No one charges for photo storage & Kodak Gallery has been free, but as of May 2009 they will implement the “$5+ per year or deletion policy”.
Pretty good product
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
My brother and I purchased this digital frame for our parents as a gift. It displays great images and my dad has had a lot of fun playing with it while my mom has enjoyed looking at all the pictures it will hold. The only negative was that it was kind of complicated to get images on it through the wireless (memory chip worked great!) but it’s likely that it was an issue with the router/network rather than the frame. It’s a great product and I don’t regret purchasing it!
very pleased
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
I researched a little before I purchased, since I’ve never used a digital frame and found this to be the best quality for the price. I bought one for a gift for grandparents, then liked it so well I got one for myself! It’s easy to use once you set up the wireless (without wireless it’s a little more complicated). The one thing I haven’t figured out is how to save music to the internal memory! I would highly recommend this product.
Not good as it seems
Rating:1 out of 5 stars
The Digital Frame itself works but the wireless capability is a disaster. It doesn’t want to connect to my Cisco WPA network. It only works with the WEP and works really bad… it crashes after loading few pictures online and crashes again if you change the menu while loading the pictures online.
The network feature is just a disaster. I should have been tested before selling it!
I have also opened a ticket in Kodak to get support and they are not helpfull at all. They just answer based on the product manual…
Just buy the regular one without wireless, it’s a waste of money…
Feature packed, and wi-fi makes it awesome
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
I bought this frame for my mother-in-law to have with her so we could push photos of my daughter to her. This is done over the wi-fi, as kodak lets the frame pull photos from an online gallery that we can upload pictures to.
Note however that I have seen this frame freeze up (just while being on and doing its thing), and thus needing a power-off-power-on cycle (no need to unplug, as there is a switch).
For the price, feature packed!
Easyshare Is Easy
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
My husband is a photographer and I got this for his birthday. It took him about 10 minutes to set it up and we had an ever changing view of some of our favorite pictures. He also takes it along to use as a table display when he does an event because it’s so portable. It looks good sitting on a table in your living room or den. It also makes a great gift to friends or relatives who don’t have internet access. We would highly recommend it.
Kodak EX Review
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
I just recieved the unit today. I have found that it will meet all my needs for a picture frame. I have not used all the features however I am writing this to warn buyers to be careful of paying over the msrp on this unit and the sv 811, many dealers are charging way over the asking price from Kodak. Check the Kodak site for the fair price. A fair price is around $ 169.00 some are asking around $ 199.00- 225.00
the only problem I recognized right away is that the stand is not going to support the unit. I fixed the problem by going to walmarts and purchasing a picture frame stand, problem solved. update as of Jan 26th’
Check the price at Kodak store they are going for 199.99 and I think this is high for the unit. I paid 166.99 at Amazon just about a mounth ago they will go down. Word to the wise
Nice frame
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
My husband and I bought this for his mother. It was easy to use and looked great. I’d been reading reviews and specs for many frames, and didn’t find one in our price range (under $200) that had everything we wanted (good resolution, remote, black or wood frame (not white), picture cycling times including longer cycles of >5 minutes, etc.). The only shortcoming we found with this frame, which I knew going in, was that the aspect ratio was not the same as that of our camera, and that pictures would be cropped to fit. That’s what happened, but it was fine. Few pictures suffered noticeably, and even those that would have been better uncropped were fine. I figure we always have the original to print or resize for the frame, if we want to.
BIG FRAME, little picture…
Rating:2 out of 5 stars
Odd, Kodak has been doing this for years, and this is not what people want. The frame is maaassive, and the pictures therefore look small. It’s slow to power on, no picture shuffle, no picture/video hybrid playback, poor wireless quality… In short, not living up to it’s purported operation or quality. C’mon Kodak!