Kogan digital photo frame (Verdict: keeps it simple, does the trick)

More from Kogan’s expansion project, the digital photo frame fares better than the GPS watch. It’s taken the right approach to cheap gadgetry – keep the styling simple and you want show up how cheap it is. Brushed stainless finish, white trim, 7-inch screen (though it’s a panoramic 480×234).

Specs are great: JPG, GIF, BMP, MP3 and WMA (yes, speakers are built-in), DivX, AVI, MP4, and WMV videos. It’s got 16MB of space built in, and takes SD, MMC, MemoryStick, or USB. You can run music under a slideshow, too, which not all cheap digital frames will do. Slideshows are also easily customised to run with your own time intervals between slides and a choice of quite a few transition options. Clock, calendar and alarm functions round out the general feature set.

More details and pricing after the jump, plus my general rant on what digital frames should get rid of.
The image processor can also handle massive images (up to 50Mp), though
I’d suggest if you’re shooting on a Hasselblad you probably want
something a little bigger to show your pics off. You can also output
from the frame to TV.

The package is pretty good, and comes in at $129 (+ $19.50 shipping)
with a 1 year warranty. Could be a winner for Christmas for family. They also have other styles to choose from (black, and a funky styled edge). [Kogan digital photo frame]

On with the rant. While this is a nice simple frame, why has it become standard to have remote controls built into these things? Do people really need remotes to control their picture frames? I HATE those damn IR bubbles that appear on the front of every one of these things. Give me a digital frame. A nice frame. A frame that looks elegant sitting on my mantle. I’m happy to turn it around and tweak settings. The sooner these frame makers realise I don’t need to pretend this frame is a TV, the better.