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Lightning Review: D-Link DSM-210 Wireless Internet Photo Frame
Posted by Jason Chen at 5:00 AM on August 2, 2008
The Gadget: D-Link's entrance into the 10-inch photo frame market, which contains Wi-Fi to download and display pics from your Flickr, MobileMe, MSN, PIcasa, webshots, Facebook, and various other photo sharing accounts, or your local network. There's also RSS news display, 1GB on-board memory and a USB port for external photos.
The Price: US$240
The Verdict: Works mostly as advertised, but at a price of US$240, we expect a bit more polish to the unit.
The 10-inch display is roomy, but its 800x480 resolution looks somewhat pixelated when you get up close. Loading photos from its internal memory and USB slot (or SD slot) works just as well as you'd expect, which is nice. However, 1GB of built-in memory is pretty tiny for something that costs US$240.
You can also stream photos from various online photo sharing networks, which works pretty well over its 802.11g connection or its 10/100 Ethernet port (you really want to use the Wi-Fi to make this truly wireless, but seeing as there's a mandatory AC adaptor, that's pretty much an impossibility anyway).
One of the goofs we find is that the default setting on FrameChannel.com, the online utility you use to manage all your internet feeds, sets the default photos at a maximum of 5, so you only get 5 pics in your rotation at once. Easy enough to fix if you know where to look, but your parents would have to call you first. Again, for US$240 we expect the kind of user interface that you can actually tweak settings on without having to use a separate computer.
Is it fairly solid? Yes. Would we recommend this to our parents? Probably not. We'll wait for the second-gen (or is it fifth-gen now) photo frames--something we can give to our parents and have them figure out themselves. [D-Link]
Comments (AU Comments · US Comments)
There are currently no AU comments for this post.
tetzel1517
Posted 5:26 AM 2/8/08
Can it actually download and display photos that are in my iPhoto library though? Not everyone uses online photo albums, but just about everyone has photos stored on their hard drive.
tetzel1517
Sora57
Posted 5:22 AM 2/8/08
Really ugly and lame for a $240 gadget. Is that an EA branded memory stick??
Note to designers: if you're going to provide a memory stick port, recess it enough to hide the memory stick so it is not seen when looking at the frame. Just sayin.
Sora57
lilaliendog
Posted 5:18 AM 2/8/08
um dude I totally see a wire, badda bing
lilaliendog
sfokevin
Posted 5:16 AM 2/8/08
@Jon!: It's not just your II!...
sfokevin
Gann
Posted 5:16 AM 2/8/08
@Jon!: It looks like those pagers you get at restaurants but with a screen.
Gann
zerito87
Posted 5:15 AM 2/8/08
@Jon!: Its not just you...
zerito87
Jon!
Posted 5:03 AM 2/8/08
Is it just me or is it really ugly for a photo frame?
Jon!
Pixelantes Anonymous
Posted 5:56 AM 2/8/08
Where is Wireless Pixxa???
All other wifi digiframes pale in comparison.
It was supposed to be out Q2 2008.
Oh, and the review seems to imply that this digiframe does not support RSS feeds from an arbitrary URL. If so that's useless to me.
Pixelantes Anonymous
Jason Chen
Posted 5:50 AM 2/8/08
@Parapraxis: They paid me exactly one memory stick, which coincidentally enough had their press assets on it when they gave it away at E3.
Jason Chen
Parapraxis
Posted 5:38 AM 2/8/08
how much did EA pay you?
I think the better one would be to have the humping dog usb drive.
That way, it will hump the frame when a picture of your leg appears.
Parapraxis
Puck
Posted 5:36 AM 2/8/08
This thing looks hideous. Nice idea and technology, but seriously, this is the Gary Busey of picture frames.
Puck
Jason Chen
Posted 5:35 AM 2/8/08
@Sora57: That was my own memory stick, but yes it is.
Jason Chen
zydeco100
Posted 6:03 AM 2/8/08
Yeah, why is letting the frame download from a customizable source so hard? RSS feed would be one way, how about letting it connect to a given IP in my LAN and letting it download photos from there?
Is there *any* frame out there right now that can do something like this? Picasa/Snapfish/Ofoto/etc doesn't count.
zydeco100
kyel57
Posted 6:46 AM 2/8/08
does anyone else want a digital photo frame with a glossy screen? The matte screens just don't seem to be that great at viewing photos.
kyel57
PipeRifle
Posted 6:24 AM 2/8/08
Is there some sort of bezel on the front that you removed for photos? Or are those just really deep, ugly screw holes?
PipeRifle
Jason Chen
Posted 6:22 AM 2/8/08
@zydeco100: Yeah you can view photos off your network as well. Forgot to mention that, thanks!
Jason Chen
Sora57
Posted 6:58 AM 2/8/08
@PipeRifle: It has a remote, so maybe one hole is the IR sensor and the other a photocell (automatic brightness adjustment).
Sora57
the_gank
Posted 7:31 AM 2/8/08
where are the hack folks..to hack this thing to do all sort of magic tricks...
the_gank
AlphaTeam
Posted 7:14 AM 2/8/08
For this price I'd rather go buy an old Nokia N800.
AlphaTeam
zed0
Posted 8:18 AM 2/8/08
Sounds like a decent enough gift for the parents. Once it's set up anyways.
[www.amazon.com]
zed0
1roll20s
Posted 8:09 AM 2/8/08
800x480 res, looks like a 3:2 aspect ratio. I have an older 16:9 frame and in retrospect wish I had avoided it.
What I'd really like to see is a 1:1 screen. Then you can display portrait and landscape photos at the same size without cropping.
1roll20s
VNSROCK
Posted 10:28 AM 2/8/08
fugly
VNSROCK
skulldriveshaft
Posted 5:07 PM 4/8/08
I see a wire
skulldriveshaft