Gonzo Gadgets

Sungale ID800WT Digital Photo Frame Review

Sungale ID800WT Digital Photo Frame

Sungale’s ID800WT do-everything photo frame has a spec sheet designed to please the most discerning photo lover. For that reason, it has moved right into the same neighborhood with one of our favorite frames – the iGala Wireless Digital Picture Frame. The ID800WT, like the iGala, is priced around $250 and offers features well beyond the norm – including internet connectivity, improved screen, touchscreen interface, streaming media playback and more. The ID800WT is certainly not cheap, but the promise of so many features demands attention even in a crowded market.

Read on to see if the ID800WT capitalizes on the big ambitions of Sungale’s engineers.

The Hardware

Sungale’s announcement of the ID800WT recently garnered interest among technophiles.

The highlights of the hardware are a generous 800×600 resolution, high-quality screen, touchscreen interface, built-in Wi-Fi, a multi-format card reader and a capacious 512MB of internal memory. The ID800WT is right at the top in terms of hardware in this price range.

The look of the frame is classic, understated but pleasing. The back panel reveals two easy-to-use thumbscrews to remove the stock frame and replace with another frame., at least in theory. At this time, Sungale has published no information on where to obtain additional frames.

One other oddity – the unit has an infrared receiver centered just beneath the bottom edge of the screen. Sungale however includes no remote and again does not advertise how to make use of this feature.

In all the hardware is well designed and of high quality. The eventual availability of replacement frames could bump up the “style” factor, but even so we find it suitable for nearly any desk – home office or executive penthouse.

Features & Software

As excited as we were with the hardware specifications, it was the long list of internal applications that really got our attention.

The feature list – copied from Sungale’s ID800WT page:

• Youtube: Top ten YouTube programs for your entertainment
• RSS news: Google &Yahoo
• IP Radio:  Thousands of stations for your selection
• Picasa:  View and download your photos
• Stock: Real-time stock quotes and market news
• Gmail: Watch your email without a PC
• Weather: Real time weather report in your area
• Video:  AVI
• Music:  WMA
• Photo: JPG, TIF, PNG, BMP
• Calendar: Digital Calendar
• Clock: Analogue Clock display
• Touch Screen: Touch screen to do your operation

Sounds great, but how did it perform?

Unfortunately, we found the actual operation of this feature list to be a mixed bag.

Features: The Good

Displaying photos, it’s no surprise that the ID800WT does quite well. The screen is bright and crisp – not the very best we’ve used but well above average. The 512MB internal memory is more than adequate for storing oodles of your favorite photos. The transitions between photos are snappy.

Connecting to the wireless network is simple and smart and painless.

Most of the software features (but not all – read the next section) work as advertised. RSS reading, video & music playback, internet radio streaming, weather, Gmail, etc all operated properly.

Features: The Bad

Unfortunately we encountered a fair share of problems, or at least annoyances, during our time with the ID800WT photo frame.

We crashed the unit on several occasions attempting to play “Top 10″ videos from YouTube. Not all Top 10 videos seem to cause this, but the ones that do do so consistently. The entire frame became unresponsive and our only recourse was to power cycle the unit. Very frustrating.

Despite trying on multiple WiFi networks, verifying our login many times, and patiently typing and retyping the login information, we were unable to connect to Picasa. This was disappointing as Picasa is a great photo service and we were excited to see how Sungale’s product enhanced it. This may work great for others, but we were unable to enjoy this feature.

Beyond these errors, we were perplexed at the rough edges and inconsistency of the interface. Each application seemingly was designed in a vacuum (possibly each by a different designer & programmer?), making individual features feel like stand-alones rather than part of a well-planned whole. In too many cases, small icons without accompanying labels served important purposes, but only trips to the manual would reveal them.

In another example, we could not get the stock application to recognize popular stocks symbols such as Apple (”AAPL”). This was not a major drawback to us but again, a case where things don’t work quite as you would hope, gimping the effective feature list. No onscreen help pointed us in the right direction.

The Gmail application does indeed read email, but be forewarned that email  content is displayed in a test-only, bare-bones and is needlessly cramped on-screen. As a result reading Gmail on the ID800WT requires lots of sifting through technical headers, scrolling and patience. We doubt many this application will replace customer’s home computer or iPhone for reading email.

The difficulty of typing accurately on the touchscreen was our final frustration. The Sungale is not alone in this respect among photo frames, but typing passwords especially was troublesome. Happily you won’t find yourself typing too often on it – once you’ve got your favorite applications configured you shouldn’t need to reenter text again.

The Verdict

We came in hoping that the Sungale ID800WT and it’s amazing feature list would unseat our reigning photo frame champ, the iGala Digital Picture Frame. Sungale’s hardware specs are up to the task but ultimately the ID800WT is let down by the implementation of its myriad software features. The frame that looks unbeatable on paper but after spending hours with it, a surprising number of rough edges appeared. With a little more thought to a cohesive interface design, improvements to some of the functionality and some overall polish, we believe the ID800WT could be a winner.

At a price of just under $250 however, we continue to recommend the iGala Frame. It doesn’t have quite as many features listed on the spec sheet but what it does do – and it’s plenty – it does slickly and we found the iGala’s apps to all be fully usable. Sadly we did not find the same to be true of the Sungale.

There is a niche market out there for the Sungale ID800WT because it does offers unique features. It has a great physical screen, attractive design and some may find that one or two of its software applications are compelling enough to warrant the purchase. Overall we are left feeling that the ID800WT is a major software update or two away from being the product we know it can be. At an asking price of $250, that’s tough to swallow. If Sungale releases updates to the ID800WT we will revisit this review with updated impressions to share with you.

Tags: id800wt, Photography, picture frame, sungale, touchscreen, wifi, wireless

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