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Kodak EasyShare M820 8-Inch Digital Frame | 
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| Brand: Kodak
Category: Photography
List Price: $169.95
Buy New: $109.99
You Save: $59.96 (35%)
New (36) Refurbished (1) from $109.99
Avg. Customer Rating:  21 reviews
Media: Electronics
Autographed: No
Memorabilia: No
Batteries Included: No
Native Resolution: 8
Display Size: 8
Removable Memory: Memory Stick
Shipping Weight (lbs): 4.9
Dimensions (in): 10.1 x 7.1 x 1.3
nv:Picture Frame Type: Desktop Frame
Display Type: TFT LCD
Screen Size: 8 Inches
Aspect Ratio: 16:9
Supported Media: MMC
Supported Media: SD
Supported Media: xD
Supported Media: MS
Supported Media: CF
Supported Formats: JPEG
Supported Formats: MP3
Supported Formats: MPEG 4
Supported Formats: MPEG 1
Supported Formats: EXIF
Connectivity: USB 2.0
Power Source: 100-120V
Remote Control: No
MPN: M820
Model: M820
UPC: 041778485026
EAN: 0041778485026
ASIN: B0016PFBB6
Release Date: April 14, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 2-3 business days
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| Features:
| • | 8-inch high quality LCD screen | | • | More memory with 2 card slots | | • | Play video and listen to MP3s | | • | Ease of control with Kodak's Quick Touch Border | | • | Create on-frame multimedia slide shows using Kodak Easyshare software |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Indulge your senses with pictures, videos and music. Just insert a memory card or USB flash drive into the Kodak EasyShare M820 Digital Picture Frame and enjoy viewing your pictures right away. Your frame comes with decorative mattes that allow you to personalize the look of the frame, and complement your home decor. Kodak EasyShare Software makes it easy to access all of your pictures and transfer them from your computer to your frame. Kodak's Quick Touch Border keeps fingerprints off of your viewing screen so your images stay beautiful. The touch panel features yellow lights that illuminate to tell you exactly where to touch. Create, edit and view slideshows at the touch of your fingertips. The convenient drag-and-drop feature is perfect for transferring pictures for slideshows. View your pictures on the 8" (20.3 cm) 16:9 wide screen featuring Kodak Color Science for vibrant color and crisp detail. Store up to 300 pictures directly on your frame's 128 MB of internal memory and use the two available SD card slots to view and enjoy even more of your pictures. Set the mood with your music, listen to your favorite MP3s with built-in speakers Selectable viewing hours featuring automatic on/off settings Easily browse and edit your albums Display your frame on a tabletop or on a wall, vertically or horizontally Add style to any decor with optional accessory faceplates Discreet cord design is barely visible
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| Customer Reviews: Read 16 more reviews...
 Good picture quality - but the software is horrible January 1, 2009
This was purchased as a Christmas present for me. I spent almost the entire afternoon trying to load the software and make it work. It messed up my computer so bad I had to restore it to get it back. I tried just about everything including updating the firmware, uninstalling and re-installing; nothing worked. I gave up. The software is bloated and poorly engineered.
On the box it states it comes with a USB cable to attach it to your computer. You won't find one in the box. You will need either a fire wire cable or a USB Male to Male cable which isn't very common. In the manual, Kodak states that you don't get the cable. Nice touch Kodak!
Kodak makes a big deal about it having 128mb's of internal memory. With 2 Gigabyte SD cards costing so little today I don't know why this is a selling point. It also isn't easy to access the internal memory. In my opinion the front controls are confusing to learn and not intuitive. Once I figured it out, it was fine. There also isn't any battery backup so once you unplug the unit you have to set it up again.
On the positive side, this frame does have a very nice picture and colors are sharp and detailed. The frame is nice looking and I like that you can customize the frame borders. It's also nice that it accepts multiple different types of memory cards.
Once I downloaded my picture folders from my computer onto it from Google's Picasa software, it ran without a hitch. I'm not sure why anyone would even attempt to use Kodak's terrible and bloated software when you can download an excellent free program like Picasa. I know this isn't a review for Picasa, but this is a brilliant piece of software! Kodak would have been better off just pointing people to a link to download Picasa.
Overall, I give it only 2 stars because the software is so bad and Kodak hasn't even admitted there are problems with it. (Yes I tried it on two different computers and had problems on both) I also found there was no support on their website for any software problems. Not coming with a cable to connect to your computer is also a joke these days.
In my opinion there are better frames out there for your money. I have decided to keep it since it does have a nice look and displays my pictures well, however, knowing what I know now, I would never purchase it again.
 Good enough, could be better January 1, 2009
I generally liked the frame and was satisfied with it, the pictures do look good, and it is reasonably easy to use, aside from somewhat awkward navigation mentioned below, and a troubleshooting issue that I mention at the very end, which I did not see mentioned by anyone else (although I only read a smattering of reviews, not all).
The most disappointing thing to me, as mentioned in another review, is that the wide-screen format is of no use for viewing ordinary snapshots. I don't have a single thing loaded on there that uses the extra space on the left and right edges. If those same pixels had been placed at the top and bottom instead of the sides, you'd get a bigger display area that you could actually USE. Might as well have just gotten a 7 incher instead of the 8, and save the extra bucks for the pixels that are never used. If you are viewing widescreen video, then that's another issue but all I wanted was something for ordinary photos. I have not used either the video or sound capabilities of the frame, so have no comment on those issues.
This is the only digital frame that I have ever had or used, so I don't know how this compares with other models that might be out there, but I was a little disappointed in the navigation interface. If you have thousands of photos and you want to be able to get at one particular one, it is very cumbersome on this device. It brings up thumbnails of all your pix, in rows. In order to get down to the photo you want, you have to scroll through every single picture between the beginning and there. Although they are displayed in rows, internally it's as if it is just one long filmstrip and you have to pass through every single picture on the way to the next. That's a LOT of scrolling. It seems pretty no-brainerish to me that you should be able to jump a pageful of thumbnails at a time, until you come to the page where your picture is, and then scroll down the rows to the row you want, and finally go across just THAT row to your picture.
Also as mentioned in another review, I agree that it is weird that the only scrolling control is oriented horizontally at the bottom of the screen, while the menus are oriented vertically, so you slide your finger across left to right, in order to move your selection down the menu. It seems like it would have been easy enough to have a vertical scroll control on the right edge of the frame. Also it is a little tricky to get just the right touch to operate the controls. Sometimes you touch somewhere and nothing happens, other times you barely move your finger close to the frame without even touching it, and it activates a control unintentionally. When swiping your finger across to leaf through the photos as a slideshow is running, quite often it takes it as if you tapped instead of swiped. This is very annoying because the tap brings up the entire control panel, which you then have to close, in order to go back to what you were doing. Although this gets better as you learn the correct pressure and speed to use, still, I was never able to perfect it.
Another review mentioned seeing a lot of the same pictures repeated in shuffle mode, I also noticed this but after I updated the firmware it seemed to improve. Definitely, your first chore out of the box is to update the firmware!
I read several other reviews here but didn't have time to read all. In the ones I read, I did not see mentioned that anyone got the error message that I got when I tried to load up the memory from my computer. It is an obscure message, just an error number (forgot what it was already) which I had to Google, it is evidently not an uncommon error as it was fairly easy to figure this out using Google, but NOT by searching Kodak's own troubleshooting web pages. The problem was that I could only transfer a certain number of pictures (not all that many) and then it would not take any more, even though I'd only used about a third of the built-in memory. The same thing happened when I tried to load up a blank SD card (put the card in the frame, then access it as a flash drive from the computer). Solution: Reformat the SD card as FAT 32 instead of just FAT. I just had this card lying around so I don't know if it had ever been formatted or used before, or what I might have used it for, so perhaps I had formatted it as the less useful FAT format myself at some previous time, not knowing what issues might arise from using FAT versus FAT 32. I also tried to reformat the onboard memory to FAT 32, but although it allowed me to initiate the format, the operation failed right at the end, after which the onboard memory was 0 bytes used and 0 bytes available. I was able to restore it to normal with another format attempt, as FAT. I was only using the ordinary Windows file interface to drag and drop stuff onto the frame, not using the included Kodak software, so perhaps the software works around these problems somehow? Also from what I saw online about this error, it sounded as if you can load up more files in FAT format if they are in folders, the problem evidently was having too many files in the ROOT directory. I did not try to experiment with using folders to resolve the issue since using FAT 32 on my SD card had already taken care of the problem and I needed to get it into the mail to my mother ASAP. (From reading other reviews, it sounds like this is a very popular gift for one's mother!)
 Kodak M820 - excellent photo viewer with some frustrating issues December 26, 2008
I purchased an M820 for my mother for Christmas after also trying a Sony DPF-D70 (see review under that product). I kept the Kodak due to ease of use and better image quality.
I am just going to highlight a few things that you may not find in other reviews.
First and foremost, images on this frame look great! Since this is the primary purpose for this device, I weight this more than any other aspect, and viewing on the Kodak is a treat. Viewing angle is a bit narrow and is worse in the vertical direction than the horizontal. I would say no more than three people can view pictures at the same time since adding the fourth would require them to stand too far to the side or too far away.
Navigating the menus to select pictures or change slidshow options is not too bad. However, you should be aware that you do not actually have to touch the frame to activate the 'buttons'. This leads to the occasional unintended action and you have to watch the screen carefully to make sure you did what you wanted. As some have metioned, the menu is not very intuitive. The biggest problem I had was using a horizontal slider to move between vertically oriented menu options - I always moved the wrong way first. I wonder who they tested this on...
I did not use the video viewing except to test the ability to view a file from my Kodak camera (worked fine) and another that was on my PC (had to be converted using the Kodak software). It seems to work fine, but I don't think I would use this very often. Viewing videos takes lots of processing power which I would rather not pay for anyway.
Here are some of the frustrating things that limit the usefulness of this product:
- If you want to view a subset of photos on the internal or external memory, you can select them, if you have the patience. However, not if they are in separate folders! Finally got what you want? Don't turn off the power - you will have to start from scratch unless you save it as a slide show. Want to save another show? Sorry, there is only one.
- You can select an option to cause the image to fill the screen even if it means cropping the image. However, this does not work with photos that are not in the same orientation (landscape or portrait) as the frame. This means that viewing portrait-type photos in landscape mode (the most common) results in a tiny, useless picture that takes up only a third of the already small frame. As far as I am concerned, they might as well prevent viewing of photos that do not match the orientation.
- You can select all the pictures in a folder, but if you do this by accident (see above) there is no 'unselect all'!
- You can zoom-in on a photo or change the orientation, but as soon as you move to the next photo, the changes are lost.
It is unfortunate that Kodak did not run some Beta testing on this product and get some user feedback. If they had, I suspect they would have found that users want the option of saving multiple photo groups (for instance, grouped by orientation or event) and then be able to select them for viewing at different times.
I am basically pleased with the frame and think my Mom will like it. I suspect that it will still have the same pictures on it the next time I visit however.
One final note: I could not get the "up" button on the right end of the scroll bar to work. Although it will turn yellow when I touch the correct frame LED, the menu option will not change. the down button works fine. I called Kodak and was told my frame was defective. I returned it only to get another one with the exact same problem. Anyone else notice this or did I get two lemons?
 Corrupted files? December 25, 2008
I cannot figure it out..Its not the file size nor the filename length or the characters in the name; it just doesn't like some of my photos. I can see them perfectly on my PC etc but on the frame it thinks some of the files (which appears ok in creative suite/photoshop etc) are corrupted.
The frame also hangs every now and then, so I updated the firmware and it seems a little better aka no hanging. Still doesn't like some of the pictures though.
Sorry if the product doens't do what its say on the box (aka displays digital photos) then its useless. I also looked on the kodak site, no joy there. Sending back...
Good High Quality Picture and Sound with a few minor quirks December 21, 2008
This purchase was a gift for my mother. In my search, I went through several other frame manufacturers (Pandigital, Winbook, etc) that had poor interfaces and firmware, taking them all back. I was a bit skeptical of a "Kodak" product, but decided to try it after seeing the display in the store. And even though it's not perfect, I've been pleasantly surprised.
I loaded music (.mp3), video (.mov) and pictures (.jpg) onto a 2GB SD card inserted in the frame by connecting my PC to the frame with my own mini-usb connector and downloading files. The frame presents itself to the computer as a USB hub with 5 USB drives connected. These represent the Internal Memory, the SD/MMC, MS(?), xD and CF media. A USB Keydrive is not recognizable in this mode, but works well with the frame disconnected from the computer (I was tempted, but did not have time to see if an external HDD would work with the frame). Folders can be created on the frame when connected to the PC and files are easily copied/pasted.
The included software is not needed to access the frame from the PC, so I did not load it, and have no feedback on the software quality.
The border-touch interface has a learning curve, but once you get used to it (with a little help from the advanced manual downloadable from the Kodak website) I feel it's preferrable to other frames which use remotes or hidden buttons on the back of the screen.
Music sounds good (tiny speakers, so volume is limited, but you can connect to larger self-powered speakers if your goal is to have this act as a media player). Pictures are crisp (given that you load files of decent resolution) and there are "fit" and "full" sizing options. Videos played quite well also.
A few quirks:
* The frame doesn't appear to want to "remember" the music you select for a slideshow. I had to re-assign music each time I reinitiated a slideshow or rebooted the frame. This may be due to the fact that I had my files segregated into folders ("/Pictures", "/Video", "/Music") on the SD. There may be a workaround, but I haven't found it.
* Although there is a clock internal to the system that will wake the frame up and put it to sleep at given times, there is no function to allow you to display the clock along with a small picture or as an overlay like other frames allow. This is a significant oversight in my opinion, but not a deal killer.
* The 128 MB of internal memory is quite small, but at least you have the option of plugging in a very large CF, SD, xD or USB Keydrive.
I'm fairly satisified with the frame and hope my mom likes it.
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