Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsExcellent for Grandma to get the latest pictures and videos - and imported to the UK!
Reviewed in the United States on May 13, 2019
I'm based in the UK and contacted Nixplay to ask whether the item would work on the UK voltage - they confirmed it would and indeed it shipped with European and UK adapters.
I bought it from Amazon in the US and imported it to the UK. It arrived about 2 weeks earlier than expected!
This was a gift for my mother's birthday. She's not very technical and so an iPad or Android Pad was out of the question. I wanted a picture frame that *I* could upload photos too and she doesn't have to do anything.
The great thing is that I can take photo and videos send them to the frame via the App on my phone. I have an Android phone. The app itself is reasonably okay - in fact it was recently updated to allow Android devices to send video (previously this was an Apple iPhone / iOS feature only).
I have a few 'niggles' about the application and way of managing the frame which is that first, the videos have to be in MP4 format - this means that I have to convert my phone's native video output via a third party (free on the Google Play store) App. Secondly, I can't have the frame application setup for multiple people to send from - instead for my brother and wife-to-be, they have to add me as a 'friend' and send their pictures to my account which then sends on to the frame. The other thing that's a little annoying is that you can't share pictures directly from your photo's (like you can to WhatsApp, FaceBook, SMS, and other) - instead you have to open the application itself and upload pictures. And when you do upload pictures, it can take a while to 'prepare' the pictures before you then 'send' to the frame or your friend's frame. It would be great if in future you can just snap a picture and share it without having to open the Nixplay app and do things through that.
However, the minor irritations aside it's an excellent does-what-it-says-on-the-tin product. If videos of my 'liitle-one' come up in the playlist, they just play with audio and video. The pictures cycle through randomly and if new images arrive a prompt comes up on the screen. Really, really excellent product!
The interface is great for technophobes - but for power-users it's a little annoying. At time of writing at least, the way in which playlists are managed is infuriating. What I really want is a drag-and-drop interface through the website or App that lets me categorise the photos easily. However, moving photos around and trying to setup playlists often results in lost photos or the playlist not having the content I wanted. It's hard to explain, but the web-interface is just not as intuitive or functional as it could be.
My advice to Nixplay would be to make this model available globally and not just via the US, and to fix the niggles above. People want to just upload straight from their phone (without entering an App to do it or having to convert video first) and people no doubt several people may want to register to the same frame (rather than having to send to their 'friend' (registered owner) to send/share photos), plus more than anything, people want an intuitive GUI - something that makes it easy to categorise pictures without having to keep going back and forward in a browser - just a drag and drop hierarchy of folders perhaps.
SO ...
Would I buy this again?! - Yes, absolutely!
Would I buy an alternative? - No, not at time of writing - The NixPlay Seed Wave 13.3 does exactly what we want and is end-user intuitive to browse photos.
Is it good value for money? - Hmmm ... perhaps! Considering you can buy 13.3" fully featured tablets easily enough, it's a steep price to have to import (£250 GBP ~$300USD).
