Philips 9FF2M4

Author's product rating:   

Display quality
Range & Quality of Features
Durability
Ease of Use
Value for Money

Advantages:	An excellent way to display your photo's, looks superb and is easy to use
Disadvantages:	Expensive at the moment, but they all are no matter who makes them

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Those of you who read my review of the Epson Perfection scanner know I’ve been scanning in favourite photos for displaying in a digital photo frame and this is the photo frame in question.

Well, we all know these are quite expensive at the moment and some are less than nice to look at but I’ve got this as a combined birthday and fathers day present for my dad so its okay to be expensive because it is a perfect present for him. He likes photos, he has them in every room, and I thought an ever changing display would be a nice idea. He’s become a gadget man and a bit of a silver surfer since his retirement and I know he will enjoy this so it was worth the money to me.

These frames retail around £150 in the UK but I got mine on a recent shopping trip to America and with the £ being so strong against the $ the exchange rate virtually halves the cost.

What I got for my money:

Basically it’s a 9 inch true flat LCD monitor. It’s set into a glass outer frame with various interchangeable plastic inlays so you just choose the best to suit your furnishings or your taste. I liked this version of the Philips 9FF2M4 because it looks dainty compared to most of the others. Where this Philips has glass the other models and its competitors have dark plastic or dark plastic so in my opinion this one looks best.

Setting it up:

In the box you get 4 different coloured interchangeable frames, a wall mounting kit, Software CD-, USB Cable, AC adapter, stand, quick start guide and user manual. It also has an included rechargeable battery

It is surprisingly easy to use. I connected it via the included USB to my PC and it is just a matter of transferring the files over. It will take up to 12-mega pixel photos as jpg’s. If you don’t have a PC it will take images straight from a memory card but I haven’t done that. The frame happily sizes the images to suit the frame so you don’t have to mess with it and it will hold around 100 photos depending on the size and resolution of each and how much you expand the memory (you do this by simply putting in 1 or 2 memory cards) its internal memory is 32MB
Using it:
You can choose different transition effects for your photos such as fade, slide and scroll .I like the fade .You are able to set the length of time for a transition and for how long each photo displays. The minimum time between photos’s being 15 seconds the maximum is several hours. You can have it set to turn itself on and off at preset times too (and you can set it to be different at weekends!)
You can choose to have the frame stand as a landscape display or as a portrait. Most of the photos I’ve put in are landscape so that’s how it will sit. It can be wall mounted it too but I think it’s a bit small for that and it would be a pain in the neck to get to the buttons as they are at the back. It has 4 buttons and a navigational button (like a joystick but without the stick.) Button 1 is play/stop slideshow, button 2 is the menu, button 3 is on/off and button 4 is a small reset button.
It can change your photos to black and white, or sepia and it can add frames. You also have a choice of backgrounds; black, white and grey. The slideshow itself can be random or sequential and it will operate from either its rechargeable battery or on AC power with the included cord.
There isn’t much else to say about it so in conclusion it was easy to set up and use, it looks good, its well made and not at all flimsy and the display is excellent the colours look really good and you can adjust the brightness easily
All in all I am really pleased with this and wish I had got myself one but they will come down in price eventually and I won’t feel so wasteful if I buy one then

* i was stumped when choosing a response for sound in the drop down menu as it has none, never has had any nor ever will ! sadly i had to choose poor as id hate someone to buy it expecting an MP3 player hidden away in the back ...The only noise it makes is the beep when you set it to give you an alert !

**** marco asked a good question about pixellated images so ive been messing. ive discovered that small photos that rely on the frame to enlarge them do indeed look pixellated. I never noticed this as ive had the frame reducing the size of larger photos or displaying photos of the same size give or take a few mm and these do look very good quality.. so ta marco, i'll avoid little photo's and advise other folks to do the same too