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I have been looking for a simple digital frame that allowed me to easily upload photos to the frame without any hassles, and most of all I wanted a digital photo frame that would hold as many photos as I could possibly throw at it.
I naturally took my search to the Internet where I discovered something that seemed even better than what my original needs were.
The digital photo frame I came across was the eStarling ImpactV Clip Frame.
The eStarling ImpactV is basically eStarlings newest and supposedly greatest digital photo frame of all time.
Why is that?
Well it is because the ImpactV is wifi, and the first digital photo frame to allow actual video clips to be played on the frame!!!
Besides that though, the ImpactV comes packed with all sorts of delicious features. You have the ability to upload photos from your PC, photobucket, picassa, flickr, youtube, and many, many other sites where you may have photos or video footage drifting around. The frame also will upload RSS feeds.
What I liked about the eStarling ImapctV though was the photobucket feature. I have over 1,000 photos sitting on photobucket, never really seen by others, and never really shared.
I figured I could finally bring these old photos sitting in storage on photobucket into play thanks to the ImpactV.
The eStarling ImpactV also comes with it’s own email address, that way friends and family can easily send their photos to your frame as well. All you have to do is provide them with the frames email address, and their photos will show up on the frame.
Sounds spectacular doesn’t it!?
The ImpactV also comes with it’s own website, seeframe.com. Here at the site you can upload photos from your computer, cell phone, email, or from the mentioned sites above. The choice is yours really.
Another nifty feature that I knew I’d love was the fact that I could set up timed play lists. Timed play lists are basically a collection of photos you would like displayed on the frame on a certain day/week/month. For instance, you can play all of your holiday photos for the month of November and December. Or you could play only summer photos during the summer months. I simply adored this feature.
I knew I should have waited for some consumer reviews to come out before placing an order, but the eStarling ImpactV sounded so good just based off of it’s features, that I went ahead and placed an order on it.
Unboxing the eStarling ImpactV sort of shocked me, because it only came with a manual on how to set the frame up to your wifi network. The ImpactV did not however come with any user manuals on how to upload photos, or how to even make the wifi frame run once it was set up to the network.
I hoped that the lack of this user manual was due to the fact that the frame would be easy to use once I had it up and running. I was dead wrong though. In fact the frame was impossible, frustrating, and very, very annoying. So much so, that I nearly packed the thing up and sent it back to where it came from.
Before getting into why the ImpactV Clip Frame almost made a long journey back to the warehouse, let me discuss its appearance.
The ImpactV is gorgeous; there is no denying that. The frame features an 8-inch 800×600 resolution flat screen, with a shiny gloss finish to it. A black border surrounds the actual picture panel, and it features a beautiful black high gloss finish.
In the box you also get a wall adapter to plug the frame in, and a remote.
The ImpactV also features a bordered touch screen, however I find the touch screen to lag, and using the remote works 10 times better, and is 10 times easier to use than the border touch screen is.
All in all the wifi frame is beautiful, and it matches all of the new HDTV’s and LCD high gloss modern sleek look, so if you have one of these nice, nice television sets, the ImpactV Clip Frame will look gorgeous nestled next to it in a living room, or bedroom.
Let’s move on though, shall we?
Once the ImpactV was all set up and in junction with my wifi network, I got a message on the frame which contained a code in order to activate the wifi frame on the seeframe website.
I went onto the seeframe website and plugged in my activation code. Added in my information, and gave the frame it’s own web address.
Once I did this, a message popped up on the ImpactV Clip Frame stating my frame was ready to go.
Now what?
I pretty much had to dive in at my own risk, with a ton of trial and errors.
I managed to in sync my photobucket account with the seeframe accont, and my photobucket photos began to show up on the seeframe website. The only problem was, they were not showing up on my frame.
A lot of cussing, and trying to figure out what the heck was going wrong, I finally realized that on the main page I had to set all other tabs to stop, and the photobucket tab to start. This was the only way the frame began to upload photos from photobucket onto the screen.
It would have been truly helpful had seeframe or eStarling mentioned this crucial piece of information. Unfortunately their website is stacked with nothing on the ImpactV. Every article pertaining to these wifi frames are information focused on older models, and even those articles of help were of no assistance to my problem.
Had I known how chock full of nothing the customer service was I’d likely of never purchased the ImpactV.
During my frustrations I figured there would be a help section on the seeframe site, which would offer some sort of insight on how to go about getting photos to the frame. The only way I could speak with customer service though was to join their customer service help section, by having to sign up with a user name and password. It seemed pretty stupid, especially seeing that I was already an activated customer to the seeframe website!
4 days later, and still I received no reply from the case that I had submitted. Luckily I managed to figure out my issue on my own.
To better put it, seeframe.com, and eStarling has the most awful customer service I have ever seen a company offer. I was left scratching my head wondering if anyone was even there to provide help, or I should say; provide help that I’d understand, seeing that many of the questions in the FAQ section had spelling errors, and some answers were not even answers at all, but just a compilation of pure confusion. It is obvious there is some sort of language barrier.
Other Issues:
Besides the lack of assistance, I have also found that the ImpactV will freeze up at times. The only solution to fixing freeze ups is to unplug the frame and start it back up again. Although it is not a huge issue, it is still an issue nonetheless.
Another big, big issue I had with the ImpactV Clip Frame was the fact that video does not play unless you hit the enter button on the remote, or on the touch screen frame!
It really stinks because I thought that my video clips would play in conjunction with the rest of my slideshow. It was a major disappointment to see that the video clips needed to be prompted in order to work.
This is something major that I think all of you should know before rushing out to get one.
One more thing that many of you may not like about the eStarling ImpactV is the fact that your photos will not play in the order you have them placed on the seeframe site. Instead they randomly get thrown onto the slideshow in a random order, which is just straight up tacky.
I have photos that I wanted to play in a chronological order, and as soon as I seen them being added in randomly on the frames screen I was pretty angry. It looked pretty dumb when I had winter photos play, and then a summer photo playing right after the winter picture. The storyline I was trying to create of seasons was just all over the place.
Overall Opinion:
The frame indeed has its quirks. It’s up to you from here though.
The pricing on this wifi frame is a bit high, and the video feature is flawed. Personally I would recommend a cheaper wifi frame, seeing that the video clips on the frame need user interaction before they play. What is a clip frame that does not play clips unless you prompt it to?
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