The best solution to the demise of the photo album
It has occurred to me that there is a real problem in digital photography, one not generally acknowledged.  Image quality has gotten better and better due to advances in sensor technology, but easy means for displaying all these great images haven’t really kept up.  We are all struggling in a sense with the demise of the photo album, and with the (mostly unacknowledged) severe limitations of phones and tablets as display media.  Photo albums have passed almost completely out of current usage (everyone I see still dutifully printing at photo kiosks in drugstores is over 65!), and photo albums are now resting quietly with the Sony Walkman, VHS, and ‘carbon copies’ as technologies in the historical graveyard.<br /><br />Currently, roughly 95 to 98% of all digital images are viewed on small screens, often times barely HD, and oftentimes, no bigger than 5 inches.  Tablets are now the second most common viewing surface for digital photos, followed by laptops, but these are also small, and although higher resolution is now readily available, the eight megapixel display on my Android phone with its 5” screen is clearly overkill.  So we really do not have commonly available high-quality display options, unless we have 4K or above monitors, which tend to be used as workstations for image processing but not for image viewing in the home.  And 4k TVs are also a cumbersome display media – I’ve used them, and they are a pain, and you can’t just hit a button and have a slideshow.  For our very best images, photography enthusiasts have gravitated towards large prints, but at some point, we simply run out of wall space . . or frames.  And large prints have their issues too – principally the cost of all those frames, and significant cost for the print itself, if we are printing past 13 x 19.  Frustrated with a huge library of high quality images but no great, easy way to view them, I decided on a bit of a whim to try a rather expensive Memento 25 inch 4K display – thinking that if I didn't like it, I could easily send it back.  Well, to my surprise, it's had a transformative effect, in terms of how I approach image display, and has made a huge photographic library all of a sudden much more accessible – and I bought its bigger brother, the 35 inch version, which even my wife, our queen of anti-technology, loves.  And indeed we like the images on this screen even more than any of our high resolution prints, even though those printed images legitimately might have a bit more theoretical detail (more on that later).<br /><br />It's proved to be a stunning way to display an enormous amount of photography (the frame will hold up to 3000 images – these appear to be stored in the frame, but I suspect they get compacted down to the 4k max resolution to save memory space). The frame has changed radically the way I look at my own photographic work, and it has rendered large prints virtually obsolete. Although the very best larger prints may have a little bit more detail than any 4K frame is capable of displaying, the panel has a luminous image quality that makes the very best images even more appealing, and remarkable per pixel sharpness and definition. And of course when you display a large print, that’s just one image, while this display medium gives it the ability to display 3000 of them on a rotating basis.<br /><br />Pros:<br /><br />1) Luminous image quality – they have done an excellent job of tuning this panel so that image quality exceeds both of our larger 4K TVs, even though the panel is clearly smaller and has no more resolution.  Terrific contrast, and dynamic range and color, without notable oversaturation.  Best viewing surface I've seen yet for a 4K panel displaying high-resolution images.  Does not appear to be OLED but gets close to that in dynamic range and color.<br />2) Excellent per pixel sharpness<br />3) Basic image parameters such as color, saturation, contrast and of course overall panel brightness are easily modifiable.  I find that default settings are just about right.<br />4) Capacity for holding 3000 images organized into almost any number of playlists (not sure what the maximum number might be but I haven't hit yet).<br />5) Excellent smart phone app (but see Con #1) which allows full remote control of the panel (controlling everything from cycle times to playlists to screen color and contrast tuning to simple on/off functions), as long as you are on the panel Wi-Fi network.<br />6) Excellent program on the PC side and decent Android and iPhone software for control of the panel and for image uploading (but see con #4).<br /><br />Cons:<br /><br />1) Somewhat buggy operating system issues, suggesting that this needs more OS refinement. One frustration is that you can't simply load images by attaching a flash drive or SD card.  Indeed there is not even an SD card reader, and the apparent USB flash drive slots on the rear of the panel are there for 'diagnostic purposes only' according to their technical support, and have no utility as a port for reading or loading images.  WUWT???<br />2) This means that you are totally dependent on a Wi-Fi network and Wi-Fi connection to upload images into the panel's memory.  This is very slow when you're talking about uploading hundreds and even thousands of images – way slower than even USB 2.0.<br />3) The panel’s total memory capacity is unspecified so I suspect that the 3000 image limit might be exceeded long before you get to 3000 images if you're uploading very large files.  This may change and re-incentivize where you set your JPEG quality slider in your postprocessing program!<br />4) User handbook is a bit of a joke, and does not adequately clarify that your best interface for uploading is unquestionably through your PC (or Mac) – where typically we have most if not virtually all of our digital images.  Someone not doing a deep dive here might readily conclude that they could only upload images from their phone, grow frustrated with the process of having to transfer everything into their phone, and give up.<br />5) Cost – this is a pricey item, with even just the smaller 25” panel going for $600, and the larger 35” one (which might be more appropriate in living rooms and other larger rooms), going for $999 – up from $900 just one year ago.<br /><br />This is the best digital frame on the market right now.  So why am I giving it 4.5/5 stars?  Good question.  It's just a bit overpriced and needs further work and refinement of its operating system – both of these are likely a function of the near total absence of real competition In what appears to be a still immature and developing marketplace niche.  It's as though nothing has really yet filled the gap of the now totally antiquated picture albums, and while tablets and phone have taken over, those aren’t the way to make your images more ‘viewable’.  Perhaps the ‘meme’ of a dedicated high-resolution display (and your phone, TV or tablet cannot be dedicated by definition) just hasn't quite caught on, as people have not yet experienced and appreciated the virtues of this approach.  There are for sure many other digital frame products (the idea has been around for quite some time and I think the first of these appeared 15 years ago or more), but none that I have seen anyway that offer 4k.  And several of the barely HD options aren't even that much less expensive than this.  Given that even your typical android cell phone and iPhone take 12 to 14 megapixel images, it's amazing that the marketplace is so far behind the potential demand for a technological solution to fill the gaps between the dead photo album and the limitations and restrictions of phones and tablets. In any case, this is clearly the best way to display your images, whether they are from a cell phone or from a high-end professional full frame camera . . or anything in between.  But it does have some minor issues – and it ain’t cheap.<br /><br />Still, overall, Highly Recommended, with the above caveats. Given that the cost of 4k displays have come down rather dramatically, I was hoping that we'd see a more competitive and less expensive product in the last year, and one with OLED, or a price drop on this, but instead the price has gone up!  For now, this is the best option on the market for both mid-size and large digital frames.  It will potentially transform how you feel about your digital image library, making it far more accessible to both you, and your family.  Worth a try?
Rating: 5 stars