In my office on my desk alongside my hand cream, lip balm and my treasure Ryan Giggs figurine I had a mass of photographs of my wedding day, my husband, my three cats, my god children, my nephew and my niece and as you can imagine it was getting a little bit cluttered. I like to make my desk homely with lots of mementoes and with limited space by wonderful hubby solved the problem for me, a digital photo frame.

I am not the techiest of people I'll hold my hands up to that, but I am quite good at getting things to work even if I reluctantly have to follow the instructions. So armed with my new photo frame which is the Sony DPF-D85 I am ready to sort my desk out and make it a little less cluttered and a bit more up to date and modern - hopefully although I did spend hours sorting through photographs to upload!

This photo frame is marketed as being a "Digital photo frame with superb picture quality and smart features" and it comes in a cardboard box which I was expecting to be a little bigger in size, but anyway, neatly and securely wrapped in bubblewrap inside is my photo frame and whilst the box weighs 1.4kg which is quite hefty, the photo frame itself weighs a mere 581g which is relatively light. Inside the box is a mains charger, a remote control, the photo frame and an instruction booklet which I actually found to be quite helpful.

To look at, this photo frame is actually quite sleek and stylish I think and the shiney black border which surrounds the actual photo screen is an LCD screen which is 8 inches in size, blends and fits in quite well amongst my PC, PC Screen and telephone. The branding Sony is also clearly visible in white lettering in the bottom centre of the frame and the reason it is white lettering is because it is LED illuminated and the writing disappears as soon as your photo frame is moved into the portrait position. The memory on the photo frame is 250mb and it states it can hold up to 500 photos, mine currently has around 300.

When it comes to the photo frame it is really easy to stand it up without having to support it because it comes with a lovely little stand that you attach to the photo frame with minimum effort and it is silver coloured, similar to the Sony lettering that has been previously mentioned. However with this frame you can choose whether or not to stand it in a landscape position or portrait position so that your photographs can be shown in two different ways and this is done by a smart sensor to give it its technical title, whichever way up you pose this photo frame, the smart sensor inside works it out automatically flips the photos to mirror how the frame has been stood on its surface but it does need to be placed on a totally flat surface to get the best out of it. Then to ensure it is fully working you need to plug the charger into the wall to give it some life, but it doesn't need to be on charge the whole time, once it is fully charged you can turn the charger off and then only charge it up again once it is needed too. With this photo frame though is an on and off switch, so if you remember to turn if off when you are leaving work for the day and then turn it back on once you return to your office and in doing so you shouldn't have to charge it more than once a week, although it does depend on how long you have it running for of course.

So with the technical bits out of the way the digital photo frame is compatible with JPEG photos which is probably the format in which most people are most comfortable with but it also accepts the follow formats TIFF, BMP and RAW as well using your memory card from your camera and adding to that it also supports Memory Stick, Memory Stick PRO, SD, Memory stick duo, XD and SDHC naturally I don't know what half of them are and don't use those formats anyway but I think it is Sony's way of covering all the possibilities.

So with that established getting your photos, of which is can store up to 500 at anyone time, onto the photo frame is something that had always confused me before I owned one and now it is so obvious I feel quite silly for wondering how it works, anyway to transfer your photos onto your photo frame is a really easy process, but you do have a number of options, you can either plus a USB cable into your computer and then into the photo frame and transfer the photos that you most want onto your frame by transferring them to the frames internal memory, as soon as your USB is connected to both the computer and the frame it will instantly recognise the two and give you a list of options on transferring and placing the photos, which again is really simple. If you choose not to use a USB cable to transfer photos from your computer you can also use your cameras memory card, which is also how I have transferred photos. With both methods of transferring you'll find that as soon as your memory card/USB is inserted or connected into the right slot the photo frame recognises the memory card and promptly displays its contents on to the photo screen and you are then given further options of viewing the photos and selecting the ones you want. At this stage it is worth pointing out that the options given are quite limited with regards to selecting your photographs, but you either want it to feature or you don't so really the options are not overly complicated.

So once you have selected the 500 pictures that you want to have on your photo frame you can now have a look at what they look like and I found that uploading them into the photo frame was quite quick to do and whilst mine holds around 300 photographs currently it took me less than half an hour to get them on there. When looking at your photos on the screen in front of you, the first thing you need to remember that the images on your photo frame will only be as good as the camera taking them, so I was told that anything over 2 mega pixels is recommended for this and as my camera is a 10 mega pixel camera then I have no problems with my photographs, each and every one of them is crystal clear on the screen in front of me.

This photo frame also features a clock, which is digital and you can always see the time if you choose to have this function on your photo frame and there is a calendar which can be used to show particular photos on that day, this is something I have just set up, admittedly with only one photograph so far of my nephew to remind me on his birthday that it is his special day and so I can ring him. Also on the photo frame you can also set up your own slideshow and organise your photos in the order that you want to show them and if you can be bothered to get up from your chair or reach across your desk, this is when the handy little remote control springs into action because you can control every aspect of the photo frame by using it. I do use the remote control on a regular basis, whether it is to find a photo I want to look at, go back to a photo or set it up to run a particular slide show. So, should you get a little bored of watching your photo's you can add a little entertainment into your life by using extra features on the photo frame such as creating Folders - you can choose to create a folder to keep your photos in, I have one titled Wedding on mine and in that are all the photos of my wedding and should I be feeling nostalgic and want to reminisce then I simply select that particular folder and the photo frame will just show those photos. Likewise I have a folder made up of certain events in my life, certain people and even one of my cats, so at any time during the day I can just focus on those photos. Again to set this up is really simple and the instruction booklet is really good at helping you to do this.


This Sony D85 photo frame is widely available and retails at anything from £65 right up to £99 depending on where you shop and it is only available in black. It is quite pricey for a photo frame if you compare it to similar ones that are now available but in terms of quality you do get what you pay for with Sony but purchasing it depends on how often you are going to use it and where you are going to use it. If it is simply going to spend most of its time in a box or on a shelf where no one can see it then spending up to £100 seems to me to be a lot of money, whereas if you are intending to have it on display the whole time and use it regularly. Keeping it clean is also not an issue because it essentially wipes clean, naturally it is going to attracts finger prints when you are picking it up and placing it back down, but a damp cloth solves those problems for you.

So far all I have are positive things to report about this photo frame, it is brilliant and I love it. My desk has been revamped since it was introduced and is now a lot less cluttered and it makes my day much more interesting and I do sometimes get distracted looking at my photos whilst at work, but they also cheer me up if I am feeling stressed or blue. I particularly like the fact that it is easy to use and easy to get up and running and that it is not a high maintenance piece of machinery that I am going to get bored of anytime soon. Every time I have someone in my office they also ask me about my photos, so it is also a focal point as well as a reminder. The main thing for me though is that I get to keep my treasured photos with me at all times, if I am away on holiday or off work, I can pack up my photo frame and take it home with me. I also love the fact that I can decide how to store my pictures and display them and for me this was a perfect gift and something I would happily buy for others, although I would probably shop around on the pricing to get a better deal.