The Sony DPF-E72N is a digital photo frame with a 7" LCD that costs roughly £60 - this isn't overly expensive for this type of frame, however when you think of standard frames this is substancially more than you'd pay for a regular frame of the same sort of size.

What are the benefits of digital photo frames?
You can use them to display multiple images (slideshows), you dont have to pay for the cost of prints and you don't get dust stuck between the glass and the photo.

What are the disadvantages?
They're expensive, use electricity, not as many style/design options, not available in large sizes and quality isn't always that good.

Frame specifications:
-128mb internal memory and a card slot which can take SD, XD and memory stick pro
- 480x234 pixel image display
- 7" LCD
- remote control
- clock and calendar


I've seen a number of different digital photo frames and never seen one that I've thought was particularly stylish - however this is the best one I've seen so far. The frame surround is a thick gloss plastic in black (although I think it might be available in a couple of other colours) - whilst this does look nice, it does unfortunately show up fingerprints, furthermore it attracts an annoying amount of dust to it.

All the buttons are placed on the back of the frame - they're well labelled and simple to use, however you have to consider that pressing the buttons will activate menu's on the LCD and you can't really look at the front and back of the frame at the same time! As a consequence you really need to be looking at the LCD and just feeling for the right button's - this isn't too difficult, but is a bit of a pain. The card slot is also located at the back and it's very simple to put the card in, the card will also stick partially out of the slot so it's easy to grab hold of and remove when necessary.

The frame can be positioned either landscape or portrait and the frame has a sensor in it which detects which way the frame is orientated and then flips your photos so they're the right way up.

You can choose from a number of different settings such as slideshow or having both a clock and image on display - you can switch between these modes at will and the addition of a clock and calendar definately gives another dimension to the frame.

From a distance the LCD is nicely bright and clear, colour reproduction and contrast is also good. Unfortunately though when you get up close you start to notice things that let this frame down and one of these should be obvious from the specifications - the frame only has an image display of 480x234pixels. To put this into perspective if you tried to print a 6x4 photo from a digital image with this number of pixels, the results would be poor. If you have good eyesight and look closely at this frame you can actually see the individual pixels - not that I'm suggesting that you will intimately scrutinate the images on the frame on a regular basis, but these low pixels do have the knock on effect of essentially eradicating fine detail.

Overall I can't say I'm impressed with this digital photo frame - it looks good from a distance and it's easy to use but the poor resolution has the knock on effect of poor image quality which is too big an issue for me to ignore. As mentioned at the start - the price isn't too bad for this type of frame, but I'll definately be sticking to traditional frames with prints!