Design
This digital photo frame was designed by Andrée Putman, who according to Parrot, is a "leading lady of French art". We doubt she'll be known to many Australians, but apparently the chic style she represents is pure and sober. We're not sure about those adjectives, but she's designed a simple, all-perspex frame, that measures 22x17cm. The 6-inch screen seems slightly dwarfed by the surrounding black 4.5cm border, but the look is clean and it should fit well into almost any room décor.
The frame is supported by a black metal rod that screws into the back of the frame. As the rod is located in one corner, the frame can be set up in either a portrait or landscape aspect. Better still, you can rotate the frame while it is turned on, and the picture you're displaying will automatically swap to the correct orientation, as well as scale to the maximum size allowable.
There is 10MB of internal memory in the frame for storing photos on the device itself. You can transfer images on to it from your camera or PC via an included mini USB cable, or you can simply insert a memory card into its single SD/MMC slot. Unfortunately, other types of memory cards, like compact flash or Sony's memory sticks are not supported.
Unlike many other digital photo frames on the market, this Parrot frame has no remote control. The few basic controls in the frame are accessed by a single menu button on the back, which is flanked by a forward and back key on either side. This works well enough for what you need — you just tab through its icon-based interface. It's almost a relief not to have to keep track of yet another tiny remote control device, and once you've set the time and your slideshow preferences, there will probably be little need to dive into the controls frequently thereafter.
Features
The one feature that sets this digital photo frame apart from the crowd is its on-board Bluetooth. It is a very simple matter to pair this frame with your camera phone, and then quickly and wirelessly transmit images to the frame to be stored on the frame's internal memory. It's a very handy display solution for the many of us out there who rarely get around to unloading the spontaneous snaps taken on our camera phones in any other way.
The Parrot frame does not incorporate any of the other highfalutin features companies are throwing on digital frames these days. It has no photo editing, Wi-Fi, video or audio capabilities. But ask yourself, do you really want a photo frame to play music? We suggest the Parrot does not suffer from these omissions.
Performance
The Parrot frame is simple to set up and use, and the image quality from its 262x144 colour, 720x480 resolution display is very true to the original image. We tested the frame with images taken on various cameras and found that it displayed good images very vividly, but it also seems to exaggerate those poorly exposed. (Perhaps there's a reason all those grainy photos taken in dark restaurants with camera phones are seldom printed or displayed). Still, you can't fault the frame for the mistakes of the photographer.
The only thing that kills the positive vibe on this frame is the price. Parrot will soon be bringing out a couple other digital photo frames that hit the sub AU$200 mark — at last we hoped these nifty, but not terribly high tech devices would start becoming more affordable. Alas, when the pricing came through for this model, the AU$399 tag gave us a bit of a shock. Surely Bluetooth can't demand that much of a premium? We can only suspect that the licence fees demanded for Madame Putman design services must be très onéreux (put simply, very expensive).
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