Aluratek ADMPF311F 11" Digital Photo Frame

(Review) - Aluratek’s 11-inch digital photo frame is interesting, to say the least. It holds a lot of the first-generation values with a couple of features added to make it a more trendy option to better compete against some of its key competitors.

The photo frame offers a great wooden bezel to make it an attractive addition to your living room décor. The right spine holds the on/off button and a few controls, while the left spine is integrated with a CompactFlash slot, SD/Memory/xD Picture card slot and a USB jack to transfer data back-and-forth. The controls are well hidden and preserve an overall clean look for an inviting experience.

Clearly, this is a desk-only display. It’s too bulky to put it on the wall. Plus, it only works with direct power. To make that happen, you’ll have to pull the cable down to a power outlet, which looks very unattractive. Aluratek makes it easy for you to use the display on the desk. The back stand does a good job of it, but be careful. If you slide the frame, the stand tends to pop back into place, making the frame land flat either on its face on the desk. That could easily break the device. Oh, and the frame is for horizontal use only, not something we were super glad to learn.

32-Inch Digital Photo Display A Reality

With the physical overview out of the way, let’s get to the user interface (UI). It’s there, and it’s functional, to an extent, at least, and it’s only accessible through the included remote. You lose that remote, and you are out of luck. A pity, really! You can connect the display to a printer or your computer, copy/delete files from on board and independent memory sources, set display options (color, brightness, tint and contrast), slideshow speed and transition effects through the menu. Unfortunately for transitions, you only have two options: pick the 9-options mode or none at all. That’s crazy. And no, the transitions aren’t random either. And finally, there’s the Separate Windows options that displays four images simultaneously by resizing them. We liked this feature. Do understand, though, that the frame doesn’t resize images on its own, so you will have to do that yourself. If you are into viewing your photos a lot, this will end up being a very tedious and annoying task.

Aluratek’s 11-inch display also plays video, but the performance was disappointing at best. The video clips would freeze the frame, which would require a hard power reset to bring it back to normal, and a good majority of video clips that we played were unsupported as "codec not found" errors littered the frame one clip at a time. When it did play video, the quality was average with a lot of breaking up of clips.

The music playback is also there, and it, too, is a disappointment. The speakers were pitiful, and totally killed the great music we had playing in the background with our photos. That’s true with pretty much all photo frames, so we’ll let Aluratek skip with this. But in conclusion, playing calm music in the background is out of the question.

You can turn on/off the display automatically to conserve power with its Calendar and Time options. We loved this feature, as it’s useful and intuitive. Talk about going green. Good work on this, Aluratek!

Overall, Aluratek does its best to add as many features as possible without making it an expensive frame at $180 or so, but it falls short on a number of fronts. Audio and video, two of the most critical components of the display, were blunders. Display quality, on the contrary, was excellent. But limiting UI interaction to remote - not acceptable. And neither is manual image resizing.

Overall, we say skip Aluratek for now, and look at other options that get things right at first go. Sorry, Aluratek, but you have a lot of work to do to further refine your product. It’s not quite there yet.

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