WHAT YOU GET

For you money, inside the nice cardboard box you will find:

- The frame itself with an 8″ display at 800×480 resolution

- DC adapter

- 2 mattes, silver and burgundy

- A small cleaning cloth

- Kodak EasyShare software on a CD

- Manual in English/French/Spanish/Portuguese

- One-page Quick Start

SETUP AND OPERATION

Within less than 5 minutes of me opening the box, my frame was already displaying pictures. It’s as simple as plugging it in and inserting a memory card or a USB drive in the back.

For fine-tuning, the touch border menu system (NEVER TOUCH THE SCREEN) will let you customize your slide shows by selecting:

- the time each picture is displayed – from 5 seconds to one hour

- the sort order (A-Z, Z-A, newest to oldest or vice-versa)

- orientation – portrait or landscape

- the source for your pictures – internal memory, or one of the 3 (THREE) external memory ports

Physically, your frame can sit on its stands that rotates 90 degrees to allow for either portrait or landscape or you can use the mounting holes to hang it on a wall. The 2 provided mattes are easy to attach and more can be purchased from Kodak.

In addition to displaying pictures and playing videos, the frame can be also used to play music.

Besides slide shows, it’s possible to display one specific picture by selecting it from a display mode of thumbnails.

FEATURES

The most important parameter is, of course, the display and it’s a bright, crisp, , fast, 800×480.

Kodak has built a lots of features into this frame, some most welcome, others not exactly needed. The most impressive is the frame’s ability to accept just about any memory card in existence. There are 3 slots in the back:

- SD, MMC, MS, xD

- CF, MD

- USB

In addition, you can connect to a computer and load the frame’s own tiny 128 MB internal memory.

Since you can have ‘something’ in each of the three slots at any given time, you could load this frame with, literally, tens of thousands of pictures if you so desire – slide shows will only look at one port at a time but you can switch any time you want.

Not likely to be used much, the frame does allow you to copy files between the various ports or from a camera/computer, you can magnify a picture, rotate it, save slide shows, print a picture and so on.

The EasyShare software lets you organize, print, and share your pictures. It’s nice that it was in the box but I am not likely to use it – it’s available as a free download, by the way.

MY RATING

Since all I wanted was a picture frame that displays pictures with bright colors without distorting the original, the M820 fully meets my expectations.

I appreciate its ability to take inputs from so many different sources – I currently have an inexpensive HP 8 GB Class 4 SDHC Flash Memory Card Q6276A-EF with over 1000 pictures on it, cycling them at a rate of one every 30 seconds. I also like the ‘real picture frame’ look and feel, with the nice mattes included. I don’t have much use for the ‘extra’ features having to do with file management or music playing but them being there doesn’t hurt. The border touch interface is not always as responsive as it could be but, once a slide show is set, the frame is likely to keep working for many days before there’s any need of controls so this is not a big demerit.

The M820 is an easy 5-star because I am impressed and so is the rest of the family and so are friends who invariably ask me the 2 questions: where I got it from and for how much .

The gains in image quality are pulled back by the reliability of this product, and please note that this is not an isolated case. In case you want a reliable product, try another brand/product. Five out of ten.