Pandigital 10.4-inch Digital Photo Frame with PanTouch (PAN1002W02T)

Pandigital’s 10.4-inch Digital Photo Frame with PanTouch (model PAN1002W02T) does its best to blend in with your “retro” picture frames. It even comes with an extra wooden frame, so you can switch between black and espresso, depending on your décor. It has 512MB of built-in memory (it reads JPEG images only) and supports CompactFlash, MicroDrive, MemoryStick, MMC, SD, and xD cards, as well as USB flash drives. You also get a headphone jack and a built-in alarm clock.

The 1024-by-768-pixel-resolution LCD with a 4:3 aspect ratio was impressive. It presented good image detail and very little color shift (what little there was tended toward the cool side, as with most digital frames). If you don’t like the look of things, the frame offers brightness, contrast, tint, and color controls—adjustments not found in most digital frames.

The PanTouch feature comes into play along the mat beside your pictures; the PanTouch controls embedded here let you turn album pages, move images along, and access menu settings. For slide shows, you can change the speed and transition type, and shuffle between modes. The frame plays AVI videos only, however; if you have .mov video files, you must convert them to .avi format. You can upload MP3s to the frame and play them along with the show. The sound from the Pandigital’s speakers (a little tinny, but bearable) was average for the current digital picture-frame market.

The PAN1002W02T is advertised as Bluetooth- and Wi-Fi-compatible, but you’ll need to buy a special Wireless USB Adapter ($24) from the company to stream content from photo-sharing sites or RSS feeds. And, as with other frames we’ve seen, the Pandigital has no power button on its remote—you must use the switch on the frame itself.

Macworld’s buying advice

Pandigital’s 10.4-inch Digital Photo Frame with PanTouch is a good choice if your primary concern is image quality. Its adjustment options let you tweak the settings to get a good-looking picture. Doing anything else, like playing videos or connecting to a network, requires extra effort.

[Kathleen Cullen is a freelance contributor.]