Review: Kodak Pulse Digital Frame

One of the problems inherent in the digital frame market is the fact the frames generally sit dark on shelves and book cases a few months after purchase. Most consumers rarely update the pictures they originally uploaded and most of the earlier models did nothing more than display a finite amount of images.

The category has evolved right along with consumer memory sharing habits and the new Kodak Pulse may be the best example of this. One of the more versatile frames we’ve played with, the Pulse has added WiFi capabilities along with very simplistic operation. The fact it can be managed from a computer and synched with the Kodak Gallery as well as other social networking sites like Facebook make this a very compelling gift option for the less tech savvy folks in your life. The notion that you can purchase the Pulse for your mother who lives in Florida and then manage the frame for her in New York  is very slick.

   The Pulse measures only 6.25” x 7.5” x 1” and the unit’s touchscreen LCD panel is 7 inches (diagonal) and is surrounded by a 1-inch black border with an attractive gunmetal trim. While most manufacturers refrain from putting their logo anywhere on the front of the frame, Kodak couldn’t resist but it is very faintly placed in the border beneath the LCD in a light shade of gray that’s barely visible.

   Interesting to note is the fact the frame’s screen aspect ratio is 4:3 which is the default ratio that most of today’s point-and-shoot cameras use – the point being the images will nicely fill the screen. Many older frames were 16:9 and left thick black borders on the edges while displaying images from many cameras. The Pulse’s native resolution is 800x600 so images appear crisp and sharp as well and the brightness is nicely subdued.

   There are a few different ways you can load your images onto the device or you can simply slide them over to a memory card or flash drive as the Pulse has a USB port as well as slots to accommodate SD MMC, xD and MS cards.

Using the Web to load images has not been the typical way users have gone about this process, but Kodak has made this extremely easy with the Pulse. As soon as you turn the frame on it prompts you to connect to your WiFi network. If you’ve played with other WiFi frames you may recall this as a fairly laborious process. On the Pulse you are spared layers of menu options to do this as you can quickly touch the necessary letters and you’re set in a snap.

  Perhaps most impressive is the fact you can manage all the frame’s options remotely through www.kodakpulse.com. Once you log in through the account you create, the frame is automatically connected to a WiFi network. Here’s where the Pulse separates itself from the pack as through the aforementioned Web site you can view the images on the frame, adjust things like slideshow settings and, slickest of all, even set up the frame to automatically import images from either Kodak Gallery or Facebook.

   Here’s where the non-tech among us can benefit as you can constantly feed the Pulse you purchased for your grandparents with the latest images of you and the family as you can update the frame’s content through the Pulse website on the fly. It’s actually simple enough to allow them to do this as well but the key here is the fact there’s no reason to let the frame go dark as new images can be uploaded daily.

   Kodak has even set up each Pulse with a free e-mail address so you can send photos directly to the frame this way as well.

One of the few drawbacks of the Pulse is the fact it doesn’t play video but we must add that we’ve found playing video on a digital frame was never an optimal experience as repeatedly hearing the audio in a loop got rather annoying after a few cycles.

As we touched upon earlier the GUI on the Pulse is conveniently uncluttered – just a tap on the screen and six icons instantly pop up offering the variety of ways you can have the images displayed – collage, slideshow, etc. along with a few other basic functions. The back of the frame itself actually has only two buttons – one to power the frame on and the other to enter the extended settings menu, which configures WiFi and checks for software updates. Add 512MB of internal memory so you don’t have to leave media sticking out of the frame and it’s easy to see that Kodak’s goal here was to do all the thinking for you. 

   Kodak has certainly stepped things up in both the frame and digital camera categories of late, bringing highly functional yet very easy to use models to market that really focus on easily sharing your images. The new Pulse certainly speaks directly to this strategy and the $129 price tag certainly fits the bill as well. EG

Kodak Pulse Digital Frame$119.95 (off of Kodak Web site)www.kodak.com• E-mail pictures directly to frame• Connect to pictures on Facebook and Kodak Gallery• Touchscreen and WiFi enabled