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Sungale 19" Cloud Digital Picture Frame CPF1903 - REVIEW
4K views
Jun 22, 2024
[- Please see UPDATE -] The concept is terrific: Who wouldn't want a big, beautiful picture frame that could cycle through dozens or hundreds of photos? And one that could connect to the Internet so new photographs could be magically added to the slide show from relatives far afield? The Sungale Cloud Frame Digital Picture Frame CPF1903 features a bright 19" display and seems like it should be a perfect match with its Android brain. But it's not. In fact, as tech expert Dave Taylor of https://www.AskDaveTaylor.com/ finds, the hardware is good (though the wireless mouse is a bit clumsy) but it's the software and implementation that ends up being problematic with the Sungale Cloud Frame Digital Picture Frame. If you can get photos onto the device, you'll love it. But that process is not for the faint of heart, as demonstrated. UPDATE: Sungale pointed out that I never paired the Cloud Frame with their smartphone app. I encourage you to check the app out [iPhone or Android, search for "Sungale Cloud"] because it does address some of my concerns with the interface and user experience, though certainly not all of them. Check it on the authorized sales site: https://boutique.sungale.com/products/cpf1903-19-inch-cloud-digital-photo-frame
View Video Transcript
0:00
A digital cloud picture frame? Let's check this out
0:11
Dave Taylor here and I'm looking at this. This is the Sengale Cloud Frame, CPF 1903
0:19
It is an 18.5, not actually 19 inch screen, at 1366 by 766
0:26
So it's fairly low resolution. two speakers, headphone jack, you can put it in SD card
0:33
There's a lot it can do. And as you can see, hopefully, it's running Android, which is pretty interesting
0:40
But here's the thing. I'm going to talk about it a lot. But here's the reality is that it works really great once you figure out how to struggle
0:49
through the pain of getting the pictures onto the system. As you can see, I have this set up, and I have every five seconds a new picture coming on
0:57
including yes, this is me from a couple of years ago. Mostly these are just sort of random kid pictures
1:03
You'll notice on this side, it's showing me the time and the weather and the date and stuff
1:08
That's actually really cool. But mostly, it's just showing the picture. Now, there is apparently a way I can change it to be full-sized pictures
1:17
And obviously, in reality, I think every five seconds is probably a bit much in terms of transitions
1:23
But for this demo, this works really well. Now, let me show you a little bit of the hardware too. So you can see it is big. It is heavy
1:32
This is a heavy device and it actually just knocked over our remote and you can see that there's a stand on the back
1:39
But they also include this. This is a wall mount kit. So if you'd prefer to have it on your wall you can do that
1:46
It is a highly reflective screen. I'll just show you as I turn it. It is highly reflective. So I had to sort of fiddle around to find
1:55
the optimal angle that think it's just about there that gives you the minimum possible glare
2:02
Now, let me pick up the remote. Hang on. Okay, so it actually is not a touchscreen. It's
2:08
interesting. The company makes other devices than different sizes, and the smaller units have
2:14
touch screens. This one, you get to use this kind of goofy wireless mouse, and it has a little
2:21
piece that I pull out here on the... frame there's a little USB dongle that plugs in and then the remote actually works
2:33
mostly as a mouse and now this piece is falling so hang on just a second again to be honest
2:41
this is kind of indicative of this whole adventure with this particular device it has lots
2:45
of ostensible features let's get this mouse back working and I'm going to actually
2:51
click the home button on the remote and that gets us to the home
2:55
screen Now it has lots of capabilities but the capabilities are a little bit not how you think For example you can see right here that it has Dropbox
3:07
So if I use this and go to Dropbox, you think, cool, so I can just automatically have Dropbox be the source
3:15
for all of the pictures in the picture show, right? No. If only it worked that way
3:21
Instead, I get the standard Dropbox interface. This is just the Android version of Dropbox
3:27
Not only that, I can't choose an album and say, just download the whole thing
3:32
There's really no special accommodations for the digital picture frame. Super annoying
3:38
Now, it also means that it has support for things like video
3:42
so I'm going to go to online video. It's very awkward to do this
3:47
Let's see if I can get the little cursor. It's not even on the screen
3:51
There it is. So I'll go to online video because it supports Netflix and YouTube
3:59
But, you know, it's just not very good experience. You can do it
4:04
I have Netflix installed, which was a bit of a trick. And just watch, even just the load time, it just takes a little while
4:14
The idea of having this be a really inexpensive 19-inch TV, pretty cool
4:21
But, you know, there's so much that they could have done. But they really need to step away from Android and just write their own operating system
4:29
And then have their own system that interfaces with, for example, Dropbox
4:34
Because if the company is going to say that it actually is supporting the cloud
4:39
I want it to support the cloud. Like, it has Bluetooth. I paired it with my phone
4:45
And then I have no idea how to go any further. There's no information. There's no app that says, here's how to download
4:52
You know, on my phone, I certainly don't see anything. special. So it is very confusing. And you can see here, I finally have Netflix running. I'm not going to go
5:02
ahead and sign in right now, but it will work. Let's just go back to home. Maybe. There we go
5:11
And again, you can just see that the speed and performance of the whole device is really not very
5:17
optimal. You know, I mean, the screen is really nice. The slideshow is really cool. I mean, I really like
5:23
this. I just really wish that it was this completely different back end. The whole software thing
5:29
is super complicated. And to manage your photo albums, even though they're on this, because whatever
5:36
you want to do, whatever cloud service, you can hook up Facebook, which gets you literally to
5:41
the Facebook homepage. It doesn't like let you have a photo display or album of Facebook photos
5:48
but it just takes you to Facebook, right? Hmm, not exactly what I would expect
5:53
But you know if they could just figure out how to get everything onto the frame because it needs to be the pictures the videos They all need to be on this device to be part of the slideshow But once they are it works really great
6:09
So let's go to, if I can find my cursor. This is not an optimal positioning, obviously
6:18
Okay, so my cloud album is actually the standard place you're going to put stuff
6:24
And you can see here, I have a lot of slides, a lot of photos
6:28
These are mostly old kid picks. I will choose Start Slideshow. And we'll be back to what makes this really cool
6:37
It's a really cool device. And 19 inches is a lovely size screen
6:41
And it's not that expensive. But like I said, it has all these capabilities
6:47
It works with Dropbox. You can do video chats through Skype. You can go into Netflix or YouTube
6:53
You can cook up Facebook or Twitter or Instagram. But if you're going to use this as a digital picture frame, the pictures need to be on the device first
7:03
So you could use an SD card. There actually is support on the back
7:08
In fact, let me give you a quick close-up. Here's all the different plugs and ports on the back
7:12
You can see. I can plug it in SD card and then I can use that for my slideshow or I can download the images, which also you can do from the web
7:23
Now let's jump over and I'll show you real quick. So here we are in the main view of the Sungale site
7:30
And you can see if I click on Manage Album, I can see all my photos, I can choose to delete them
7:37
I can share them, and I can actually add new photos. The most important piece is this push to cloud frame, which means, yes, you have to log in
7:46
and sync your cloud frame with the website before you go further
7:52
you've done that you can then go to manage frame and check out on the lower part I can change transitions
7:58
this is where I change slideshow interval I can how you know set it up to start within one minute or 10
8:06
minutes I can have it never sleep or maybe after six hours it goes to sleep which means basically
8:12
it would never wake up again I can also have multiple frames showing the same set of images
8:17
so I could have one and I could give one to my sister and we could both use them simultaneously with
8:22
the same shared album. You can add new albums, super easy. The web interface is actually
8:28
probably the easiest of everything that Sungale has done. And then here, manage album
8:34
All I'd have to do is add new photos. And remember, this is a copy to storage and then synchronize
8:41
with the frame. It's not actually a cloud-based service in as much as it doesn't automatically
8:47
upload new content and synchronize with other photo backup or cloud service
8:52
storage systems The most important thing of course is that you actually click the upload to frame And once you done that it actually gets onto the frame and then it uploads the photo album So that actually the coolest part because I could give this to a friend or to
9:09
grandma or something and then say just leave it plugged in, just ignore it and every 15 minutes
9:14
it'll change to another picture or whatever time you want. And then every so often I can just
9:19
upload a new set of photos and it would be like, wow, that's really cool. You can actually
9:24
have multiple people sharing the same photo album. Very, very cool. You know, the concepts are there
9:30
The ideas are really definitely there. But all in all, you know, 20 gig of local storage space gives
9:36
you plenty of space, especially when you're only at 1366 by 766. You can have pretty small
9:42
pictures. So you can have thousands of pictures on this. What a cool idea. Heck, you could actually
9:48
just go to somewhere online like the Smithsonian or the Louvre or the National Gallery
9:54
and just grab a hundred of their famous artworks. And then you can put them on this
9:59
And then every hour, it could change from one masterpiece to the next or something
10:04
How cool would that be? And it's just thinking it through and making those tiny software tweaks
10:10
or doing it yourself, all really pretty straightforward. So I like the hardware
10:16
I really don't like the software. Just being super honest with you
10:20
You're getting to see the slideshow. So there are some people. pretty neat ideas here, but it's just the implementation is really weak. Now, before I get to the
10:30
price, this is the only thing we really haven't talked about, but before I get to the price
10:33
let me ask you if you can subscribe to my channel. I think this demonstrates, I'm really honest
10:38
I am not just shilling products for companies. I am telling you the actual truth. And if that
10:44
gets me in hot water with these companies, whatever, that's okay. I can handle it. So this beautiful
10:50
piece of hardware, that's a little beautiful piece of software, is the, uite Cloud Frame, CPF 1903, and it's 21699 at boutique.sungale.com. Shop around a little bit
11:05
They also have them in lots of different sizes. I assume it's the same basic experience
11:09
but you can get it down to a 7 or 10 inch, and that's under $100, and it's a touchscreen
11:15
So it's going to be a much better interface than this thing. So with that, you can see the pros and
11:20
the cons, and you're getting to watch this slideshow. I am going to leave this plugged in
11:25
I am going to put it on the mantle. I am going to enjoy it. But how often am I going to update photos
11:30
Is it going to automatically update photos as I take them? No, it doesn't have that sort of functionality, but I wish it did
11:37
So with that, I'll catch you in my next video
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#Online Media
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