Sweex 1.5 inch Digital Photo Frame Keyring (Black)

This device is very popular on Play.com where it is one of the top sellers and it's received many rave reviews and statements like "battery lasts for ages" and "fantastic". Well I'm of a slightly different opinion.

Yes it's cheap, but it's built cheaply. The key ring itself is poor quality and needs adjusting with pliers to stop you losing the device at the first time out the house. The screen is grainy and lack lustre, with a strange fluctuation in brightness every few seconds on slideshow (on both units I bought). The menu is clunky to say the least, and the buttons on the back are slow to respond and hard to find the right one without looking. Why couldn't the "On" button be on the front or top, or anywhere that you can easily feel for it.

When you're in the menu then it's hard to navigate to the "Off" command, and that's the one you need the most. The reason for that is that if you inadvertently leave the unit on, then the next time you look at it the battery will be dead. I contacted the manufacturer and they quoted 4 hours life. What?..... 4 hours for such a tiny screen, I expected it would last days on end. The maximum time I've got out of it is about 6 or 7 hours, but even that is still less than a working day, and that means you need to be charging it up 3 times a day if you want to leave the slideshow on constantly.

There is an "Auto Off" menu item, but it only allows you to switch on the slideshow between certain times of the day, and not to sensibly turn itself off after a predetermined time (suggest 10 or 20 mins). I originally set the auto timer to come on at 8am and go off at midnight. It happily allows you to do this, but what the point when it won't last half that time!

I've searched through the specifications on all web sites (including the manufacturer's) and checked the packaging, but nowhere will it tell you the battery life. Well that's why I'm writing this review, to tell everyone that they admitted by email that it's only 4 hours, so when you buy this cheaply then be aware that you're getting a cheap device. I'd happily send mine back and buy one at twice the price if it lasted about 48 hours use between charges.

Bought one of these on pre-order from Play. Arrived duly, and I am very impressed. It links with your PC via a USB/mini-USB cable and is re-charged during the process (yes - no button cell batteries here!). It can hold 70 different pictures and synchronises them via a very easy-to-use bit of bundled software that allows you to preview your pic and crop to size before sending to the device. Picture quality is what you would expect from a small screen but its very good for so few pixels. You can amend brightness, contrast, etc and also delay on picture change. Set the time and date. You can choose when to turn it on and off to save battery - but it lasts for AGES between charges. Everyone who has seen it has asked where they can get one...so I logged back onto Play.com tonight to get a couple more - and I can't find it!! C'mon Play!! Sort it out - these are mint! Get 'em back in stock pronto. That's an order!!

Easy to set up and put pictures on.

Makes a great gift and you can personalise it very easily

One tip: make sure you have the keyring connected when you try and open the software (once downloaded on2 pc) or it wont open - from previous experience

Bought this for my daughter, she couldn't believe how great the pictures of her kids were and the screensaver effects. The choice of picking one of the photos as a wallpaper is also excellent and my daughter's work colleagues were very impressed - beats carrying 70 odd photographs! The software loaded no problem and the self-cropping in the application was very handy for selecting the right part of my photos to crop. Seriously thinking of buying a few more at this price, great stocking filler at the very least! At this price, cheaper now, I can only say it was a bargain.

Wow. great product for 14.99. really wasnt sure if i should get this for my missus as expected it to be cheap looking/feeling, but it was a suprise to me. The images look great on the 1.5" screen and she can carry around pictures of the family wherever she goes. got nearly 70 pics on it in total and can change them easily as its quite a simple plug and play process. very happy. thanks Play