eStarling Wireless Frame Reviewed

by: Sam Costello

eStarling Inc.
Support: http://www.estarling.com/support.html or support@estarling.com

Price: US$249.99

Warranty: The website is missing warranty information.

Product Specifications:
7″ color LCD screen
WiFi 802.11b/g with support for WEP encryption
MMC/SD/CF/MS card slots
128 MB on-board storage
RSS 2.0 compatible

Summary – A Mixed Bag
Overall:

The eStarling is among the first WiFi-enabled digital picture frames to hit the market. No product is perfect, especially not products that crack open all-new categories, and the eStarling is no exception. It has a number of problems, including inconsistent RSS implementation and stability issues (the frame crashed three times in my first weekend using it).

On the positive side, it’s an early product from a new company, is dead simple to set up, and is a cool product for a decent price.

While not perfect, the eStarling is innovative and points the way forward for the market. And for early adopters and the tech-savvy, it’s a pretty cool toy.

Set Up and Use – Four Steps and a Long Walk
Grade:

Initial set up for the eStarling is pleasingly simple. It’s getting photos onto the frame that takes a little more work.

The included quick-start guide is spot-on and helps you connect to the web quickly. Just connect the frame via USB to a Windows PC (no Mac or Linux support yet), plug it in, and run the included CD. Specify the wireless network to connect to (it’s case sensitive) and you’re ready to go.

You can add JPEGs, GIFs, and other common file formats to the frame’s 128 MB of onboard memory via a web interface, email, and RSS (slots for various removable media cards are also present).

The web interface is a simple file upload tool. It’s limited to four photos at a time, though, and a folder upload seems like a good future expansion.

Each eStarling has its own email address and photos sent to that account will display on the frame. Emails can be restricted to authorized addresses only (preventing picture frame spam as this market grows is key. Good for eStarling for thinking of this.). However, when the filter blocks mail, there’s no notification. Some feedback would be useful.

Emailing photos from a phone is also easy, though these messages sometimes include attached artifacts – a phone company banner, blank images, etc.

The frame’s coolest feature, but also its biggest stumbling block, is its ability to subscribe to RSS feeds. Subscribing is easy enough – copy, paste, add - but the implementation is buggy. Though eStarling touts RSS subscriptions of all kinds, I could only get RSS 2.0 feeds from Flickr to work.

And when the feeds did work, they behaved erratically. Only one or two images in the feeds were displayed at first, despite there being dozens available. These two images repeated three to five times each before a third came up. Only after being subscribed to the feed for more than an hour did more images show up consistently.

Unsubscribing from feeds does not remove the images from the frame, since images are downloaded to the frame’s memory and can only be deleted using the frame’s controls, not the web interface, a fact not noted in the documentation.

Given that RSS is likely the key feature to the success of the WiFi picture frame market, eStarling needs to make this feature seamless and simple.

No matter how you add a photo, it generally takes an unsatisfyingly slow 20 minutes before it starts showing up.

Software – Gaudy Transitions
Grade:

The eStarling’s easy-to-use built-in software lets you display a single image or a slideshow, change the slideshow speed, and delete images. It doesn’t, however, let you control the transition animations, which would be nice as the defaults are distracting.
The ability to change these settings through the web interface would be even better.

Screen – Don’t Stand So Close
Grade:

From a distance, the LCD looks fine. Up close, though, the images are pixilated. This is likely the result of dealing with the wide variety of image sizes and resolutions on a small screen, but quality-conscious consumers may not be understanding.

Style – Martha Stewart Disapproves
Grade:

Though it doesn’t look like a traditional picture frame, the eStarling is good looking enough, except for the WiFi adapter that protrudes from the top of the frame. That takes the frame into the realm of the dorky and in the future ought to be integrated into the case.

Conclusion
Right now, the eStarling has to be viewed as much as a proof-of-concept as a true consumer offering. More than making a bid for use in every home, it helps create a market and point a way forward.

As one of the first WiFi frames, there’s no doubt that this is an innovative product. Just the idea of being able to email photos to someone’s wall, or subscribe a grandmother to a grandchild’s Flickr feed feels like living in the future.

Until it’s easy enough for the less-technologically able to use, the eStarling won’t be a true consumer item. But we’re only a product generation or two away from that, and that should come fast. If eStarling can learn some lessons from this product, there’s no reason they can’t be on walls and desks across the world soon.

Editor’s Note: We keep our readers informed by updating these reviews when new software and features are released which enhance the product. As such,
we encourage manufacturers to let us know when review updates are warranted. Should there be inaccuracy in the review, please let us know (Contact Us). We also welcome feedback from users and readers - in the blog’s comments and through email - as we build our tips and tricks sections.

Read eStarling Tips and Tricks

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