NIX 8 inch Hi-Res Digital Photo Frame with Motion Sensor (X08D)

First let me say I am a tech nut and have a good eye for flaws in technology products. Upon booting this up with an SD card inserted, it immediately starts playing my pictures. So even if you're an idiot, using this should not be difficult, at all. The screen is VERY high quality for a photo frame. Colors are vivid and the viewing angle is VERY good. You will notice almost no degradation in the image at any left or right angle, or from the top. The only time the image degrades is if you look at it from below - almost every photo frame I've seen does this though. Make sure the frame sits at or below whatever level people will be at when they look at it and you're fine. Another note, when I received the frame, photos were sharp but dull. I turned the Saturation setting all the way up and now photos have perfect color (not oversaturated, the way they should look). So be aware of this if colors look a bit dull upon first use. I didn't need to change any other settings. Of note too is that this frame does a phenomenal job of shrinking down large photos to fit the frame. It uses 'bicubic sharper' reduction so the images retain incredible sharpness when reduced in size by the frame to fit the screen. The motion sensor works perfectly. No false alarms and no having it turn off when I'm sitting right in front of it. Having used Sony and a host of others in the past, they aren't even close. I highly recommend this frame. EDIT: I heard from other reviewers that NIX was asking people who buy this to rate it 5 stars on Amazon for a chance to win something. Mine did not come with this card asking for a review nor was I asked to or paid to post this review. I posted it simply because the frame is very nice. Also some people mentioned the transitions on this frame are bad. Not that they are even really noticeable, but they seem fine to me.

My first impression of my new Nix 8 inch digital photo frame. I received it yesterday. It was very easy to set it up. After removing it from the box it took about 1 minute to have it running. Inserted my SD card, plugged it in and away it went. The X08D looks nice enough, nothing outstanding or off putting about it. I think it is best used on a desk. If you have it sitting six feet or more from where you view it I think you might be disappointed. A larger frame is probably in order. That said I find the display to be quite nice. All my photos display properly. My camera is only 2 megapixels. I surmise that people needing to resize their photos are using high megapixel cameras. I would find the need to resize photos before they would display properly to be onerous. The transitions are ok. I found the speed of the transitions to be acceptable. There are probably only two or three I really like. For now I have settled on the "Reel" transition. It is one I have not seen before. The photos roll off and on the display. I have not changed brightness, saturation, or other display characteristics. At first blush the defaults work for me. It is possible a little more time with the frame will lead me to make adjustments. The settings menu is easy to use and I find it responsive enough. One thing I do not like about the settings menu is the bright green color used to highlight the selected setting. Against the blue backround it makes it hard for me to read the words. The remote works well for me. I really like the motion sensor. So far it works very well. The calendar/clock display is also ok. Nothing to get excited about and I am not sure when I would use it since the photos displayed are much smaller. But it is there if that is your thing. I have not tried to use videos but I will probably try that at a later time. I can recommend this digital photo frame with the proviso it probably is best used on a desk or somewhere you are fairly close to it. If high megapixel photos do not display properly without resizing I would downgrade my rating a bit. That said it seems to be a problem with many digital photo frames, at least in this price range. I read the reviews that reported an included card that encourage owners to post a 5 Star review. Nix still encourages you to post an Amazon review but says to do so even if it is a negative review. So maybe Amazon or owners got their attention and changed their policy regarding reviews.

You can't get anything like it for the price (~$60)! It has a large 8" display with excellent display quality. I wish the frame came in wood but the black matte plastic frame isn't terribly distracting. I haven't tried all of the features yet but it was easy to operate and went directly to the slideshow mode when I inserted my SD card. I like the remote control and the ability to go to the thumbnail menu to delete or edit photos. I haven't tried the motion sensor, music, or video features yet but those weren't what drew me to this as much as the display size, quality, and price as a photo frame - which are all excellent! I am editing this post as I originally thought that the frame would only change orientation from landscape to portrait if you rotated the frame. The display defaults to "optimal" and the directions tell you to rotate the frame to change orientations so I was really disappointed. I am delighted to discover after exploring the settings that you can indeed set the display to "auto-fit" as well as "full" or "optimal." Too bad I had already deleted several portrait-oriented photos from my SD card thinking I'd have headless subjects before I figured that out. Honestly, the next best 8" digital frame that gives you all of this was in the $200+ range! This is also something I initially listed as a problem but am editing after exploring the settings further. I discovered how to change the slideshow default from a random selection, which repeats photos quite often, to play the photos in succession - much better. I was also able to choose one consistent transition. The random transitions, while creative, can be annoying and draw attention away from the photos so it was nice to be able to change that. Overall, you can't beat this digital frame for the price! I'm very happy with this purchase if it lasts a long time. Time will tell on that.

Like many others, I purchased this as a gift. I planned to add a card with some photos of friends and their family. I went ahead and loaded the card up with the pictures and took the frame on a "test run" I have been through several digital photo frames and they all seem to burn out after a month or two. I look at pictures as background decorations, so I tend to leave them on continuously, so the motion sensor appealed to me. I popped the card in and it starts working. Already set on random, and since it's not for me, there is nothing else I need to do. I was curious how the motion sensor worked, and I left it running a bit and left the room and came back in. Either it sensed me before I got in the room, or just didn't shut down when I was gone. Not sure. I glanced at the instructions and settings and didn't see anything regarding the sensor. Picture quality is really nice, it will auto adjust if you spin the frame to portrait. I tried the remote, but it didn't work. It may be because there is a battery protector that has to be removed, but I didn't want to take it out of the plastic. I don't think it will be used anyway. I will say that it seems to struggle a bit in the transition between photos. That may have to do with the resolution of the pictures, but not a huge deal. It also tends to "favorite" a few photos over others in random mode. Again, not a big deal. My hope is that the recipient can set it up and leave it alone, but the test will come in time. As I said earlier, the life span on these type of frame haven't been great for me. I will probably purchase one or more for myself in time. But the price went up by ten dollars since I bought this one. $79 is OK, $89 is kind of pushing it for me for a frame. Update: The motion sensor is activated in the settings, and seemed to work well. I'll have to check with the recipients to see how it's holding up. Price has dropped to 69 bucks. may be time to buy. Update 2: I bought myself one of these when the price came down and have had it in my office at work for several months. It comes on a few seconds after I come in and rolls through photos until I leave. So far so good. Update 3: 2016-I've had this frame for 3 years already and it's still going strong. Update 4: 6 years and still going. March 2019 still going strong.

I ordered my parents this digital picture frame for their anniversary since their last one had the screen stop working. I decided to choose the NIX one based on positive reviews from this site. The first thing I noticed about this frame when I opened the box is that it feels cheaply made. The plastic just feels very cheap and like it could break easily. The last frame they had was a Sony one and it had a very polished look and felt like good quality. I ordered an SD card to go with the frame because it didn't have any internal memory. I didn't think it would be much of a problem. Boy was I wrong. The problem was getting the pictures on the SD card. The SD card goes easily into the frame, but there is no USB cord that comes with the frame to connect with the computer. I have USB cords laying around, but they are all custom fit to work with digital cameras or cell phones. I tried putting the SD card into the slot on my computer but I still couldn't move the pictures onto the card. After searching throughout the internet on how to do it, I finally realized I needed an SD card reader. That is another $12 out of my pocket which I wasn't expecting to spend. This was like a 2 or 3 day process to get the actual pictures onto the card and then into the frame. I almost didn't get the present to them in time. This is my fault for not getting a frame that has internal memory. Next time I get one you can bet it is going to have internal memory on the frame. Once I got the card into the frame and the pictures started showing up I felt relief. From what I can tell the pictures seem to be of pretty good quality. The majority of the pictures are scans of really old pictures so they aren't the greatest of quality to begin with. Only other problem I have with the frame is the remote that can with it. It seems you have to press the button multiple times to get it to actually do something. That can be frustrating. Overall, it's a pretty good frame. It seems to get the job done once it's set up. Honestly I don't think I would buy this frame again as a gift to someone.

Decided to purchase this one because of all the positive customer reviews. But after receiving the product, I'm not really sure what everyone was so thrilled about. This was *supposed* to be a Christmas present for my dad. Looks like he's getting something else instead. I should have known I'd be in for trouble when I opened the box and unpacked the frame. The front cover of the frame made a "snapping" noise when I first picked it up, as if the black border of the frame was snapping into place. The plastic feels flimsy and not well made. But of course, most people aren't going to carry frames around with them so I didn't let this bother me too much. Besides, I liked the aesthetic of the frame. Next, I loaded up a 16GB Class 10 SDHC card with ~1200 JPGs. Each file was between 250-750kb in size. I also threw on 22 relatively low-resolution 3GP videos that I had taken using an older smartphone camera. I noticed immediately that, when navigating through any menus that read the folder structure off the SDHC card and showed a photo, the device would hang for extended periods of time. Sometimes it would hang for so long (over 60 seconds) that I would assume the device had locked and would just restart it by pulling the plug. So I tried just starting the slideshow. The transitions between photos were absolutely awful; aliased / jagged and jerky. For the life of me, I couldn't find a transition that simply showed the next slide like you would see in a slide show (i.e. no transition effects). The video quality of the device was so-so. I've seen better. I've seen worse. For the price I paid for this thing, I've seen better. Didn't even try the video playback. Of all the 3GP movies I loaded, only a few would actually even show up as "Supported" by the device. So I tried a WMV file that I created using Windows Movie Maker on Windows 7; no luck... the frame said it wasn't supported either. Also, something odd I noticed: Some settings wouldn't stick after unplugging the device. This wasn't consistent; sometimes they stuck and sometimes they didn't. The only setting that I never saw get "reset" from unplugging the frame was the time. Other minor gripes: Boot up time takes longer than I'd expect. The non-photo menus navigated slowly and the kickstand in the back is off-center which will cause the frame to teeter if on a slightly uneven surface. I understand the designer wanted the frame to be used in portrait or landscape mode but there are other ways to design a kick stand that would have made the device more stable. Oh, and the clock defaults to 2010. Could it be that was when this thing was designed and manufactured? Because that would explain a lot... I didn't try the motion sensor or auto-rotate functionality. Sending the device back to Amazon because of the device freezing but even without that problem, I wouldn't pay such a high price for such a mediocre device.

This unit works straight out of the box. While the package was being shipped, I transferred about 70 of our favorite photos of our grandson from our computer to an SD card using drag and drop. When I opened the NIX, therefore, I simply assembled it (one support peg screws into a hole on the back of the unit), inserted the SD card, and plugged in the transformer. The NIX immediately found the card and began displaying images. Total time from opening the package to beginning to enjoy the pictures was about three minutes. Once it was installed, I used the menu to make two adjustments -- sequence vs. random order and auto fit rather than optimal photo mode, since so many of our images are portrait, rather than landscape mode. That took another two minute. But that's that. There are other settings you can make, all easily understood, but this is all we needed. Image resolution, brightness, color, and contrast are superb -- this from someone who uses Photoshop on a color-corrected monitor. In short, this unit is simple to set up, easy to understand, and provides great image quality. UPDATE: I have answered so many questions about the NIX that I am starting to feel like a shill. Since posting this review, I have purchased two additional units for our children and loaded images of our grandchild on them. (Merry Christmas!) Many of the questions I am fed from Amazon presuppose that this is a highly technical unit. It's not. I have now automated the images for our unit through a Lightroom present, but really all you have to do is plug an SD card into your computer, then drag and drop jpeg or video images onto the card, plug the card into the slot at the back of the unit, and turn it on. Others have pointed out that the menu is sort of kludgy -- well, it is -- but you are likely to meddle with it only once or twice. It is easy to set up, and the video quality is outstanding for a unit in this price range.

I bought the NIX X08D for my wife for our 40th anniversary. Over the years we have collected many photographs both in print and in digital format. We have several albums and "brag books" filled but all they do is sit and collect dust. The Nix digital photo frame has allowed me to start collecting our favorite pictures onto a flash drive and we display them 24/7 in the frame on our mantel in the living room. The displayed picture image is very clear from almost any angle and at a fairly good distance from the frame. I bought the frame several weeks before my anniversary and started loading pictures onto the flash drive to test them. I found that I needed to size the pictures in order to get the picture to properly fit the screen. The printed instructions did not answer my questions so I went to the NIX website and easily got the answer to my question as well as a link to a utility program that I now use to size my pictures. The results have been very pleasing. It is also helpful to have a photo retouching program like Photoshop to help restore scanned printed photos to their original state. The NIX is capable of doing many things such as playing music, displaying videos, and even displaying clock and calendar. However I have not used those functions. It also has a motion detector that can be activated so that the frame will turn on when motion is detected and turn off when there has been no motion in the room for several minutes. As yet I have not used those functions so I can't really comment on them. The frame comes with a remote control. Before I purchased I read some of the other on-line reviews both at the top end and bottom end of the scale. Several complained of picture or color quality. I have not found that to be a problem. I have used a computer program to enhance some of the color images and to touch up areas of a photo that have been damaged or many years of storage but I have not been disappointed with the results shown in the frame. I have read some complaints about the stand being flimsy. I have not found that to be the case though I would not lean on it and expect it to hold up. It is stronger than most of my non-digital picture frames. I turned the frame on and off many times while testing pictures on it over the month I had it before I gave it to my wife and have never had it to fail to operate. It has been running pretty much 24/7 (except for turning off to add pictures) for two weeks now without any problem. The upside to this frame is that it has a nice, sharp, clear picture. It is very easy to set up and program. The downside is that this frame does not have a memory. It relies strictly on a flash drive or digital HC card for content. It also doesn't retain settings to the calendar or clock after the power is turned off. It is this downside that prevented me from giving it a five star rating.