Remember digital photo frames? You probably got one for your grandparents back in 2006, and haven’t given them a second thought since. Turns out, they’ve gotten a lot better since then.
The first thing you’ll notice about the Nixplay Iris is that it actually looks like a picture frame. They sent me the Silver model to check out, and it looks and feels fantastic, but there are two other finishes available as well to match your decor.
They all feature an 8″ 1024×768 IPS display (basically like an original iPad Mini) which sounds a bit low res, but it looks great from more than a couple of feet away. The screen is fronted by glass to look more like a real picture frame, and its backlight adjusts based on ambient light to make it seem subtle and natural, and not like an extra stress-inducing computer screen.
You add photos to the frame over the internet, no SD card required. Just log onto Nixplay’s site or app, and you can either upload photos into playlists, or connect various accounts (Facebook, Instagram, Google Photos, and Flickr just for starters) and pull in photos from there. I wish you could set up automatic syncing so new photos you upload to these sites would automatically appear on your frame, but it’s not too onerous to log in periodically.
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I have to say, I’ve enjoyed having the Iris in my apartment a lot more than I expected. I take thousands of photos every year, and print like, five of them. Now, my favorites scroll by on the Iris as the days go by, and give me an opportunity to see them when they’d otherwise stay buried in the photos app on my computer. It’s a high tech gadget that comes across as decidedly low tech, and that’s the way it should be.
And yeah, it would still make a good gift for your grandparents.
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