As digital cameras proliferate, consumers want to make use of all of those pictures they’re taking. Many of them wind up buried on computer hard drives. But it’s getting easier to take those photos and display them on a digital photo frame in the living room.
These photo frames look just like any other picture frame from a distance. But they are, in fact, small liquid crystal displays that can change the photos on display every few seconds. For romantics and technology Luddites, that is a kind of blasphemy, a reflection of a fickle age where not even a still image can remain constant.
But who says you have to look at the same pictures of your relatives on the mantel for all eternity? Sometimes, change is good. That’s why digital photo frames were the No. 2 consumer technology gift on Black Friday, just behind navigation devices, according to market researcher NPD Group. Sales were up 171 percent compared with a year ago.
Picking a good digital photo frame is a matter of looking at the display and checking out its quality. If it looks good, that’s a clue.