Digital Photo Frames

ViewSonic DPG807BK

ViewSonic's half-heartedly announced a pair of 8-inch digital photo frames for your all of your half-hearted holiday shopping needs. The DPG801BK and the DPG807BK are basically the same product, with 800 x 600 resolution displays, a 500:1 contrast ratio, and 512MB of internal memory. If that's not enough memory for your um... memories, you can of course load in a memory card or USB drive (there's no wireless integration in either frame). The DPG807BK also has a remote control, which is going to be handy when you want to quickly cycle past photos of your "lovely family" from across the room. They're both available and the DPG801BK will go for $119 while the DPG807BK is $159 -- a small price to pay for the gift that says "I got this for you last night and you're lucky I even thought of it at all."

iGala Wireless Digital Picture Frame from Aequitas

We know, you started yawning at the sight of the headline, your ears will pop with relief by the middle of this paragraph, and you'll finish up somewhere around the Read link. We get it. But there's something kinda special about the brand new iGala Wireless Digital Picture Frame from Aequitas, we'll call it "common sense." The photo frame sports an 8-inch, 800 x 600 touchscreen, 1GB of internal storage, WiFi and the traditional complement of card readers. What's new here is that iGala really puts that WiFi connection to use, featuring Gmail integration (for sending photos), an alarm clock and integration with Microsoft's FrameIt service for news, traffic and weather info. The frame also hooks up to Flickr directly, which is such a no-brainer these days that we're surprised we see still so many "connected" frames lacking the feature. A full touchscreen makes all of this stuff actually possible to use, and the $239 pricetag doesn't mean you have to get soaked for the convenience. iGala is available now from Aequitas' entirely sketchy online store -- we guess you can't win 'em all.

Giant International IT7150

Not that we'd expect any reputable digital photo frame manufacturer to consort with a real, live hand model, but we've gotta hand it to Giant International for discovering this particularly unnatural, eerily glowing appendage to point vaguely at its new Intouch IT7150. Lucky for us, the device in question is not at all cheap and uninviting, featuring a 7-inch 800 x 480 LCD touchscreen, 802.11b/g WiFi, USB to PC connection cable and the standard complement of memory card slots. What makes this particularly fun is vTuner support, which allows for play back of 11,000 radio and TV stations (primarily public access and other undesirables on the TV side), in addition to the increasingly standard FrameChannel service for photo sharing and RSS subscriptions. There's also a built-in rechargeable battery for about 1.5 hours of portable use. At $349, you're certainly paying a pretty penny for all these good times, but if vTuner isn't your bag, you can drop that support and pick up the frame for $299.

Sanyo Albo

Up until now, we'd have to say that Sony's WiFi-enabled VAIO CP1 is the most attractive digital photo frame we've ever had the pleasure of laying eyes on. And quite honestly, it's still probably the sexiest in terms of, well, sheer sexy. But Sanyo's latest rival is cute in its own way, as the HNV-M70 ALBO packs a retro motif that anyone fond of The Jetsons will adore. Specs wise, we're looking at an overly glossy 7-inch LCD (800 x 480 resolution), 256MB of internal memory, 802.11b/g WiFi, WinCE 5.0 behind the scenes, an IR sensor, RSS / e-mail reader, automatic screen rotation, a multicard reader and a multimedia player for good measure. Users can also load up pictures stored on Picasa or add in captions and e-mail to grandparents for maximum enjoyment. Sanyo's set to start selling these in Japan (in black or green) next month for ¥40,000 ($423), but you can take an early look thanks to a bevy of hands-on shots linked below.