***UPDATE (12/11/2020): I am updating this post following an e-mail from Nixplay customer service which identified the issue I was having as being due to "a recent version of the Google Camera App". According to the Nixplay rep, they have now updated their software to fix this issue. Unfortunately, we had already returned the frames, so I cannot test this fix. However, I am changing my overall rating from 2 to 4 stars, since this "major oversight" turned out to be a minor glitch that is supposedly resolved and shouldn't be a problem for others.*** Original review continues below. ************ My wife and I purchased two of the these frames with the intent of keeping one for ourselves and gifting one to my in-laws so that we could share photos of their grandkids with them. I decided to open ours and set it up first, then set up the in-laws' frame in advance. I never got to theirs. I had a relatively poor experience with these due to their limitations, and ended up returning them both. TL;DR VERSION: I uploaded photos from my phone (Google Pixel 4XL) into the Nixplay app, which indicated they were successfully uploaded and showing on the frame, but the actual frame would not show my photos. Eight (8) days of back-and-forth with customer service to identify this issue. Turns out, the photos taken from my cell phone were too high of resolution for the frame to display. Their solution is to use a third-party app to reduce my photo sizes before uploading...adding an annoying step (or steps) every time I want to add photos. Not worth the price tag, in our opinion, so we returned the frames. Unrelated to my issue, but you should also know that for anyone to share photos to your frame, they are required to create a Nixplay account through which they can send the photos. I.e., they cannot send photos via email without setting up their own account. This may not be an issue for others, but it is for me, so make your own decision there. FULL VERSION: First, I gave this frame 2 stars instead of just 1 because despite our issues, there are some good things about this frame, that shouldn't be overlooked. Overall, the hardware is nice. The frame itself has a very modern, sleek design and seemed to be of good quality. The pictures, when displayed, were clear. The motion sense and scheduling features were nice and functioned as-expected as well. No touch-screen or physical buttons on the device, but a remote control, which has a built-in magnet that will work on the back of the frame (though only in one spot very well), was a nice touch. The app itself was a little less than intuitive, although not bad. Adding photos was a multi-step process (first add to album, then add album to frame). I was a little confused at first (in that I wasn't entirely sure if I did it correctly), but figured it out pretty quickly without having to consult the manual. I suspect most people would be able to handle this similarly. Now, getting into the issues we had, and although it was mainly one thing, I consider it a big oversight on Nixplay's part. There two main ways to upload photos. For simplicity within this review, I'll refer to these as "direct upload" (directly uploading a photo from a phone into the app/frame) and "cloud sync" (linking / syncing a cloud service, such as Google Photos, to the app/frame). I really like the cloud sync function. I used a couple Google Photos albums with our frame and it worked great. The process to connect my Google Photos albums was quick and easy, and the photos showed up almost immediately. Assuming the link with other cloud services works as well, this is probably the best feature. Where the cloud sync worked flawlessly, the direct upload from my phone into the Nixplay app turned out to be a terrible experience. The process to upload a photo from my phone to the app itself was actually relatively quick and easy. The app indicated that all my photos uploaded from my phone (a Google Pixel 4XL - 12.2 MP camera, 4032x3024 pixel resolution) had successfully uploaded into the app/Nixplay cloud storage, and upon assigning to our frame, also indicated that the photos were showing on the frame. A look at the frame itself proved otherwise. No matter what I did, the frame would not show photos that were direct uploaded. I searched through the manual and online to find help for this issue. After trying/checking a few common errors and coming up short, I reached out to customer service. For their part, customer service was very friendly and patient. They also required patience on my part, as it took eight days to resolve the issue, frequently with 1-2 days between our back-and-forth e-mail conversations. It ultimately took customer service requesting my account login credentials to troubleshoot for them to identify the problem: my phone's photos were of too high resolution for the 1200 x 800 pixel display. Now, at first this seems reasonable, but here's the problem: nearly every display (computer screen, phone, tablet, tv, etc.) that I've ever used will automatically resize a photo to fit the display screen, regardless of original size (for example, I often use my 4032x3024 pixel photos as background on my phone and computer screens, both well under that resolution). This is so common that I, and even Nixplay's own customer service, didn't think about that being an issue throughout over a week of troubleshooting. Once the resolution size issue was identified, Nixplay's solution was to use a third-party app to resize all my photos before uploading to the Nixplay app. The whole intent of this device is to quickly and easily share photos -- to our frame and the one to be gifted to the in-laws -- from our phone's photo album (which these days is the primary camera). If the frame can't handle standard photos from a cell phone without the need for the user to take the extra step to edit photos every time they want to upload, than what's the point? To me, this was more cumbersome than it's worth. This issue was by far the most problematic, but an "honorable mention" for disappointing limitations is that in order for someone else (family, friend, etc.) to share photos to your frame, that person is first required to create their own Nixplay account, even if they don't have a frame themselves. They cannot just send an email to your frame (via a personalized, unique email address) without having created their own account. I assume this also means they can only send the photos by uploading them to their Nixplay account first, via the app or website. This may not be a problem for some, but to us it was a big annoyance and we would never want to ask all our family members and friends to create an account and/or download an app that they don't use themselves. We ultimately decided to return both the purchased frames in preference for a brand which did not have the limitations of the Nixplay "Smart" frame. For the price of this frame I expected better and am happy with our decision to return these and go with an alternate brand.
