The Nixplay Seed is a wonderful digital picture frame, and given that I’d never even heard of Nixplay before I tested this, it vastly outperformed my expectations. Not only does it looks great on my bedside table, but they also nailed it when it comes to the difficult software and connectivity side of things. It’s simple to set up, simple to browse photos and simple to add new photos from a variety of sources. For really avid picture takers, the previously explained dynamic Dropbox syncing is worth the price of admission alone. Really, this is a fantastic product at an excellent price. Discover more in Nixplay Seed 10 inch WiFi digital photo frame review.
Nixplay Seed 10 inch WiFi digital photo frame comparison
| Nixplay Seed 10.1 Inch Widescreen (Wi-Fi) Color: Black | Nixplay Smart Photo Frame 9.7 inch (Wi-Fi) Finish: Metal | Nixplay Seed Wave 13 inch Widescreen (Wi-Fi) Color: Black | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Unit Dimensions (WxHxD) | 10.20×6.69×0.98 inch | 8.78×10.75×1.34 inch | 13.22×8.39×1.48 inch |
| Net Weight | 1.10 lbs. | 1.74 lbs. | 2.12 lbs. |
| Display Resolution | 1280×800 | 2048×1536; 2K | 1920×1080; FHD |
| Display Aspect Ratio | 16:10 | 4:3 | 16:9 |
| Supported Photo Format | JPEG/JPG | JPEG / JPG | JPEG / JPG |
| Auto On/Off Sensors | Infrared Sensor, Hu-Motion Sensor (active range:2.5 m) | Light Sensor ; Activity Sensor ; G-Sensor | Infrared Sensor, Hu-Motion Sensor (active range:2.5 m) |
| Speakers | 2 x (2W) | 2 x (2W) | 2 x 5W speakers with bass and amplifier |
| Wi-Fi | ✓ | ✓ | 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0 |
| Supported Nixplay OS | NixplayOS 7 | NixplayOS 7 | NixplayOS 7 |
Nixplay Seed 10 inch WiFi digital photo frame review
Design
Aesthetically, some of them look great, like the Seed frame that I was sent. The bezel is nicely proportioned, and the angular design on the back is very modern. Others, such as the Edge Frame, don’t look great. The Edge, for example, has a larger bezel on the bottom, making it look extremely awkward in a vertical orientation.
Stand
Instead of a stand, the Nixplay Seed has a rigid woven power cord, which acts as a stand that you can adjust in many ways in both portrait and landscape orientation.
I quite like this idea because it hides the typically ugly white power cord in a smart way and provides ample flexibility setting it up. Compared to a rigid stand, you can adjust the inclination as you best see fit.
Color display
The 8-inch version comes in black, mulberry, blue and mango, the 10, 10.1, and 13-inch versions only in black. The frame color is fixed; the frame elements are not interchangeable.
Both use IPS displays that offer good color reproduction, plenty of brightness and wide viewing angles. A good display panel is critical to a good digital photo frame, and these do the job nicely. Nixplay also offers advanced features like the ability to tweak the color settings, and manually set brightness levels (or use the built-in ambient light sensor to adjust brightness based on room lighting conditions).
Motion sensor
In the corner, there are two visible sensors, one for infrared and one for the motion sensor. I would have liked for these sensors to be hidden as they reduce the perception of a real image frame.
Audio
This digital photo frame has built-in speakers that are fine for whenever you’re playing videos in the frame. Don’t expect room-filling audio that you can rock out to—the sound is actually somewhat muffled—but you’ll be able to hear what’s happening in a video. Given the size and price of this device, it’s hard to expect it to produce high-quality sound.
Cloud storage
The 10 inch Seed Picture Frame is part of their Wi-Fi Cloud Frames collection. In other words, you can connect it to your local WiFi network at home to send photos to it wirelessly from your mobile device, or to play them directly from Facebook, Dropbox, Instagram, Google Photos or Flickr. There’s also a secondary collection of frames which are just called Digital Photo Frames, and these ones require the use of an SD card or a USB stick to get photos onto them. Within those two collections – Wi-Fi Cloud Frame and Digital Photo Frames – there’s a variety of sizes, colours, aspect ratios and styles available.
Local storage
Local storage for the frames is 8GB, and Nixplay includes 10GB of free cloud storage. There’s no USB port or SD slot for side-loading, but once you’ve uploaded photos to these frames they are stored locally so you still see them even if the Wi-Fi network goes down.
How to setup Nixplay Seed 10 inch WiFi digital photo frame?
Setup is extremely simple, and I breezed through it in a couple of minutes. The screen walks you through the process, and all you need to bring to the party is your WiFi password. The physical remote control really comes in useful here because when you start the process you don’t yet have control over the frame through the mobile app.
Once the frame is connected to Wifi, download the mobile app and follow the prompts on the screen to pair your device to the frame. You can easily pair multiple frame to the app, and even pair a frame to the app before giving it to a loved one as a present, thus allowing you to constantly update the photos on their frame from wherever you are in the world. Don’t tell my mum, but I’m definitely doing this for Christmas this year…
The only features of note on the front are the sensor for adjusting screen brightness, and the IR receiver for the remote control.
Now your frame is connected to Wifi, and your mobile device is connected to the frame, you can begin to set up playlists of photos. Since this is part of the Nixplay WiFi Cloud Frame collection, there’s the option to pull photos from various social media channels, or you can just upload them from the camera roll of your phone which is what I decided to do. It’s all perfectly straightforward and I had multiple playlists up and running in a few minutes.
Once the playlists are sent to the frame, you can use the app to control things, or you can use the physical remote control. The remote allows you to pause the automatic slideshow settings, advance back and forth manually between the photos, or access your list of playlists. Once I had completed the initial setup using the mobile app, I simply used the physical remote control to switch playlists during my several weeks of testing.
After the terrible app and connectivity issues I experienced with Meural frame earlier in the year, I approach this whole section with a certain amount of trepidation. It turns out that I had nothing to worry about though. Everything worked perfectly first time and every time. I’m sure this kind of connected, wifi and app-based control is tricky to implement, so hats off to Nixplay for this stuff, they really did an incredible job.
How to use Nixplay app?
The Nixplay Seed is Cloud-based, which means that all images are stored on Nixplay servers first and then streamed to the picture frame. You can do this either via your smartphone app (for iOS and Android) or through the browser on your PC or laptop. Both the Nixplay mobile and desktop apps are very easy to use. There is even a special tablet-sized app available.
I tend to prefer the desktop app because if you have a folder of images, you can upload them in one go. Maybe I am old-fashioned, but this works a lot faster for me than doing it on my phone.
Most people will probably do the initial image upload in the browser app and casually add images via the smartphone over time. You can allow friends & family to add images to your playlist by sending them a link but will also get a personal Nixplay email to which you can send images.
You can also link your Nixplay account to Google Photos, Instagram, Dropbox, Facebook, and Flickr.
Nixplay Seed 10 inch WiFi digital photo frame customer review
The NixPlay Seed was the perfect solution. Photos can be uploaded to the frame …
My wife and I wanted to get picture frames for both sets of parents that we could upload photos to while out and about. Other digital photo frames in the past essentially became static devices that required you to remove the SD card and upload photos manually. Unfortunately, we don’t live in a world anymore where we are storing our snapshots on PCs and transferring them to SD cards.
The NixPlay seed was the perfect solution. Photos can be uploaded to the frame by the owner or invited “friends” of the owner. Frame setup is easy – upon initial power-up it displays discovered WiFi networks and you can input the PSK using the included remote – the frame then displays it’s activation code. You then go to the NixPlay website and create an account, and then add the frame to the account. Once the frame is activated, you can start adding pictures to it either using photos from a local library on your PC, linking from popular social media platforms, or by getting the NixPlay app from the Android or Apple App Store and uploading photos that way.
One important detail that I was not able to find until I went through setup the first time is that you can completely set up the frame by creating a free Nixplay account using your own email, get some photos on it, and then after the frame has been gifted and set up for your recipient – the account can then be transferred to the frame’s new owner. This is handy as you don’t want to create an account for someone who you may be gifting the frame to using their email – they’ll get a Nixplay welcome message, and you won’t be able to confirm the account. (I could not find this information anywhere – so I wanted to make sure that it was out there somewhere.)
On the Nixplay 10, the picture quality is maybe a 6 out of 10. If I understand correctly, the native resolution is 1024×768, so if you can – resize your photos to the native resolution for best results. Larger photos will not be scaled by Nixplay, but the frame will move the photo around so most / all of the photo is displayed during it’s on screen duration. It does detect orientation automatically, and I thought we’d end up using the frame in landscape mode most of the time, but portrait actually seems to work better with most photos.
Others have mentioned that the power cord/connector being part of the stand for the frame is troublesome – with both frames we purchased and gifted we did not find this to be the case.
If I could make one change to the frame – it would be to use a better display. Display technology has gotten so much better in the past few years – a nice high-res OLED display would be outstanding and worth a few bucks more to me.
Overall – if you want to have that gift that you know someone will use all the time and get the big reaction at your birthday/holiday – this is it. Fill it full of sentimental photos and you’re well on the way to getting the waterworks going for the recipient!
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