Pexar 11-inch Digital Picture Frame review: bright, brilliant and well priced
Pexar 11-inch digital photo frame review
The Pexar 11-inch Digital Photo Frame is a true 2K photo frame that hits the sweet spot in terms of cost. At $159.99/£149.99, it’s more affordable than many mid-market and high-end frames, while offering pretty decent specs and admirable performance. Since it uses local storage, there are no ongoing subscription fees. Well, in terms of return on investment, I think it’s a pretty good deal.
Getting started with the Pexar 11-inch Digital Photo Frame is easy. Once it’s plugged in and connected to Wi-Fi, you can scan a QR code to download third-party Frameo apps. Then, all you need to do is press the “Add Friend” button on the screen, enter the code shown in the app, and you can start sending images to your hearts. Of course, this also allows you to connect with friends and family so they can add photos to your frames too.
For those of you wary of uploading photos of your nearest and dearest to the cloud, here’s some good news. The Pexar comes with 32GB of built-in storage, which should be plenty; that’s enough to store nearly a quarter of my photos, which I’ve been shooting since 2010. If you need more space, you can easily upgrade your frame’s storage – just add an SD card, USB-A or USB-C memory stick to add up to 1TB.
Adding photos is as easy as using many photos best digital photo framealbeit with some special features. You can scroll through your entire phone’s image library or each album, click on a single photo or select up to 10 photos at a time – if you want to upload more photos at once, you’ll have to upgrade to Frameo+, which costs $1.99/0.99 per month Pounds or $16.99/£7.99 per year. You’ll then have the opportunity to add a title and then select a circular focus area and Pexar will make sure to maintain the portrait or landscape frame. Note that you can’t resize this focus area, and sometimes it’s framed weirdly – I’d rather choose to manually crop each photo, to be honest.
However, once the images are uploaded to Pexar, they often look gorgeous. Its 11-inch screen is true 2K, giving it an impressive 212 PPI pixel density that few frames can match. You might say the aspect ratio of the screen is weird; 5:3 is an unusual ratio for photos compared to 4:3 or 16:9, but I actually did find it super thin for portraits and ultra The wide landscape format is very eye-catching, even if it does mean losing more photos.
Pexar does an excellent job of displaying your photos. Each image shows great contrast, making my black and white photography really pop. Meanwhile, the color profiles seem spot-on – the ocher and amber tones of Fuerteventura’s desolate landscape look just right brooding, while the close-up of a rhododendron I shot at the Botanical Gardens is filled with vivid purples , red, orange and yellow. Even by the iPhone’s very strict color standards, Pexar seemed to effortlessly match the colors I saw on the phone’s screen.
The matte screen also makes images look ultra-realistic and feels great to the touch. While it inevitably attracts the odd fingerprint, I can’t say I noticed that many smudges and smudges. Additionally, the anti-glare feature does a decent job of preventing reflected light from ruining your photos – although the British weather meant there wasn’t much direct sunlight during my testing, so I was able to face the frame towards my large sash window but it didn’t Would have a significant impact on the visibility of my photos.
You don’t just have to deal with still images, though: you can also share videos with Pexar – though if you want those videos to be longer than 15 seconds, you’ll again need to upgrade to Frameo+. While I was skeptical about how these would translate to the screen, I was pleasantly surprised; the color balance and contrast were solid, even if they didn’t quite match high dynamic range The brightness of my iPhone 13 Pro display. Motion is definitely not 120Hz, but it’s smooth enough so your videos still look lifelike. Its only letdown is the sound quality: like a TV screen, it’s obvious that Pexar speakers are a much smaller investment. Most of my videos sound echoey and unpleasant, and personally I’d be happier turning the sound off completely.
Generally speaking, the auto-rotate feature works well—when the stand is installed, you simply pop out the magnetic mount, secure it to the other side of the frame, and position the frame in the new orientation; the image will rotate to match. Wall mounting is also easy. You can hang it in either direction using nails or picture hooks, but rotating it won’t be as easy with this mounting option – there’s no swivel mount here.
When it comes to the rest of its design, it looks smart. The white border around the screen gives it an elegant vibe and makes it feel more like a real photo frame and stand. At the same time, the black frame is very low-key, deliberately distracting you from the photo as little as possible. Granted, I’m not a big fan of the notched, textured effect it’s applied to, but you can only really see it close-up, and it at least improves the grip when you pick it up.
Ultimately, the Pexar 11-inch Digital Photo Frame is the perfect compromise between image quality and cost. For the relatively modest price of $159.99/£149.99, you get crisp 2K images, good color reproduction, and offline storage for added security. There are some limitations: uploading a lot of photos using the app will take a long time without a Frameo+ account; the aspect ratio is definitely unusual; and the built-in speaker isn’t worth bothering with. But that doesn’t change the fact that this digital photo frame offers far more at this price than most other frames, some even costing more.
Pexar 11-inch Digital Photo Frame review: Price and release date
- $159.99/£149.99
- Launching in the US and UK on September 5, 2024
- Frameo app is free, or Frameo+ is $1.99/£0.99 per month
The Pexar 11-inch Digital Photo Frame was released on September 5, 2024 and is now available directly from Pecos LargeAs well as products from major retailers such as Amazon.
It retails for $159.99/£149.99, which puts it right in the middle of the market – it’s more expensive than cheap and cheerful options like the 10-inch Aeezo Portrait 01, but it’s half the price of the premium Aura Walden.
One thing worth considering is that you don’t need to pay for a cloud subscription to start using Pexar: its local storage means you can upload photos using the Frameo app for free. However, you may find yourself wanting to upgrade to Frameo+: at $1.99/£0.99 per month or $16.99/£7.99 per year, the upgraded tiers will allow you to upload 100 photos at a time (instead of 10), and you can upload up to Upload videos two minutes long instead of 15 seconds. It also provides access to cloud backups of photos and allows you to browse images sent to Pexar via a smartphone app.
Pexar 11-Inch Digital Photo Frame Review: Specs
| aspect | 7.4 x 11.2 inches (18.9 x 28.4 cm) |
| display size | 11 inches |
| solve | 2000 x 1200, 212 pixels per inch |
| aspect ratio | 5:3 |
| touchscreen | Yes |
| sound | built-in speaker |
| direction | portrait or landscape |
| storage | 32GB |
| Connectivity | Wi-Fi, SD card, USB-A, USB-C |
Should I buy the Pexar 11-inch Digital Photo Frame?
Buy it if…
Don’t buy it if…
Pexar 11-Inch Digital Photo Frame Review: Also Consider
| Header Cell – Column 0 | Pexar 11-inch digital photo frame | Ola Varden | Ezzo Portrait 01 |
|---|---|---|---|
| display size | 11 inches | 15 inches | 10.1 inches |
| solve | 2000 x 1200, 212 pixels per inch | 1600 x 1200, 133 pixels per inch | 1280×800 |
| aspect ratio | 5:3 | 4:3 | 16:10 |
| touchscreen | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| sound | built-in speaker | built-in speaker | Row 4 – Cell 3 |
| direction | portrait or landscape | portrait or landscape | portrait or landscape |
| storage | 32GB | not applicable | 32GB |
| Connectivity | Wi-Fi, SD card, USB-A, USB-C | Wifi | Wi-Fi, SD card, USB |
How I tested the Pexar 11-inch digital photo frame
I tested the Pexar 11-inch Digital Photo Frame for two weeks. I used the Frameo+ app to upload various photos and set up a few others so they could share photos with the frame as well.
I upload a range of images including portraits and landscapes, everything from brightly colored photos of animals and flowers to black and white landscapes. I’ve also uploaded a series of videos to evaluate their resolution and refresh rates. I tried this frame in multiple locations around my house Technology Radar Office and change its orientation to portrait and landscape.
I am an experienced photographer and have been shooting on my camera for many years Canon DSLR and my iPhone 16 Pro. I have taken over 40,000 photos over the years and spent many years post-production on them and preparing images for print, which means I have a keen eye for how to display images so that they look as natural as possible.
