A couple of week’s ago we received a digital picture frame from CEIVA to review for you.  We got a CEIVA Pro80 which comes with a swappable front plate and the wood finish plate looks pretty darn good on my parents’ TV table.

Here’s the unit that we set up at my parents’ house.  That’s my oldest daughter in the photo in the frame BTW (pretty cute huh?).  Why did I set this up at my parents’ house?  You’ll see soon enough.

So what’s so special about the CEIVA digital photo frames?  We’ll get to that soon enough but first I wanted to talk about the setup.

Setup

Setup of the CEIVA Pro80 was a breeze.  I pretty much handed the box to my father and told him to set it up himself.  He’s not very tech savvy so this was going to be a good “real world” test.

The setup instructions were easy to follow and he only really got tripped up a couple of times.  There’s a toll free number you can call that will walk you through the process if you run into a snag so sending this to your aunt or grandmother who doesn’t use email shouldn’t come with any concerns.

It’s pretty much plug and play the way we did it.  The wifi adapter goes in the back and you use the menu buttons on the frame to enter your wifi password if needed.

Then we headed to the computer to activate their CEIVA account and sent out invites to my sister and to myself so we could upload digital photographs to the picture frame.

After that we took some of the images from their computer and uploaded them to the frame so there would be some images already rotating and adjusted the settings to our liking.

It took about 20 – 30 minutes from unwrapping the box to final settings.  Nice.

Image quality

I really can’t say enough good things about the image quality.  I have a 3 year old, mid price range, digital photo frame at home and it looks lousy in comparison.

Here are the screen tech specs:

Screen: High resolution, 8-inch active matrix digital LCD screen

Aspect Ratio: 4:3

Display Resolution: 640 x 480

Height: 8.5″

Width: 10″

Connectivity!

The CEIVA digital picture frames are not your usual digital photo frame.  They use a technology called “PicturePlan® Photo Delivery Service” that enables the owner of the frame to enjoy digital slide show images that have been uploaded from friends and family from anywhere around the world without having to upload them to their own computers or USB.

The photo delivery service is exactly why this frame sits at my parents’ house not mine.

Here’s how it works in our situation in a nutshell.

The CEIVA digital photo frame sits at my parents’ house in their living room and is connected to their internet via wifi.  My sister who has a beautiful little girl (cute kids run in the family) lives in another city 6 hours away (in Texas we distance cities by hours not miles) and I live in the same city as my parents but I hate getting on their computer because it’s a mess.

So they don’t always have the latest digital images of their grandchildren.

We try our best to ensure they get CDs full of images from time to time but often, when we finally get around to it, they’ll hold months of pictures on them.

I suppose my parents upload them to their computer and look at them from time to time but that’s pretty much it.

That has now changed.

Now, with the CEIVA digital picture frame, I can upload images from my computer at my house to our CEIVA account and they go into a queue to be placed directly on the frame.  You can set how often the frame checks the queue in the settings.  I like instant gratification so I set their frame to sync every hour.

If, for example, we went on a family vacation and wanted to send my parents a virtual postcard we could.  Or, because my sister has to alternate holidays with our parents and her in-laws, she can now send images of their little one opening Christmas presents 7 hours away and my parents will get to see them pop up on their frame right in their living room…on Christmas!

How cool is that?

The concept behind this was absolutely perfect for our parents.  I know how to upload images to a USB stick and put it in our digital picture frame that isn’t connected to the internet.  My parents, who have an older one as well, never update theirs.  EVER!

Features and Settings

There are tons of cool features and settings that CEIVA has put into their digital photo frames and you can check them all out on their website but here are my favorite features that came with our review unit:

There’s an app for that!

CEIVA has an iPhone app that enables me to upload photographs from my iPhone and send them right to the digital photo frame.  This feature is hands down my favorite and the way I most often send photos to the frame.  It’s part of the whole idea of instant gratification that I love with digital photography in general.

Power save settings!

The one drawback of digital photo frames is that they are always on and that wastes electricity and isn’t very eco-friendly.  CEIVA allows you to set the digital photo frame to sleep at night and wake in the morning so you can save energy, money, and the planet.  Very cool feature.

Variable sync time settings.

By default, if I remember correctly, the frame will sync every night and will upload images from the queue at that point.  We set theirs to sync every hour so new images would just appear throughout the day.  There is a manual sync function you can do from the frame if you leave it set to the default but get a call from someone saying you should see the new pictures uploaded or if someone wants to send you something timely.

Pricing and plans

With the holiday shopping season officially started I would take full advantage of the specials CEIVA is running right now.  The price for the CEIVA Pro80 (0ur unit) is at $119.95 right now and they have the CEIVA share at $99.95 and both units come with one year of the PicturePlan included.   Something to keep in mind if you are gifting this product is that the monthly PicturePlan is $9.95 a month but you can save some cash going annual at $6.95.  This would take effect after they’ve had the frame registered for a year when their frame comes with the PicturePlan.

The PicturePlan is what provides the connectivity that makes these frames really stand out.

I informed my parents about the PicturePlan costs and they both thought it was a reasonable price point for the connectivity and ease of use that it provides.  They need those pictures of the grandchildren and they need them NOW!

Conclusion

Both my parents are really enjoying the CEIVA digital photo frame.  The combination of image quality, ease of use, and connectivity really place this product in a league of it’s own.

We’re giving the CEIVA Pro80 with the PicturePlan® Photo Delivery Service a…

5 out of 5!