Axion AXN-9700 7-Inch Widescreen LCD Digital Picture Frame

I sent an email with the following question to customer service:
"Which formats may I play on Axion AXN6079 7-Inch Twin Monitor Portable DVD System?"
First email answer:"This unit will play most formats." Signed by Reginald K. Johnson.

Asked again:"Will you be so kind to tell me exactly which formats does it play? There are more than 30 video formats...
Textual Answer:"All excerpt VCD's." Signed by Reginald K. Johnson

Third email: Are u sure you want to work in customer service? I'm planning not to buy the equipment due to your help.

2 weeks and still no answer...

Ordered two of these as gifts - expected to easily be able to transfer pictures from my computer to frame since it was advertised as coming with a USB port adapter. Not so. The adaptor included is not a USB standard size but for a flash file. Also, one of the two boxes arrived with no adaptor at all.

This picture frame has been running almost continously since Christmas and works great with a 4 GB SD chip. Our whole photo album is displayed on it with music when we want it.

Considering that I bought the item on sale, at a pretty good price, it is a moderately good buy. At full price I would have been very disappointed.

First of all, the frame is very cheesy, not even as nice as most plastics or composites that are used now-a-days.

Secondly, the operation is not as straight forward and user friendly as it could be.

Finally, there are few options, such as transition types or effects. As a digital picture frame, it functions, and it does hold a good number of pictures in its memory, and again... the sale price was great.

This product was shipped and received quickly and in good shape. The product works easily and as described. The only downside is high-res photos look blurry. Low-res actually work better.

After a lot of agonizing over which digital frame to get I chose this one. I guess its OK but it isn't what I expected it to be. For one thing it didn't come with any instructions or info on how to set up the photo's on the memory card or how to put some of them into it's limited internal memory. I read reviews that said it would show several 100 to 1000's of photos on one 512mg SD card. I cant get it to show more than about 120 photos and only those on the card that are not in a folder and only in one long slide show. I cant get it to show anything in separate folders or sub-folders. As for the mp3 playing I haven't tried that yet.
Picture quality is OK and it only takes extra time to load them if they are very large. If you re-size them for the size of the screen they load OK. Overall I'm disappointed in it for what it cost me. But I guess that we aren't supposed to want very much out of something that's a little over $100 any more.

Pleased with the size, the speed, the capability. The resolution, contrast and viewing angles could be better (not quite up to the high def standard I had hoped)...., Since my purchase, I have had this thing on a running in my living room and is very nice. Make sure you have a large memory card > 1gb to go with....

I purchased this digital frame as a Christmas gift. Before giving the digital frame, I copied JPEG photos from my computer onto an SD card, and added an mp3 file for the music. Some of my photos I needed to crop to 6X8 first, to prevent the black area on the sides or top & bottom of the frame. You can use your SD card (or one of the other compatible formats) right from your camera. No cropping needed except for the portrait views. It also has internal memory too. You can zoom in your photos. This digital frame is easy to use. It doesn't have many options, which I approve of. You can adjust the contrast and the length of the photo viewing. The volume is harder to hear if the frame is hanging on the wall. The display quality of the photos is very good. I also like the looks of the frame, and that is comes with a remote. The only thing I am disappointed with is that it described the power adapter to be an ac/dc 9v. I thought this meant it could be used with a battery. It doesn't. This is what I wanted, since this frame would be hanging on a wall. If you plan to hang your digital frame on the wall, I would not choose a smaller frame than 10.4. Other than the lack of clarity in the description of the power adapter, I am satisfied with this digital frame.

This is my 2nd frame. The first one requires to edit the pictures taken from camera to fill the screen. This one, with a standard resolution of 640x480, you just select a resizing to a 20x25 640 pixels in Picasa and voilá!!.

Cons: Play only MPEG videos. Videos taken from Canon Camera can't be played on it.

When you load it up with pictures, choose you custom settings, and give it to your granny... You will find that your custom settings are forgotten every time it is unplugged. This is inexcusable!

At the time I purchased this frame, it was reasonably priced for the size screen that it offered. My only complaint about the product is that it does not have an option to randomly sort the pictures loaded to it for the slide show. This may not be an issue for some, but I was compiling pictures from relatives to give as a gift, and was hoping for the pictures to shuffle randomly across all relatives, rather than by title, as it appeared to, despite my efforts to manually sort them on the memory card. Otherwise, the resolution is good and the frame itself is attractive and blends nicely when out on display.

This digital picture frame is probably the biggest money-waster you will ever have. I have just received one as a gift and nothing works on it. The screen is supposed to be touch-sensitive but it is not; the buttons have response time of well over 2 seconds! By the time the "copy" button activates the "copy" screen, the picture I wanted to save on the digital frame has moved on... furthermore, once the option does come up, it won't go away and I cannot even see the next 2 pitures showing. I have not been able to save any of my pictures on the built-in memory! The picture quality is very poor! In the age of flat screen monitors, this is a BIG junky! Save your money!

Reason why this product is not recommended by me:
The transitions between photos takes too long (2.5 - 3) seconds.
It is not as smooth as the other brands I've seen in stores.

I put 2 different kinds of SD cards in the unit to view my photos.
After taking the cards out, all of the photos were destroyed and can be only viewed by using the axion unit. I tried every means possible to retrieve or fix the photos. I tried Bad Disk Pro, various card readers, everything. I also did everything I could to figure out where I could send the unit for repair, but Axion has very little to no info online. Stay clear of this unit and this company.

I am am not as happy with the resolution as I had hoped. I suggest potential buyers look as samples in stores and note what resolution which you find acceptable to compare with the technical specs of on-line digital picture frames. More magapixels doesn't improve the display but it does increase the loading times. A nice feature is that the batteries allow it to be passed from hand to hand. Another aspect that I don't like is that the display area is wider than typical diginal photos so that there is either back bars on either side of the photo or it gets cropped on top and/or bottom.

Product worked well right out of the box, vey nice and clear picture, we like it very much.
Only drawback is that it's not really 4:3, so there are always dark bars on each side, unless you crop your pictures.

In trying to find a digital picture frame for my parents, I found my self overwhelmed with options and misinformation. I finally decided on this one (mostly because of another amazon reviewer) and I feel I made the right choice.
As long as you put your images into separate folders, each containing 500 or less images it will show thousands of images.
I only tried out the Mp3 playing feature when I first opened it, but really never use it. It seems to me that it would become annoying very quickly.
Finally after a Summer of my parents enjoying it. My Aunt asked me to get her the same one. That's what this review is from, my second purchase of this item... as far as I can tell she is happy with it too.

I purchased this frame for my grandmother's 90th birthday. This is the second digital frame I've purchased from Axion. The first was advertised with a remote, which it did not actually include. When I called customer service they explained that the item was listed incorrectly on Amazon. You may ask then why I choose to purchase a second frame with Axion...I don't know honestly.

My issue is one of aesthetics rather than functionality. The frame functions well. The resolution is nothing to get excited over, but the technology is amazing.

Axion uses the same generic picture to advertise their product even when the product differs. The first frame I received was high-gloss faux-mahogany (dark brown). It is clearly fake, but still looks rather nice. The second frame is not glossy AT ALL and is almost a faux-cherry wood color. It looks horrible. Not only does it look fake, but it is pink.

Again, I called customer service and was told to send it back to them for an exchange, which would take 2 weeks. One and a half months later my grandmother received her frame back...the same frame presumably (with no note, explaination, or apology). So, I marched on down to their corporate office and asked them to explain. They told me that the picture on the box (and on this website) is a generic picture and that the pinkish-brown frame was the intended color. At this point it was too late to return it, so I just purchased another frame (from a different company) for my grandmother.

The product was very poor quality. The refresh of the pictures was very slow and not worth it. I had to return it - it was a gift and was going to be embarrassed.

I have since bought a Kodak and liked it very much -the idea is good however this is not the frame to buy.

My sister said it plays great, we just can't get dear ole mom to use it!!

When I bought this, it was the most affordable digital picture frame so I thought to give it a try.
Unfortunately, the pictures did not turn out as good as I had hoped.
I even resized it so that it doesn't have to resize itself but 480 x 234 pixels doesn't really help.
I realized that I had to go for about an 800x600 pixels to get a quality that I can accept so I returned it.
The only good thing was that you can put batteries in it to make it mobile unlike many other frames.

For a cheap first try into digital frames, this one's not too bad. However, there are reasons why it's cheaper - most importantly, the screen quality is nowhere near good, at all. Pictures are blurry and colors too shiny. Pictures also take a good 5 seconds to show up in the slideshow mode. Other than that, the frame itself is cheap plastic, and there is no USB port, which is a huge bother. I guess it's a cheap mistake - but it's sure a better idea to spend some more money and buy a frame where pictures show up as they should.

This is a great frame for the price. Since it is only a 480 X 234 display, it doesn't do justice to high quality landscape shots but if you need a low resolution display in widescreen format, this will do the trick. If you are after a high resolution widescreen frame, you are going to have to spend a lot more money than this.

The display is just above average but the frame they could have done a lot better. It's like a plastic cheapo frame covered with a woodgrain sticker over the top of it. Instead of accenting the picture it tends to take away from it.

I do not own this device. I am not reviewing it so much as clarifying several reviews. A lot of the reviews are of the 9900 (9") model. The 9700 (7") model has a lower resolution (480x234 instead of 600x480). It also has no USB port. These comments are available in the discussion/comments sections after some reviews, but a lot of people have bought this frame without reading those sections and I thought it was worth stating. I am buying this as a gift. If I wanted to spend $100, I would buy the 9". Since I want to spend less, I will not buy this device because the 7" model is not good enough for a present.

I only just set it up last night and I haven't been able to stop watching as all of my favorite pictures roll by continuously. The picture quality is perfect, almost better than my computer screen.

I think they should make some of them in 30" screens. I'd buy a ton of them and put them up rather than picture frames or paintings.

I was disappointed to discover upon delivery that Amazon's product description of this item was inaccurate in two important respects. First, it does not have video output capability. Second, it does not accept compactflash media. In addition, I found that the player recognized only one of my removable media devices, a USB flashdrive. It did not recognize CF media in a USB adapter, XD media in a USB adapter, or a portable hard drive. It also would not play the video clips taken with my digital camera, even though the format was listed as compatible with the player. So, I returned it. I will try a DVD player which doubles as a digital picture frame.

The perfect gift for your wife if she has a cubicle at work. Picture plus and MP3; just the perfect gift.

My mother-in-law loved her Mother's Day gift, but shipping was way slower than we were told. It was not delivered within the Amazon window.

I ordered this picture frame for my mom as a gift for mothers day. It's a decent size screen but if your looking at it from an angle the picture is either blurry or dark, that is just one down fall, the other is you have to put your disk card from your camera to play the pictures their is no internal memory to download pics to, So you lose your card for taking pics.. Anyway I wasted my money on this item because my mom hardly uses it for that reason she only has one card for her camera...

I really liked this frame, the price was great, it was easy to set up, and the picture quality was very good.

Not the best quality, but good for the money that it cost.

We've had this digital frame for a couple of weeks now and couldn't be more pleased. We got a good deal on it with a rebate, so the value was particularly attractive. We have a 4 MB SD card in it with around 400 photos. It does have the black bar on the sides but that's not a big deal to us. I may eventually try to resize photos on another card to fit the full screen, but I don't consider that to be an urgent project. Friends who have dropped by have really been impressed with it.

I have not tried to hook it up directly to a PC and doubt I will. I can make any changes I want to directly to the card (check out the IOGEAR Universal Memory Drive Hi-Speed USB 2.0 Memory Card Reader/Writer on Amazon; it's great!)

The screen size is great for the price, the frame looks very tasteful, and it delivers on performance. I have noticed that the picture quality is a direct delivery of what you put into it. Photos taken on a higher end camera look better than those taken on a lower end camera (no surprise, but the lower end shots do seem to look more "lower end" on this device than on a PC or a print).

I recommend this digital frame.

A little smaller than I expected from the pictures on the web.
My fault for not checking the measurement properly.
Received in perfect condition and before the time estimate.
Product performs exactly as specified - no complaints - and easy to use.

The concept of a digital picture frame is great. You don't need a computer, you don't need to squint at the postage size viewer on your digital camera, just sit back and watch your slide show. I thought it would be a great gift for my technology challenged mother.
The Axion AXN-9700 is a good start. It doesn't match the resolution of even a poor quality film photograph, and this unit is overly difficult to operate for anything but the standard slideshow. But, it did capture the attention of everybody at the Mother's Day dinner. I guess I got what I paid for.

We ordered these frames for our 3 moms for mother's day. I was not impressed with the plastic faux wood frame - so I painted it. Now, it looks fantastic! As for the pictures, it is awesome. I bought a 1G memory sd card and have put almost 500 photos on it. I found a two pack of 1G memory cards at Circut City made by Polaroid for $29 bucks! I like the black "bars" on the side - it's like watching a movie. True it doesn't shuffle, but that doesn't really matter. Actually, it's kind of better that way. I have two little ones and some photos we have are actually consecutive scenes. Keeping the photos in order is a positive. To paint the frame I did not sand or do any prep work. Just used a water based product. I left the inner black surround to actually touch the picture. I am on the site now to order three more for father's day gifts! As far as quality goes, you are talking about a 7" frame - not a 40" HD tv. I think the photos are great - and I am showing off my 2 and 3 year old boys that I am only a little (hee hee) proud of!

I bought both the Axion AXN-9700 7-Inch Widescreen LCD Digital Picture Frame and Coby DP772 7-Inch Widescreen Digital Photo Frame with MP3 Player in the same time.
Comparing it to Copy its just not the value for money, the colours arent that good so if you want to put the frame on a desk or table the people around wont have a good luck unless they take it and stare at it to realize whats the pic. about.

in summary you dont want to spend this money on something not that value.
try other brands i suggest

I was skeptical about buying one of these but it turned out great!!! The pictures come up so brilliant. It even does a slide show for you as well so it's cool not having to take the frame apart to changes pictures. The only thing I didn't like was the fact that it didn't have a storage card with it. We had to buy one separately. We couldn't use our digital camera memory card for some reason.

I've only had experience with the Pandigital 7 and 8 inch models and the Axion 9 inch - so this all have have to compare with. The Panditigals are SO easy - just link to your computer and your done. Don't need a memory card at all (as long as you reduce the storage, there's lots of built-in storage). The 7inch widescreen automatically adjusts the photos to widescreen so there aren't any bars on the right and left sides.

After saying that about the Pandigitals, here's what I have to say about the Axion. I bought this because it was only $99 - "What a deal," I thought when buying it in May 2007 (compared to the $80 7" and $130 8" Pandigitals). But if you are going to show more than 20 photos (regardless of size), you HAVE to use a memory card - so figure that into your costs if you need to buy a new one. Here's are some of my thoughts:

The Look - It's a widescreen - a little less than 8" by 5". The "wood" frame is plastic and I don't really care for it. There's a black plastic inner border that is nice to help mask the photos that don't come all the way to the edge.

Uploading photos - If you don't care about black blank "bars" being on the right and left side of your photos, then this is a great deal for you but you really don't get the full advantage of the screen size. If you bought an 8" screen, you wouldn't have to deal with this model's widescreen "bars" issue and you get about the same screen space in the end. I found the "bars" distracting and couldn't not figure out how to fix this consistently via the frame's program. Therefore, I took the time consuming effort to edit each photo to a wide frame size. Shutterfly Studio (downloadable for free) allows you to do this at 16x5. Then I reduced the resolution to 72 dpi. I even changed my portrait sized photos into landscape widescreen size since they really look better. The slide show mode does not shuffle the photos. However you load them is the same order they are shown, over and over. The slide show does not have any various on how they One nice thing about this unit is if you saw a photo that you want to see again and want to go back to it, it's easy to press the back button to see it again. When in the slide show mode, the fading between one photo and the next is the same it scrolls on from the top to the bottom. There's no variation (the Pandigitals offer variation).

The Mechanics - It comes with some kind of chord but it doesn't fit into a computer. Not sure what you'd use it for but you can't directly connect with the computer to the frame. I guess since you really need a memory card to put lots of photos on, it doesn't matter. I needed to connect my computer to my camera, load the photos and then pull the disk out and put in frame. The remote control is nearly completely useless. The receiver is behind the unit and you need to point it directly at it to make it work. Fortunately all the buttons found on the remote are on the back too. There's no spot to store the remote in back of the frame. I found maneuvering through the menu functions rather difficult and frustrating. Once you get the photos formatted, loaded, and running, it's nice but it's lots of effort to really make it look good. The screen is like a screen on a laptop - you can touch it (there's nothing protecting it) and when you touch it, it's kind of springy.

I hope this helps you know what you might be purchasing.

I purchased the 8" Widescreen Digital Frame. I don't know what people are talking about when they say you don't get a remote or USB cable, etc. Everything that was advertised came with my order. I thought this product was very user friendly, the picture was very good, and it looks great. The frame may be plastic but it is heavy duty and looks very nice. The only problem I had was I expected my Sony Memory Stick Pro to work in it since it said it worked with Memory Stick brand memory cards. It didn't - I had to use a non-pro version. For the price I think this frame is the best one out there.

The Axion 9700 7 in picture frame looks great with the simulated wood and is just the right size. You can use the internal memory to store about 20 pictures with the option of using a memory card for an unlimited amount of storage depending on the size of the card. The only negative issue I had was getting my photos to dislay in the full frame size without the black bands at the edges. I called cusomer service and they said I needed to "resize" them to 6X9 (1600X1900). After figuring that out it works good. This to me did not make it easy to download pictures. Also the supplied instructions are very vague.

We are very pleased with this product and the price was excellent. The delivery was swift !!!! Would recommend this company and the product.

I have two 8" picture frames that are other brands, and they are GREAT and I use them for Open Houses all the time! I got this one as a gift from a friend, and it is terrible!! The instructions are difficult to understand. The wide screen makes everyone in the picture look FAT and distorted! This is a weird size and I am not happy at all!! I don't recommend it.

I found the frame reasonably easy to use. Did not have to reformat my pics. Great valeu.

I bought this frame for my wife. She has alot of digital pictures and no good way to see them all. After reading the reviews by others, I decided to try this one. She loves it. With the little card reader we have for our computer, she can drag and drop her photos to an SD card. Then just plug in the card, hook up the AC power, and turn on the frame. It goes to the slide show automatically.
We didn't bother to re-size or crop the photos. The 1/2" black bars on each side of the photo just aren't that bothersome to us. No remote controls or sound features but if you're looking for a simple frame to just show off all your digital photos, at a reasonable price, this one is great.

I was lookin for a big frame without the big price, this is perfect!! Very easy to use I bought a 256m sd card filled it with about 130photos and just put the card in, after adjusting the brightness I was all set, its very simple to use, and for the price well worth it!!!

I have been looking for this traditional look photo frame for quite a long time. I search no more. I have found it. I love this unit and it's very user friendly. Pros--nice frame design and clear widescreen. Fast slideshow. Pictures don't distort like others. Internal memory can store up to 20 hi-res photos. on-screen menu and shown buttons. Best of all: Last memory! Cons--buttons on top and can be just a few. No CF.

I am pleased with the purchase. Very good value. Picture quality is good and it is easy to operate. Only negative is that it was advertised as wood frame when in fact it is plastic. However, it looks good. This is my second purchase of this product: one for myself and one as a gift.

This is NOT a high-tech digital frame. It doesn't play MP3's. It doesn't come with a remote. It simply reads your digital pictures from a card and displays them in a slide show mode. There's an "on" button and an "off" button. There is no manual to read in order to learn how to operate your frame (though it does come with a one-page instruction sheet). It's great for your office desk when all you need to do is reach over and turn it on or off. If you want to display it in a difficult-to-reach location, or choreograph your pictures with music, then this is not the frame for you.

My husband ordered this frame at a local electronics store as a Christmas gift. After a month and a half, I was very excited to pick it up today. My excitement was short lived. In the box was the frame, an ac adapter and a small 1 pg manual. The manual inside the box stated that is comes w/ a remote and a usb connector. At first I thought they were just missing form the box, but after looking at the frame I noticed that there was no place for a usb connector.
I took it right back to the store and requested a refund!!

This is a really nice product. Looks good, functionality is great and very easy to use.