My hands-on review of the Aeezo 9-inch WiFi Touchscreen Digital Photo Frame

Aeezo is a Chinese digital photo frame brand with several frames under its belt. They contacted me and sent their most popular model the Aeezo Portrait 01, a nine-inch WiFi photo frame with a touchscreen. The frame features the popular Frameo software made in Denmark which I had reviewed in early 2021.

Let’s take a look!

The Aeezo Portrait 01

The Aeezo Portrait 01 frame comes with a little stand that you screw on the back of the frame that holds it in position in both portrait and landscape orientation. You plug in the power supply and you are ready to go. A manual is included but you don’t really need it as the basic setup is easy to do.

All you need is to select your language, choose the WiFi connection and enter the password. You do this using the touch screen of the Aeezo, the app comes later.

The frame is a nice-inch model in black but it is also available in white. It has a 1280 x 800-pixel resolution and an IPS display. IPS refers to the LCD technology and all you need to know at this point is that IPS allows you to look at your frame from the side and you still see the great colors.

The frame has a memory of 16GB of which you can use 11GB for images. This is enough for thousands of images and should you reach that limit, e.g., with many videos, you can always add an SD card up with up to 64 GB in storage capacity.

The frame automatically rotates the images depending on your setup.

Aeezo made a clever move licensing the Frameo software for their lines of photo frames.

The problem with many manufacturers in the past was that their software was buggy and unintuitive. Using popular third-party software like Frameo takes this burden away from the hardware manufacturers who typically are good at the latter but not the former.

Sharing is caring

I described the Frameo software extensively in this article. However, in the meantime, Frameo has added a feature that allows you to share your reaction to photos that friends & family have uploaded to your frame.

So if you discover a new photo you can send a smile or like to the person who sent it by just tapping on the screen. This is a nice feature of the Aeezo frame as feedback encourages your folks to send more photos!

But wait, other people can send images directly to the frame? Yes, but don’t worry, you need to give them permission first. This is done on the frame where you can add a friend with a code. All that person then has to do is to download the free Frameo app on their phones, enter the code and send their photos.

This is all free and, fortunately, there is no subscription that you have to enter into. Many other frames have introduced this and I find it rather annoying.

The advantage of the Aeezo frame is that the images are only stored on the frame itself. This means more privacy as you don’t have cloud storage in between.

However, this also means that if your frame breaks, you have to re-upload your images. Alternatively, you can make a backup to an SD card through the menu.

You can even allow your “friends” to share the frame ID with others – or prevent them from doing so.

I can’t stress how useful it is to let friends and family help populate your picture frame and it’s great that the Aeezo frame offers this feature.

You can, of course, delete any images that you don’t like or even pre-approve them. There is also a notification feature that you can turn on which will play a sound every time a new image arrives.

One thing I missed was transition options, especially crossfading, which provides a smoother experience. The only available option is a “fade to black” transition, which is ok but not my favorite.

Maybe Frameo will release an update where a number of creative transitions are being added. I can’t imagine this to be so hard, the hardware is certainly capable of it.

How does it compare?

The Aeezo Portrait 01 compares with the Feelcare frames and the Dragon Touch model. Feelcare also uses the Frameo software but in terms of hardware, I found the Aeezo a tad more stylish.

If you want cross-fading transitions, you will have to look at the Nixplay frames, but they are quite a bit more expensive.

But if you are looking for an affordable digital picture frame and you don’t want to store your images in the Cloud, the Aeezo is definitely a frame to consider.

Conclusion

I liked the Aeezo with the Frameo software. In the sub $150 segment it provides definitely good value for the money.

I especially liked the possibility to open up your frame to friends & family and be able to send feedback to them in a super-easy way. Not having the images in the Cloud could also be a very important feature for some users.

(Photos: Aeezo, Wolfgang Männel)

Thank you for your support and motivation.