The Dragon Touch Classic 10's hook is that your friends and family can email photos straight to your frame. But is that feature enough for us to recommend it? Find out in our full review.
The Classic 10 is a decent, budget-friendly smart frame. On the plus side, it has plenty of storage and a number of options to get your photos to the screen: email, FTP, SD and USB. On the minus side, there's no way to organise photos or create slideshow playlists and the design is a bit generic.
It would be a good purchase for people (particularly non-tech lovers) who want a simple, no-frills, smart frame that can receive snaps from friends and family.
Price When Reviewed
- $129.99
What comes in the box is a smart frame, a mini USB lead, a 6ft power adapter and a stand. UK residents will also need a plug adapter as it's made for a US socket. The frame must be plugged in whenever it’s in use.
The Classic 10 has 16GB of photo and video storage space. According to Dragon Touch, that’s enough for 40,000 photos at 30KBs each.
There is no remote and you can’t use the app to control the frame, except to email photos for it to display.
Design & Build
On the plus side, the Classic 10 looks like a real picture frame, not a tablet. The digital frame market seems to be waking up to the fact that people who are buying a smart frame instead of a hub want something with a bit more aesthetic appeal than a functional matt black surround.
On the minus side, it’s the sort of picture frame you probably wouldn’t buy yourself. It’s a little generic, in a low-key, dark wood-effect finish. Both the Nix Iris and the Aura Digital, feature much more stylish frames.
The Classic 10 has a 1280 x 800 screen with a 16:10 aspect ratio. That’s the minimum requirement for HD. Your pictures will be good quality (HD-ish), but they won’t look as sharp as they do on your phone. The ‘10’ in the device’s name refers to the 10 inch diagonal screen measurement.
Setting up
The set-up process is straightforward: you simply download the free OurPhoto app and follow on-screen instructions. Or at least it should be.
The first frame I received was missing its frame ID, the unique reference number that allows Dragon Touch’s system to locate your device and attach it to your account.
If you buy one and can’t find the frame ID, get in touch with the company and they’ll replace your frame right away. I mention this because I found the same thing had happened to another product reviewer, so it’s perhaps a common issue.
The App
The top third of the OurPhoto app home screen is a stock picture of a bedroom. It does nothing, it can’t it be swapped out for one of your pictures and it can’t be removed. Every time I open the app I think: whose bedroom is this and why do I have to scroll past it to send a photo?
Apart from this perplexing design feature, the app is very simple to navigate. At the top of the homepage, there’s a settings cog, which takes you to your account.
Below it are tiles that allow you to take a photo or video to send to the Classic 10, look at your devices list or history of sent pictures. Alternatively, you can just sit back, relax and wonder why the page is dominated by a generic bedroom picture.
Performance & Features
The big plus of the Classic 10 is the number of ways you can get pictures to your frame. The minus is the limited control you have once you get them there.
First, you can use it as an FTP server and upload pictures straight from your PC. (If you have a Mac, the process is a bit more complicated, as you’ll need Android-compatible file transfer software.)
You can also email pictures – either via the app or direct from your email account. You can also allow other people to do the same. This feature may be enough for you to buy it as a gift.
The frame also features a USB port and SD card slot, so you can play pictures directly from storage. However, you can’t upload from those devices. If you want to store a picture on the frame, you’ll need to email or transfer it.
There’s no way to send pics straight from your social media accounts, which is a shame.
Once you’ve got the pictures on the device, your options are very limited. You can’t create albums. You can choose to play a slideshow of all your photos or of photos from one specific sender – but that’s it. There’s no mechanism to sort or separate your pictures. The Classic 10 is essentially just a big bucket.
There are some basic display options. You can choose slideshow settings, such as how long each picture is shown and change the transition effects. You can also display a single image, if preferred.
You can choose whether photos are shown in full screen or not. If you don’t choose full screen, images that don’t match the frame’s orientation will be displayed centred, with blurred bars either side. If you opt for full screen, the picture will be centred and cut off. The latter looks better – if your picture happens to fit. If not, the frame will choose the centre of the photo, which sometimes means you’ll find yourself looking at a picture of mostly neck, with a hint of someone’s face above.
While there is an auto rotate function that allows you to display the frame in portrait mode, it looks much better in landscape. The 16:10 dimensions are just too long for this kind of display.
The touch screen is responsive and its menus simple to navigate. Unlike some other frames, the Classic 10 doesn’t have motion-detecting capabilities, which are useful for saving power. Instead, you can set a start-up and power-down time.
The device’s home screen features a clock and weather app, which can be customised to your location. It also has a basic calendar.
These apps feel really unnecessary. They aren’t visible when you’re displaying photos and as you don’t have a remote, you’ll need to go to the frame and navigate to the home screen to see what the time is. It’s hard to imagine anyone bothering to do that.
Price & Availability
The Classic 10 is available to buy from Amazon both in the US, where it’ll set you back $129.99 and in the UK, where it’s priced at £109.99. In the mad world of digital picture frames, where a single-function device can cost almost as much as a tablet (and sometimes more), this is actually on the lower end of the scale.
For more options, have a look at our round-up of the best smart picture frames.
Verdict
The Classic 10 would be a good gift option for older people or the non-technically minded. Load it up with photos of the family, hand it over and plug it in. Job done. You can email photos straight to the device as soon as you snap them.
But we don’t think it’s the right choice for tech lovers. The lack of options to organise photos and create albums is frustrating. The fact you can't sync with social media accounts is a minor drawback. Much greater is the fact that the frame can apparently hold tens of thousands of photos which can’t be categorised in any way.
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