What size is the Skylight digital photo frame?
The Skylight digital photo frame comes in two sizes. The first and more popular is Skylight’s 10-inch frame. It has a 16:9 aspect ratio, a 1280×800 display resolution, and dimensions that measure 12” x 8.5” x 0.9”. On Skylight’s online shop, the price of the 10-inch digital photo frame can vary depending on promotions and discounts.
Skylight’s larger digital frame has a 15-inch display with a 16:9 aspect ratio and 1920×1080 resolution. The Skylight 15-inch frame measures 15.8” x 9.9” x 1.4” and is quite a bit thicker than their 10-inch digital frame. On Skylight’s online shop, the price of the 15-inch digital photo frame can vary depending on promotions and discounts.
Both of Skylight’s digital photo frame sizes use touch displays to control and navigate. Additionally, Skylight’s frames can mount on the wall and rest on a flat surface like a coffee table in either landscape or portrait orientations.
Is there a monthly fee for the Skylight digital photo frame?
Skylight has an optional monthly subscription plan called Skylight Plus. Each Skylight frame comes without the Plus subscription by default, but can be activated quite easily. Skylight Plus is a paid annual subscription.
Skylight Plus adds several important features to a Skylight frame. It enables sharing short 1-minute video clips with any of your Skylight frames. You can also add text captions to your photos. Skylight Plus comes with cloud storage and backups. Other Plus features include online access to view and manage some photos through a web interface, access to Skylight’s mobile app, and the ability to organize photos into albums.
The main complaint against Skylight Plus is that it doesn’t offer anything unique. For instance, Pix-Star – a competing Wi-Fi digital photo frame – offers almost all of the same features (and more) without charging extra fees. You can play 2-minute video clips, each frame has free-for-life cloud storage and full access to both the Pix-Star web interface and mobile app.
Skylight and Pix-Star digital photo frames charge similar prices for their 10-inch frames, and Pix-Star’s LUX 15-inch frame is significantly cheaper than Skylight’s 15-inch frame – yet Pix-Star doesn’t charge any extra fees or subscriptions.
What aspect ratio does the Skylight digital photo frame have?
Skylight digital photo frames use a 16:9 aspect ratio on both their 10-inch digital frame and the larger 15-inch frame. Most popular digital photo frames use either a 16:9 aspect ratio or preferably, a 4:3 aspect ratio.
While 16:9 digital frames are arguably better for video playback, 4:3 digital frames are better suited to photo slideshows. Since most smartphone cameras have a 4:3 sensor, it makes it easier to load photos to the frame without mass editing and cropping them first.
A digital frame with a 4:3 aspect ratio will show more photos without having to zoom, crop, distort, or surround photos with black bars to fill the unused space. Digital frames with a 16:9 aspect ratio will usually zoom into photos to fill unused space, but many photos still display black bars around the sides of each photo – making the display feel smaller.
Is the Skylight digital photo frame the best frame?
Skylight digital photo frames are among the most popular frames on the market at the moment, along with Nixplay, Dragon Touch, Pix-Star, and Aura digital frames. Among these popular digital frames, only the Skylight and Nixplay frames are subscription-based. Aura and Skylight frames are online-only frames, meaning they don’t work without Wi-Fi, don’t have internal storage, and don’t support using USB or SD cards.
Nixplay’s frames can work offline but only offer limited functionality. Since Nixplay’s frames – just like Skylight – are subscription-based, you have to pay extra to get full access to all of its features. Aura’s frames are more expensive than almost every other 10-inch frame on the market, all while offering fewer features and functionality than competing frames – though they aren’t subscription-based.
Dragon Touch and Pix-Star frames are among the best value-for-money digital photo frames. They can work online and offline, offer internal storage space, and there are no recurring subscription fees. Pix-Star’s frames offer more features than Dragon Touch and both frames have similar upfront costs.
For families and modern homes, Pix-Star’s frames are arguably the best on the market. You can control each Pix-Star frame remotely, start slideshows, manage settings, and much more. You can manage up to 25 frames from a single account. Using the Pix-Star Snap mobile app and web interface, you can share photos from cloud storage, your phone, email, and more – no matter where you are in the world.
While Skylight frames are by no means bad digital frames, they do struggle to compete in some respects with other top frames due to their high long-term cost (as they are subscription-based). Without paying for Skylight Plus, you don’t have access to essential features that make Skylight a top-spot competitor – all while some competing frames like Pix-Star do so without charging extra fees.
How to send photos to the Skylight digital photo frame?
Skylight digital photo frames support sending photos to any of your Skylight frames by email for free. To gain access to Skylight’s other photo-sharing methods, such as with the Skylight mobile app, you have to pay for the Skylight Plus recurring subscription fee.
It’s worth noting that, unlike many competing frames, Skylight does not support using a USB or SD card and does not have any internal storage. As such, there is no way to load photos to the frame without Wi-Fi, making it a little more difficult for big families and elderly users to share lots of photos.
For comparison, some competing digital photo frames (e.g., Pix-Star) support several photo-sharing methods. You can send pictures and video clips through the supported mobile app, sync photo albums from photo-sharing and cloud storage sites with the web interface, email photos, load pictures via USB or SD card, and much more.
How many photos can the Skylight digital frame hold?
Skylight digital frames feature the same internal storage size that many of the other top digital frames on the market do. They come with 8GB of internal storage. The exact number of photos that the Skylight digital frame can hold varies wildly depending on the average size of the photos sent to the frame.
8GB is enough to hold 30,000 photos with an average size of 300KB per photo. This number then drops for higher resolution and higher quality photos.
One drawback of Skylight frames when compared to digital frames like the Pix-Star is what happens when storage space runs out. When the Skylight digital frame runs out of storage, the oldest photos will be deleted to make space for newer ones. This could mean you might lose your favorite old photos – especially if you don’t pay for the Skylight Plus subscription. Your photos won’t be automatically backed up to the cloud (without the subscription), leaving you more likely to lose your oldest photos.
Can the Skylight digital frame play videos and audio?
The only way to play video and audio files on the Skylight digital frame is to pay for the Skylight Plus subscription. This is required to unlock video playback. Even with Skylight Plus active, you can only play one-minute video clips on the frame.
For comparison, Pix-Star’s digital frames let you play two-minute video clips, send them to the frame via the mobile app or by USB/SD card, include them in slideshows, play audio over slideshows, and much more – all without charging any extra fees.
This means that even with purchasing the Skylight Plus subscription package, these frames struggle to compete with most other premium options. Pix-Star’s frames even let you listen to web music & radio. Alternatively, you can play audio files on the frame from a connected USB/SD card and connect external speakers/headphones for a more immersive viewing experience!