Sungale ID800WT WiFi Photo Frame Reviewed: Glitchy Disappointment

Considering you can find SD cards, PMPs and even fridges packing WiFi these days, it's something of a surprise that so few digital photo frames include wireless connectivity.  One such exception is the Sungale ID800WT Widget Photo Frame, an 8-inch 800 x 600 touchscreen display which not only promises to show off your holiday snaps – whether locally stored or in an online gallery – but YouTube, GMail and internet radio, too.  Unfortunately, as Zatz Not Funny discovered, the reason so few frames include WiFi is perhaps because the manufacturers handle it so poorly.

Setup is simple, and the weather widget – which relies on your ZIP code to locate itself – works well.  Unfortunately, if you've any greater ambitions than using the ID800WT as a glorified weather station then you may be disappointed: the YouTube and internet radio widgets could be persuaded to work only once or twice, the GMail viewer shows just a few lines of each message, it refused to connect to Picasa and the news widget, while functional, is hardly visually appealing.

The end result is something that reviewer Mari Silbey describes as "decent as a standard digital photo frame, but it's not the tablet of the future".  Somehow it's hard to justify around $165 on something that delivers pretty much the same as counterparts less than half the price.