[CES 2009] ALBUM Digital Photo Viewer

By Andrew Liszewski

Even though it looks, feels and mostly functions like the digital picture frames you can buy anywhere these days, the people at the ALBUM booth tried to convince me their photo viewing device was in fact NOT a digital picture frame. And you know what? I kind of believe them. The ALBUM is just a half-inch thin, and features a postcard-sized 7-inch LCD display with a resolution of 800×480 pixels. It’s designed to be easily passed around and shared, just like a stack of printed photos, and in order to allow others standing nearby to see the photo you’re looking at, the company didn’t skimp on the LCD display.

And it shows. The viewing angle on the ALBUM is fantastic. It’s almost as good as the top of the line Dell LCD I use for graphics and photography work, and it’s probably the only reason I stayed at the booth to listen to their spiel. But the device also benefits from a well-polished UI, and the 3 large buttons camouflaged into the edge of the screen’s bezel make navigation really easy. It’s also got 4GB of storage on board, an SD card slot and can even be connected to your digital camera via USB and used as a remote viewer for the images stored in its memory card. The company is currently looking for a brick and mortar store to distribute the ALBUM in North America, but you can actually buy one now from their website for about $200.

[ ALBUM Portable Digital Photogallery ]