Skylight 15-inch Digital Picture Frame review: Grandparents will love it, but I have issues
Hobbled without a subscription and missing several key features, this otherwise lovely device leaves me wanting.
You know all those photos you keep snapping on your phone? Wouldn't it be nice to, you know, see them once in a while? That's the value of a digital picture frame, which displays a running slideshow of precious memories.
I'm a huge fan of these things; check out my roundup of the best digital picture frames to learn why and see my favorites. I'm also a fan of frames with large screens, hence my interest in Skylight's big kahuna. It's an attractive, easy-to-use model that's particularly well-suited to gifting. But does it earn a spot on the best list? Here's my Skylight Digital Picture Frame review.
VERDICT: A nice big frame with some puzzling missteps in the feature department.
- Easy setup thanks to excellent printed instructions
- Large, high-resolution touchscreen
- Can be preloaded with photos for gift-giving purposes
- Automatic brightness adjustment
- Unlimited cloud storage with no monthly fees
- Many features, including videos, available only with subscription
- Viewing angle can't be adjusted
- App doesn't flag photos you've already uploaded
- Some photos must be manually resized to fit the screen
- No transition effects
- No motion detection
The Skylight features a 15-inch touchscreen running at 1,920 x 1,080 pixels. It's a sharp display that can automatically adjust brightness depending on ambient light. However, it lacks motion detection, meaning it can't go into a power-saving mode when there's no one around. (You can, however, manually schedule sleep-mode hours so it's not running 24/7.)
I found setup to be a snap thanks to Skylight's printed instruction guide, which includes large print, clear illustrations and a link to a video tutorial. However, it doesn't provide much detail on using the Skylight app, which is optional — the frame has a dedicated e-mail address you can use to send new photos — but, in my thinking, essential.
Early on in the process, you have the option of choosing whether the frame is for yourself or a gift for someone else. In case of the latter, you can proceed to add photos so the recipient is greeted with them after setup.
Assuming it's for you, you'll have to decide up front if you want portrait or landscape viewing, as the sturdy metal stand gets semi-permanently attached using four screws. Although you can rotate the frame and it'll automatically rotate the pictures accordingly, the stand itself is one orientation or the other. That's kind of a letdown — plenty of other frames have universal stands that work either way — and it's also disappointing that you can't adjust the viewing angle.
If you'd rather bypass the stand altogether, Skylight supplies a wall-mount bracket, which lets you hang the frame in portrait or landscape orientation (and more easily swap between the two).
Skylight Digital Picture Frame: What it's like to use
Once the frame is connected to your home Wi-Fi network, you can start adding photos. I sent my first batch via the app, a quick and easy process. However, once they hit the frame, I noticed that a few weren't properly scaled for the screen. Most frames automatically adjust pictures to fit, or at least provide the option. Not here. I tapped the display in search of a relevant setting, but found only Rotate and Delete.
Alas, the only workaround for an ill-fitting photo is to use a two-finger pinch on the screen — just like on your phone — to zoom in or out. This isn't hard to do — in fact, it's easier than the multi-step gauntlet required by Aura to resize photos on its Walden frame — but why force me to do it? Where's the global "fit to frame" option? It's unacceptable in 2024 that any slideshow machine lacks this capability.
Also unacceptable: The app doesn't flag photos you've already sent to the frame, meaning it's all too easy to accidentally send duplicates. According to a Skylight representative, internal software checks for this and doesn't display any duplicates it detects, but I'd still prefer the app to put a little bug or something atop photos already uploaded. Aura and Pix-Star frames, among others, offer this feature.
The third strike is Skylight Plus, a subscription that unlocks "premium" features. Without it, you can't create albums, upload videos, add captions or — and this is especially ridiculous — access frame settings in the app. Although it's reasonably priced at $39 annually, the vast majority of other photo frames offer most, if not all, these features without a subscription. (For the record, I tested the device with Skylight Plus.)
I don't fully understand the Cloud Backup feature, given that buying the frame affords unlimited cloud storage. You do gain access to a web-based portal for managing photos, but that portal is extremely limited — and it doesn't allow you to download (or even select) your entire library all at once. Not much of a backup.
There are a couple Plus features I do like: Send a Card and Send Kid's Doodle. The former lets you create a custom greeting card, complete with photo (natch), text, stickers and so on. Kid's Doodle is just what it sounds like: Scribble on a digital canvas and the app sends it along to the frame, fully animated from start to finish. The drawing tools are very limited, but it's still a nifty way for, say, a grandkid to send a little custom artwork to a grandparent.
Skylight doesn't give you a ton of control over how photos are displayed. Vertical snapshots can be shown side-by-side, the better to make use of the width of the screen. And there's a slider that lets you adjust the interval between photos, anywhere from 5 seconds to 4 minutes. But that's it. There are no transition effects, no pan and zoom, no option to display a clock or calendar. Everything here feels very basic — not what you want from a $300 frame.
Skylight Digital Picture Frame: Should you buy it?
Much as I like the size and screen quality of the Skylight Digital Picture Frame, it's hard to overlook the missing essentials: motion detection, fit to frame, transition effects and a way to tell which photos you've already uploaded.
That's one reason it feels egregious for Skylight to charge extra for things like videos, albums and an app-based settings menu. Get the basics right first, then we'll talk Plus.
It's precisely because I love digital picture frames so much that I'm being hard on this one. Does it accomplish the goal of keeping your precious memories front and center? Absolutely, and on a sharp, spacious screen to boot. Plus, you get unlimited cloud storage, with or without a Plus subscription. But on the whole, I think there are better options available, especially for the price.
