Maplin 6-Inch Calendar Clock Digital Photo Frame

I remember 20 years ago, I had to beg my mum to let me develop the film from my disposable camera. Every birthday around that time, I would receive a photo frame. It was an ‘in’ thing during that time.

Nowadays, people rarely print photos and frame it on a photo frame to place it on a desk. Times have changed and everything is going digital. We all love the latest gadgets and how they made our life easier. So I was excited to review this lovely Maplin 6-Inch Calendar Clock with built-in Digital Photo Frame. Why print photos when I can just pop it on an SD card in this gadget to showcase a slideshow of photos?

The Maplin Calendar Clock has a black matt finish frame with a slim design (6mm thick).   It looks very stylish sitting on my white desk and doesn’t take up a lot of your working space when stood upright in portrait mode.  It is easy and straightforward to set up.

I love the picture quality on the high resolution LED panel.  It is very sharp and clear (all our images on the SD card are at least 2MB).  It supports SD/SDHC memory cards up to 32GB.  Half of the memory card sticks out of the clock base but it doesn’t pertrude enough to be in contact with the desk.

The clock allows you to choose from a variety of different layouts for how the photos and the calendar display. I prefer to display the photo on top with the calendar neatly below it.  The calendar only displays in portrait mode. In landscape mode, it only displays the photos but not the calendar.

There are five intervals to choose from for the slideshow: 20 seconds, 1 minute, 30 minutes, 1 hour or 1 day. For me, I prefer to have the photo change every 20 seconds to keep it fresh. I also chose to have it display in a random order.

Another really useful feature is that it is able to turn off the display during certain times. For example, between midnight to 8 am when there is no one sitting at the desk. It uses about 3W of power with the display on and no power at all when in sleep mode which is very impressive.

Setting the calendar to start from Monday is also useful for me.  Some calendars you see start the week on Sunday which makes no sense to me. There are also 7 different colour themes to choose from.

One downside of the product is that the power cord is only around one metre long.  I’d recommend you think about where you can place this without compromising on the location as it has to be mains powered. It does carry a button battery which saves your settings. Overall, I rate this 4.5 stars out of 5. For only £17.99 at Maplin’s website, it is a very good value calendar clock with digital photo. It makes a great gift.

• Clock with 12 / 24-hour time formats and timer function
• Perpetual calendar displays year, month, date and day of the week
• Display has 8 language options: English, French, German, Italian, Polish, Spanish ,Portuguese and Russian
• High resolution 6-inch TFT LED panel
• 480 x 800 pixels resolution
• 16:9 aspect ratio in portrait
• Light sensor saves power – the brightness is adjusted automatically
• Photo slideshow in landscape and portrait modes
• Ultra-slim design – just 6mm thick
• Supports up to 32GB SD/SDHC memory card (not included)
• Main unit is powered by a DC 5V / 600mA adaptor (included)
• Dimensions of main unit (w x d x h): 113 x 51 x 174mm

Disclosure: We received the sample for the purposes of writing this review, however, all thoughts and opinions remain our own.