The Nixplay Touch 10 digital photo frame makes the perfect gift, and it's $50 off

Allison Murray/ZDNET

What's the deal? 

The Nixplay Touch 10 Smart Frame is 28% off at Amazon as a Black Friday deal, making it $130 -- in time for holiday gift-giving.

Also: The best Black Friday deals live now

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ZDNET's key takeaways

The Nixplay smart frame retails for $179 and comes in classic black or black. It's easy to set up, and you can invite family and friends to add photos to your frame (even if they don't own a Nixplay). The frame is expensive, especially given that horizontal photos show up pixelated and cut off. 

Remember digital photo frames? They were all the rage in the late 1990s/early 2000s -- when parents and grandparents alike had to own one. They seemed to decline in popularity, but I'm here to say we should make digital photo frames "in" again.

I got my hands on a Nixplay Touch 10 Smart Frame, and I'm impressed. As a millennial, I take hundreds of photos on my phone but rarely print them out to display them in my home. Although digital photo frames are typically associated with older adults, I think everyone should give them -- or at least the Nixplay Touch 10 Smart Frame -- a try. 

Also: The best digital picture frames

The Nixplay Touch 10 Smart Frame comes in black, classic matte, and wood. It has 4.7 out of 5 stars on Amazon and over 22,000 ratings -- so digital photo frames must not be totally out of style.

Setting up the frame was unsurprisingly easy. First, I downloaded the Nixplay app, connected the frame to my home's Wi-Fi, and then paired the frame to the app. I used the free standard plan with the frame, which includes unlimited cloud storage, 5GB of videos, and the basic photo editing suite.

You control your photo "playlists" in the app. This is where you can add, reorganize, or delete photos and videos. The app connects to your phone's media files, or you can upload them using cloud services like Google Photos or Dropbox.

You can also invite friends or family to add photos to your playlist, and they don't need to own a Nixplay frame. I didn't invite my friends to add photos yet, but I will be -- because I'm sure they have some gems (including embarrassing pictures of myself).

Also: How to transfer photos from your Android phone to a Windows computer

On the frame itself, the convenient touchscreen lets you control brightness, the auto-shutoff timer, the slideshow timing, the display mode, the activity sensor timer (which turns off the frame after a certain amount of time without anyone walking in front of the frame), and notifications.

Allison Murray/ZDNET

Seeing photos that have been stuck in my phone for years in my living room was such a nice sentiment. I was married last October and only printed out six of the 2,000 wedding photos from the day, so seeing our entire wedding album come to life inside one frame was super special to me. (I just sat in front of the frame for 20 minutes, reliving the day.)

I also made a playlist of our travels over the past several years, which is fun to see. Walking past the frame and glancing at my memories is becoming my most anticipated moment throughout the day. 

ZDNET's key takeaways

The Nixplay's niX-Spectre HD IPS 1280 x 800 display is bright, and all my photos (even the ones shot on an iPhone in 2019) display vividly without any annoying pixels visible.

After having the Nixplay Touch 10 Smart Frame in my home, I am officially a fan of digital photo frames. Maybe millennials don't print as many photos as we should, but the Nixplay digital photo frame can let us relive hundreds of memories in one single frame.