Philips PET723 portable DVD player

Get any closer than 30cm and you’ll be hard pushed not to be distracted by this – it’s difficult not to spend time picking out the individual pixels. Sit a little further back, though, and things look rosier. The resolution issues largely disappear, and the picture looks clear and sharp; fast-paced action scenes are dealt with well, and colours are vibrant without being garish.

You will, however, be left squinting to see all the action in dark scenes, while brightly-lit sequences tend to look a little washed out - fiddling with the brightness and contrast settings did little to help. We also noticed a small amount of backlight creep at the bottom of the screen – nothing detrimental, but it can be irritating at times.

Snaps can be loaded via an SD card or CD/DVD, but there’s no internal memory

As a digital photo frame, the PET723 is fine, just as long as you make sure your guests view from a reasonable distance. Get up close and the low resolution display absolutely murders your snaps. No less than 17 transitions help ease the boredom between shots, with a choice of intervals from five seconds right up to two hours.

Snaps can be loaded from an SD card or CD/DVD, but there’s no internal memory. A small annoyance is that the power cable can be seen poking out from the side of the chassis - not great if you’re planning to have it on show in the lounge.

The drive makes a heck of a noise

At 800g, the player won’t weigh you down too much when on the move, but with no battery level indicator you’re left guessing whether or not a recharge is required before you head out. An unnecessarily large warning icon merrily flashes away when battery level reaches critical, so your last ten minutes of viewing pleasure will be all but ruined.