On the software side, the Aura frame nails my particular use case for showing photos. (The app also allows you to manually schedule on/off times, which is nice, and you can manually turn it on and off using the touch bar.) That’s a big plus, because not only do I not want to have a bright light shining in my office all night, I also don’t want to waste the energy when nobody’s around to look at the pictures. I also appreciate that, like the Google Nest Hub I’ve been using as a makeshift digital photo frame, the Aura features ambient light detection, so when I turn the lights in my office out for the night, the Aura’s screen automatically turns off as well. It’s big, bright, and sufficiently high resolution that, while you won’t mistake it for an analog photo frame, it does a fantastic job of showcasing your photos. Pretty as a pictureĪppropriately, the best feature of the Aura Mason Luxe is the screen. Most of the management of the frame is done via the Aura iOS app, which lets you choose which photos to add and manage the rest of the device’s features.

But two edges of the frame, which are the tops in portrait and landscape respectively, do have a smooth “touch bar”, which is the only hardware interface for interacting with the device.

I was surprised to find when I pulled it out of the box that it extends back around two inches, though that is largely so that it can rest solidly on the bottom edge-in either landscape or portrait orientation-with no fear that it’ll tip over.Īside from the power plug (it uses an included 5V DC adapter with a nice braided fabric cord), and a small speaker on the back, there are no other obvious ports or controls. One thing that may not be immediately apparent about Aura’s frames, however, is their thickness. You can see the smooth “touch bar” strip. The Mason Luxe has the highest resolution display amongst Aura’s lineup: a 9.7-inch “2K” screen with a resolution of 2048-by-1536 pixels and a dark gray speckled plastic frame that Aura describes as “Pebble” it’s also available in a lighter gray called “Sandstone”. A few of their models are top picks in The Wirecutter’s digital photo frame review, including the model I received, the $249 Aura Mason Luxe. They offer a variety of models in several different sizes and finishes, some of which also offer different capabilities. The photo frame I tested is made by Aura, a company that specializes in smart digital photo frames. What I discovered is that there is definitely a niche for this digital spin on an old favorite, but that even a good entry falls short in a few ways. Suddenly a digital photo frame didn’t seem like such a wild idea, so when the opportunity arose for me to check one out, I didn’t hesitate. I could, of course, always have some digital photos printed out and hung in various places, but that would only allow for a subset of all the great pictures I’d taken. Suddenly I found that, despite the thousands of photos I’ve already taken of this child in the first eight months of their life, I had no easy way to display them around the house. To me, they’re a device that seems to belong in that mid-2000s era where people switched to digital cameras, one of those weird bits of translation that supposes that every analog device needs an exact digital counterpart, rather than acknowledging that we simply treat our photos differently now. Of all the standalone devices that I couldn’t imagine I’d need in the year 2023, I would have put a digital picture frame near the top. Review: Aura’s digital photo frame is solid, if not quite picture perfect

Digital photo frame under