Aura Launches $499 Cordless E-Paper Photo Frame With 3-Month Battery Life

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Aura, known for its digital photo frames, today announced the launch of the $499 Ink Frame. The Ink Frame is Aura's first color e-paper display, with all other models using LCD displays. According to Aura, the Ink Frame is meant to show photos with a softly lit, vintage look that more closely resembles a printed picture than a digital screen.

aura ink frame
The 13.3-inch frame features an E Ink Spectra 6 display with a resolution of 1600 x 1200. Spectra 6 supports six colors, but Aura uses a dithering algorithm to create the appearance of millions of tones. Like Aura's other frames, the Ink Frame supports uploading an unlimited number of photos to Aura's cloud service. Aura users can also have friends and family members send photos directly to a frame with the Aura app.

Because the Ink Frame uses e-paper, it uses little battery, so this is also the first Aura frame that is cordless. The Ink Frame provides up to three months of battery before it needs to be recharged with the included USB-C port and cable. The Ink Frame does not have a backlight, and it instead includes a built-in front light that adjusts to the ambient lighting in the room and turns off in the dark.

Aura says that the Ink Frame automatically transitions to a new photo overnight to maximize battery life, and when rendering each photo, the frame rearranges millions of capsules, causing the screen to flash. It is meant to show just one photo per day, and more frequent updates will impact battery life. Photo transitions take approximately 30 seconds.

The 0.6-inch frame is much thinner than Aura's other frames. It has paper-textured matting and a glossy finish for the image that's displayed, which Aura says makes it look like a classic frame and not a piece of tech. Brightness adjusts automatically to match the ambient lighting of the room that the frame is in.

The Ink Frame can be positioned in portrait or landscape orientation, and it comes with hardware for tabletop or wall mounting. It features a graphite frame with a white paper-like mat.

Aura's Ink Frame is available from the Aura website for $499.

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Top Rated Comments

Martin Bland Avatar
Martin Bland
13 weeks ago
One more unnecessarily cloud dependent device. A brick in waiting when the company loses interest in supporting it.
Score: 23 Votes (Like | Disagree)
joeblough Avatar
joeblough
13 weeks ago

I wish they had the option to cycle the pictures more than once / day.
from the website:


Designed for calmer living, Ink automatically updates to a new photo overnight, or you can set the frame to update more frequently in the app. The photo transition takes approximately 30 seconds and includes flashing on the screen as each color pigment shifts to create the updated photo. You can also use the on-frame buttons to cycle through your photos in real time.
i'd be all over this but i hate the fact that it's tied to their cloud. company goes away, your pictures go away.
Score: 22 Votes (Like | Disagree)
nathanjbrown Avatar
nathanjbrown
13 weeks ago
It bums me out that people aren't impressed by technology anymore. So depressing. I've been waiting for this tech since the digital camera became mainstream; some way to display photos on a "digital canvas" without a backlight and without the need for constant power. We're SO CLOSE! In another iteration or two, you won't be able to distinguish a print from a display. Incredible. I'll take one for the team and buy one, just so that all the cheap, unimpressed consumers in the world can have their boring, mind-blowing tech for $39.95.
Score: 19 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Just_Kevin Avatar
Just_Kevin
13 weeks ago
Yup, cloud based makes this a hard pass from me.
Score: 18 Votes (Like | Disagree)
techfirth Avatar
techfirth
13 weeks ago

Too bad about the cloud. I'd accept a cloud connection if the frame worked without it and the cloud only added some optional features. Or if the seller offered an iron-clad guarantee of support for the next 15 or 30 years. But you know for sure that the cloud backend will vanish as soon as they sell the last of these frames.
You also know it would’ve been impacted by the AWS outage yesterday.

“Oh hey Chris - nice place! Out of interest, why have you framed a 404 error over there?”
Score: 15 Votes (Like | Disagree)
ThisIsMike Avatar
ThisIsMike
13 weeks ago
This is really cool in and of itself. Unfortunately-
1) It’s $500. Pass
2) It doesn’t allow an SD card, so you are completely dependent on the company, which is exactly what they want.
3) The photo cloud storage is free and unlimited. lol, right. Until it’s not. We’ve seen this story so many times before by now.

I’ll wait for a cheaper, better alternative from a competitor that allows for an SD card. And you’d better believe that’s going to come, just like there are way cheaper digital picture frames out there than Aura’s

(PS in the interest of fairness, Aura is generally well-reviewed for its quality and simplicity. I have family members who really like their frames. But I can’t personally invest in a frame that doesn’t at least allow the option to store photos directly on the device.)
Score: 11 Votes (Like | Disagree)
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