Aura Launches $499 Cordless E-Paper Photo Frame With 3-Month Battery Life - MacRumors
Skip to Content

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

by

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.

Popular Stories

iOS 27 Next to iPhone

Here's When iOS 27 Rolls Out Today in Every Time Zone [Update: It's Out]

Sunday September 13, 2026 3:00 am PDT by
Update 10:04 a.m.: iOS 27 is rolling out now, though it may take a bit for all users to see it, so keep checking! Apple is about to release iOS 27, which will finally deliver more advanced Siri AI capabilities as well as a variety of other refinements, improvements, and new features to iPhones. It's Apple's biggest software update of the year, and Apple announced at Wednesday's iPhone event...
Read Full Article • 151 comments
iOS 27 Icon iPhone

iOS 27 Available Now With These 8 New Features

Monday September 14, 2026 9:00 am PDT by
Update — 10 a.m. Pacific Time: Apple has released iOS 27. During its iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone Duo event last week, Apple announced that iOS 27 will be released widely on Monday, September 14. iOS 27 should be available around 10 a.m. Pacific Time / 1 p.m. Eastern Time today via the Settings app, under General → Software Update. Below, we have highlighted eight new features and...
Read Full Article • 111 comments
Apple iCloud Plus expansion hero

iCloud+ Now Includes Apple TV, Apple Arcade, and Curated Apple Music Stations in Over 100 Countries

Tuesday September 15, 2026 1:43 am PDT by
Apple today announced a new subscription initiative that turns paid iCloud+ subscriptions into a broader services bundle in more than 100 countries. In select countries, Apple says every paid iCloud+ plan, including the cheapest 50GB tier, now includes Apple TV and Apple Arcade "at no additional cost," while family sharing extends the storage, TV and Arcade access to up to five people....
Read Full Article • 103 comments

Top Rated Comments

M
Martin Bland
12 months ago
One more unnecessarily cloud dependent device. A brick in waiting when the company loses interest in supporting it.
Score: 23 Votes (Like | Disagree)
J
joeblough
12 months 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)
N
nathanjbrown
12 months 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)
J
Just_Kevin
12 months ago
Yup, cloud based makes this a hard pass from me.
Score: 18 Votes (Like | Disagree)
techfirth Avatar
techfirth
12 months 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
12 months 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)
Read All Comments