Few digital picture frames are meant to be placed anywhere unplugged, because most use LCDs that can drain any built-in battery in a matter of hours or, at best, days. The $499 Aura Ink is the rare exception thanks to its use of a color E Ink panel instead of an LCD. You can put it almost anywhere and not have to worry about plugging it in for up to three months at a time. But the very technology that enables that convenience seriously hurts its picture quality and speed compared with LCD frames. Further, the Aura Ink costs more than the superior-looking Aura Aspen ($229), our Editors’ Choice for digital picture frames, and the larger Amazon Echo Show 15 ($299.99) smart display. Granted, both of those models need to be plugged in, but that's a small price to pay for your photos actually looking good.
The Aura Ink measures 11.4 by 14.1 by 0.6 inches (HWD), which is fairly standard for a digital picture frame, but it weighs a hefty 3.2 pounds. By comparison, the Aspen measures 10.1 by 12.7 by 1.1 inches and weighs 2.1 pounds. The Ink has a thin, tapered black frame around a 1.5-inch white mat that surrounds the 13.3-inch screen. A status LED bar, situated between the frame and the mat near the upper-right corner (when in landscape orientation), remains off most of the time but flashes when the frame is booting up, connecting, or changing pictures. On the back, there are three buttons: an action button that displays the frame’s battery level based on the color of the LED, along with back and forward buttons for changing the displayed photo.
(Credit: Will Greenwald)
The back side of the frame is flat and easily wall-mountable. A rectangular bump, located just inside the inner tapered edges of the bezel, features two slots on the bottom and left sides, and two V-shaped notches on the top and right sides, allowing for the display or mounting of the frame in either horizontal or vertical orientation. The slots accommodate the included black trapezoidal foot, which serves as a table stand, and the notches fit the included flat peg hook for wall mounting (or you can use any appropriately flat picture hook). The frame is stable both on its stand and when hung on the wall, thanks to thin rubber strips on the back that prevent it from tilting. Wall mountability is a surprisingly rare feature on digital picture frames, and it's not available on Aura's Aspen, Carver ($149), or Mason ($199) frames. Other than the Ink, the only other model in Aura’s catalog that can be mounted on the wall is the 15-inch Walden ($299), which I've yet to test.
As a versatile alternative, the Amazon Echo Show 15 (and the larger $399.99 Echo Show 21) can also be wall-mounted; they're feature-rich smart displays with touch screens, hands-free access to the Alexa voice assistant, and even the full Fire TV smart TV platform. All of those extra features are nice if you're looking for a multi-purpose device, but they can be excessive if you just want a simple digital picture frame.
Setup: Easy to Preload With Photos for Gifting
Setting up the Ink is very similar to setting up any other Aura picture frame. First, you'll need to download the Aura app for Android or iOS, create an account, and plug in the Ink. It will start up and flash the screen to prepare it to display images, a process specific to the color E Ink panel that can take up to 45 seconds. When the screen stabilizes and shows a four-digit code, tap New Frame in the app and follow the steps to connect the Ink to your Wi-Fi network and link it to your Aura account.
You can also set up the frame as a gift this way, preloading it with pictures and adding a gift message that will show up as soon as it’s connected to the recipient’s Wi-Fi. It’s best if they can use the app at that point, but you can also preconfigure the frame’s Wi-Fi if you have their network information.
To load photos on the frame, you can add them through the app, upload them through Aura’s web tool, or email them directly to the frame using the unique address you can find in the app. Anyone can use the email address, and you can also share direct access to the frame with any Aura account holder, allowing them to add pictures. Aura’s frames require an internet connection to function, but they come with unlimited cloud storage for pictures.
Display: Susceptible to Glare, Slow to Refresh
The Aura Ink is built around a 13.3-inch E Ink Spectra display with a resolution of 1,600 by 1,200 pixels and a pixel density of 150 pixels per inch. The screen has a glossy finish, which is an odd choice as it easily picks up glare. It's an especially strange choice considering the Aura Aspen's matte anti-glare finish is one of its best attributes. Perhaps using a similar coating on the Ink would have further dampened its already muted colors and contrast.
(Credit: Will Greenwald)
E Ink consumes very little power, which is why ereaders can last for weeks on a charge. In theory, that makes it appealing for a device like the Ink, as it only needs to be charged occasionally and can be mounted without needing a cable, allowing for really flexible placement. Aura claims the Ink's built-in battery can last up to three months—depending on lighting conditions, how often it updates pictures, and other factors—but doesn't disclose the battery's capacity. Unfortunately, the compromises of E Ink outweigh the benefits in battery life.
While most digital photo frames can cycle through photos every few seconds or minutes, the Ink can only change photos a maximum of six times a day (every four hours). One of the appealing features of digital picture frames is that they typically allow you to display dozens of your favorite photos every day, or even every hour. The only way to change photos more often on the Ink is by using the physical buttons on the back of the frame.
(Credit: Will Greenwald)
The transition between pictures on the Ink isn’t nearly as instantaneous as it is on LCD frames. Instead, switching photos on the Ink causes the display to flash rapidly for up to 45 seconds as it clears all the pixels of the existing image and refreshes them with the new image. It’s uncomfortable to look at, making it tedious and unpleasant to browse through the various photos on it.
Image Quality: A Pretty Plain Picture
The good news is that the photos on the Ink look like they’re printed, rather than displayed on a screen. The bad news is that they appear to be printed on newspaper rather than photographic paper. Compared with LCDs, E Ink displays are extremely limited in terms of dynamic range and color. Photos of my vacation to Japan last year looked much duller on the Ink than they do on my phone, monitor, or the LCD-based Aura Aspen.
(Credit: Will Greenwald)
Even though the Ink has the same resolution as the Aspen, it doesn’t look nearly as sharp due to the way the E Ink panel displays variations in color and contrast. It uses subpixels of six different “ink” colors that can be toggled on and off, but cannot be individually adjusted between those states, like the red, green, and blue subpixels of LCD and OLED panels. This means it must use dithering, which involves scattering patterns of different subpixels together to produce the desired color. Looking closely at the frame, most flat surfaces, such as gray bricks and yellow signs, are heavily stippled with dots of different shades to produce the desired image. The individual dots are tiny, but I could still see their patterns looking at the frame from a foot or two away.
(Credit: Will Greenwald)
My photos didn’t look awful on the Ink, just worse than on any other display I own. That's a problem for a device designed exclusively to display images. It's even more of a problem when you're talking about a digital picture frame that’s more than twice as expensive as the Aspen, which can render the high-quality photo print look.
(Credit: Will Greenwald)
Ambient light is also a significant factor in determining the quality of pictures on the Ink. The frame features a front light that gently illuminates the screen when the room is bright, but it cannot be controlled directly. The brightness adjusts automatically in response to a light sensor in the frame, which also puts it to sleep when the room is completely dark. If there’s dim to moderate light, the unlit display can be a bit hard to see. Conversely, when the environment is very well-lit—especially by direct light sources like overhead or wall lamps—the glossy finish of the panel tends to reflect the sources, obscuring the picture in the process.
