Aura's digital photo frame (previously at Boing Boing) was a little nicer than most of the junk in the category, so it doesn't surprise me to see it come out with a fancy color e-ink model. It has a 13-inch 1600×1200 e-paper display with automatic brightness, paper-like matting, and "up to" three months of battery life. Photos and images can be managed through an app, it can shut off automatically in the dark, and it's .6 of an inch thick.
Aura Ink features an e-paper display, which is built on only six ink colors—white, black, red, yellow, green, and blue. Using Aura's proprietary dithering algorithm, these colors expand into the illusion of millions of tones. The result is photos with a softly lit, vintage look that feels more like a printed picture than a digital screen. … unlike LCD frames, Aura Ink is not backlit. Instead, Ink uses a built-in front light which automatically adjusts to the room's ambient lighting throughout the day and turns off in the dark. It's so discreet, you'll barely notice it's on. For added control, users can also schedule the light to turn on and off at set times.
It's not unique (alternatives include the Reflection Frame, Bloomin8, and Waveshare Ultra) but The Verge's review finds it a good start. Allison Johnson writes that they've "done a good job" with the Spectra 6 panel but it comes at a high price and it's not well-suited to all photos.
Aura suggests choosing photos that are bright with good contrast. I found that my photos with a lot of blue in them — sky, water, etc. — look great. Some of our wedding reception photos with a softer, lower-contrast style come across as washed-out on the Ink frame, though. Skin tones are tricky, too. Pictures of me and my kid, the pastier members of the family, sometimes have a slight green cast. Portraits taken outdoors with plenty of even lighting look much more balanced. Standing close to the frame, you can clearly see the individual dots making up the photo, but from across the room, the blurring effect that distance has on the tiny colored dots could definitely fool me into thinking I was looking at a framed print.
$500, though. Whoa.
When it comes to stuff like this, I tend to get hung up on the technical shortcomings on spec sheets. But when I finally see them, it's fine. For example, I was surprised the other day at how good Samsung's latest "The Frame" TVs look on the wall, despite them not being OLEDs. The QLED panels are fine. It's not as if many of us are going to pay extra for a matted-and-framed TV set marketed with Renoir paintings, then get disappointed at the lack of crisp HDR in Trackmania.
