What\u2019s the most cliche possible gift you can give a relative? A digital photo frame, displaying a rotating slideshow of family photos. Now Aura<\/a> has completely refreshed this product space with its gorgeous Aura Ink<\/a> frame, which uses e-ink to create a display that doesn\u2019t even look digital.<\/p>\n Digital frames have always been so popular (yet mostly disappointing) because there\u2019s an undeniable allure to the idea of them \u2014 it feels like magic to imagine hanging artwork on your wall that you can change depending on your mood. In practice, these devices usually look clunky. You need to plug them in and figure out how to hide a bulky cord, and does anyone even want another bright screen<\/a> in their home anyway? This problem was already on the Aura founders\u2019 minds when they started the company 10 years ago, but color e-ink wasn\u2019t feasible until now to use in a digital frame.<\/p>\n \u201cE-ink is definitely next level,\u201d co-founder and CTO Eric Jensen told TechCrunch. \u201cWe have people tell us that they hung it up, had friends over, and their friends were like, \u2018How did you print that picture so quickly?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n E-ink is the same technology that you see on e-readers, which lets you read a book without feeling the same strain that you get from staring at an LED screen for too long. But there aren\u2019t that many color e-ink devices on the market aside from the Kindle Colorsoft<\/a>, because the company that manufactures e-ink displays can only currently produce six colors: red, blue, green, yellow, white, and black. <\/p>\n It\u2019s hard to imagine what your favorite family portraits and travel photos would look like with only six colors. But Aura has created a dithering algorithm \u2014 a technique that blends a limited color palette into patterns the eye reads as smooth gradients \u2014 that renders images close enough to the originals that its e-ink frame could finally go to market.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m learning color theory from our chief scientists, and as far as I understand it, there\u2019s not a good definition for how many colors this represents well,\u201d Jensen said. \u201cIt\u2019s all sort of theoretical and comes down to how people perceive it. Everyone\u2019s a little different, so it\u2019s actually taken a lot of testing with a lot of people in a lot of different spaces and different lighting conditions in order to get where we are today.\u201d<\/p>\n All of Aura\u2019s frames connect to the Aura app, which is where you can upload photos from your phone, web, email, iCloud, or Google Photos. I found the process to be pretty user-friendly \u2014 easy enough for a less tech-savvy relative to navigate, which matters for a product that lives or dies on whether non-technical users will actually set it up. <\/p>\n The app also has social features, so if your sister has a great new photo of her baby, she can upload it to your shared library and it will appear on your frame. (I didn\u2019t try this, since I don\u2019t know anyone else with an Aura frame, but if I did, I would probably use this feature to prank my family members with ridiculous photos. Am I a bad person?)<\/p>\n In addition to the 13.3-inch Ink frame, Aura also sent me its more classic, 12-inch LED Aspen<\/a> frame as a point of comparison. But the LED frame surprised me with how good it looks in its own right (it feels like the Prada of digital frames). The lighting is about as unobtrusive as an LED screen can be, and it\u2019s anti-glare, which makes the frame look way more premium. Aura\u2019s frames also benefit by surrounding the LED screen with a paper-like matting display, which helps trick the eye into reading it as a printed photograph.<\/p>\n Aura says it designed its dithering algorithm for portraits of people, since users tend to highlight family photos. I\u2019m a rebel, so I decided to load my frames with travel photos. When comparing the same photo on the Ink and the Aspen, it\u2019s very clear that the colors aren\u2019t exact, but as a digital photographer who isn\u2019t that picky, I didn\u2019t care very much. The distorted color palette almost seems like an artistic choice, even if I know it\u2019s reflective of a technological limitation. But when I showed the two Aura frames to an analog film photographer who painstakingly studies the small color aberrations in his darkroom prints, he thought that the Ink frame needed some work. I disagree, but if you look at the photos below and are bothered that the white balance isn\u2019t perfectly consistent across each of the three image from my phone, then you might not like the Ink frame.<\/p>\n By default, the Ink frame changes photos once per day, and it will usually do this change in the middle of the night, when you\u2019re least likely to be paying attention. If you manually change the pictures via the app, do not be alarmed if the frame looks like it\u2019s glitching \u2014 it takes about a minute for the hardware to run the dithering process and render the six-color, e-ink version of your image.<\/p>\n I am very bad with anything involving hammers and nails \u2014 all of the art in my apartment is hung up using Command strips \u2014 but mounting hardware that Aura includes feels sturdy. It\u2019s easy to take the frame on and off the wall, but you probably only will need to take it down to charge the frame via USB-C once per month. (When the lights are off or you\u2019re not in the room, the display will go to sleep, helping save battery.) I don\u2019t think that the Ink frame looks too out of place, but if it does, maybe it\u2019s because it\u2019s surrounded by art made in other mediums. Or maybe it\u2019s the black frame. Or I did a bad job at placement. Look, I can\u2019t help that I added the Ink frame to a gallery wall that I assembled three years ago!<\/p>\n At $499, I wouldn\u2019t call the Ink<\/a> frame cheap (the Aspen<\/a> runs $229, by the way). But aside from its color inconsistencies \u2014 which you can argue are more of a feature than a bug \u2014 I\u2019ve loved having the Ink frame on my wall. With the unavoidable technical limitations of e-ink in mind, it\u2019s hard for me to imagine how Aura could\u2019ve made a better product.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission<\/a>. 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