The Aura Ink digital photo frame has just been awarded one of the Innovations of 2026 by Time magazine.
Digital frames for displaying your photos have been around for years, but they have got more popular in recent years as a handy part of the smart home - showing your best shots on a screen that can be controlled from your mobile phone. But whilst they work well on a shelf or worktop - they can't be easily be mounted on the wall like a tradition photograph. That's because they need a mains lead to work - so you get an ugly wire trailing from the frame, unless you are prepared to the extreme effort of chasing the cable into the wall.
Aura has solved this problem with the Aura Ink - which uses a low-energy e-ink screen like you get on a Kindle, so that it can be run from a built-in battery for months at a time - so that you don't need a visible wire.
The 13.3in e-ink display also gives your images a different aesthetic - as the pictures are not backlit, so are more subdued in color and more grainy, giving a feeling of viewing an old printed photograph.
In our review, our on-team reviewer concluded that "The Aura Ink is quite unlike any digital photo frame I've used and is genuinely the only one I'd hang on my living room wall. The images it displays really do have the feel of photographs that have been physically printed, rather than digital pictures displayed on a screen. While the e-paper images do have something of a 'dotty' look about them if you get really close, this has a charm of its own that adds to the 'print' vibe.
Designing it meant “reinventing the whole product," Aura co-founder and CTO Eric Jensen tells Time. "For instance, because e-paper reflects ambient light (unlike a back-lit LCD), the Ink has a built-in front light that automatically adjusts to the room’s brightness".
The Aura Ink is automatically set to swap images just once per day – users can change those settings, though increasing the number of photographs displayed each day will decrease the advertised three-month battery life rating.
The drawback of the Aura Ink is that it more expensive than Aura's best-selling photo frames - retailing for $499. In addition, it is currently only available in the US.
