The family photo was once a mainstay of living rooms and office cubicles but it is slowly being replaced by something somehow more timeless — the digital photo frame. Digital photo frames don’t fade over the years in exposure to sunlight, can be completely replaced without messing too much with paper, and make adding and changing the pictures within a snap. While the digital displays won’t have the exactly same character as the physical photo paper counterparts, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. With the possibilities for advanced screen tech, matte finishes, and the like, modern eyes may actually prefer these incredible photo display devices.
The best digital photo frames in 2024
- Buy the for the best overall digital photo frame.
- Buy the as a quality alternative to the above.
- Buy the for a larger screen.
- Buy the for one of the most beloved digital photo frames, and a true value pick.
- Buy the 32-inch version of TV for a larger, multi-purpose frame.
- Buy the for a budget touchscreen frame from a trusted camera maker.
Aura Mason Luxe
Best overall
| Pros | Cons |
| High resolution | Needs internet |
| Free unlimited cloud storage | |
| Auto picture adjustment |
Aura’s Mason Luxe is an advanced digital photo frame with subtle tech features that make it top of the line without breaking the bank. Whether you want your pictures displayed in landscape or vertical view, the Mason Luxe will rotate everything appropriately. There’s even a smart crop that hunts out faces, fitting your pictures smartly into view. Want your frame in the sunny living room or the dark bedroom? Both are okay. It will auto-dim to be the right color for whatever room you’re in and will even turn off when your lights go off at night in your bedroom.
You’ll also want to pay attention to its physical design. The 2K resolution (very high for a digital photo frame) screen goes directly to the edge and abuts the frame. This frame is a nicely ridged sandstone design that is a nice gray with specks of black, giving your Aura Mason Luxe a sense of weight. While the emphasis will always be on your photos, having a glorious frame helps add to the magnificence.
Photos are entered into the Mason Luxe with the Aura Frames app, where you’ll have unlimited cloud storage at no recurring charge. From there, with a quality Wi-Fi connection, you can easily port the images directly to the frame. If you wish to gift it, you can even preload everything from your images and a gift message to the recipient’s Wi-Fi info, so when they plug it in they’ll start to see images and greetings with no hassle. In other words, it’s a surprisingly good for the grandparents. That being said, as transfers are cloud based, you’ll need a wireless internet connection nearby to use it.
| Key Specifications | |
| Screen size | 9.7 inches |
| Resolution | 2K |
| Storage | Unlimited cloud storage |
Nixplay 9.7-inch
Best alternative
| Pros | Cons |
| Email, app, and cloud connection support | Shiny silver might not match your decor |
| Easy photo sharing | |
| Motion sensor for auto off |
Another quality 2K electric photo frame with smart features is the Nixplay. Loading photos in and focusing on the people and faces will ensure you see what you want to see in the frame without a lot of user input. It uses cloud service, its app, and even email to get pictures delivered to it. This does mean that you’ll need an internet connection to upload photos to it, but you’ll also be able to share photos with friends and family easily. The Nixplay automatically shuts off when its motion detector no longer detects activity.
The Nixplay can also handle video (including sound) if you’re willing to upgrade to Nixplay Plus. With this feature you can also do things such as share a simultaneous “Nixcast” to several devices, complete with customizable music and transitions. Nixplay Plus also includes improved security, including end-to-end encryption to keep your photos out of the prying eyes of others. With all this being said, the Nixplay works without any additional purchases. As a standard, no moving parts digital photo frame, the Nixplay stands on its own with no extras.
There is little to criticize the Nixplay on in terms of presentation. The photo screen panel goes directly to the frame. Even the wire has a brilliant double usage as a stand, able to be twisted into landscape or vertical viewing modes. However, the bright and shiny silver (or gold, should you choose that version) is more likely to clash with your décor than more muted colors. Or maybe it won’t. That’s up to you to decide. The fact remains that this product is quite shiny and you’re going so see reflections in it. Whether this is a true con or just a warning is up to your sense of taste and style.
| Key Specifications | |
| Screen size | 9.7 inches |
| Resolution | 2K |
| Storage | Cloud-based |
Pix-Star 15-inch
Best large
| Pros | Cons |
| Multiple upload techniques | “Tablet look” |
| Control multiple Pix-Star frames from one account | |
| Unlimited, no subscription cloud service | |
| Multi-use with weather, web radio, and calendar |
It can be difficult to find decent digital photo frames over 10 inches. The Pix-Star 15 does a 15-inch screen justice, however, with a device that makes control of images easy and free. You can use the company’s cloud storage without a subscription, email photos directly to your device with a special Pix-Star account email address, use the app, sync from other services (such as Google Photos, Dropbox, and flikr among others), or use a USB stick or SD card to get photos on it. Pretty much however you want to get things on your Pix-Star, you can. Despite this, it really isn’t a complex machine, with a quick setup that pretty much just entails connecting to Wi-Fi and playing around with your account. Due to the 8GB of internal storage, it’ll even continue to work when Wi-Fi is down.
Despite the accolades of its tech and incredible price-to-size ratio, there is an undeniable “tablet look” to the Pix-Star 15. This can be somewhat mitigated by adding an optional colored skin (available as a combo for just a few dollars more) but the tablet look and thick bevels may actually appeal to younger people used to the style and definitely aids in passing the frame around. Sometimes, if you’re going for modern tech, a modern look is an alright or even favored part of the package.
| Key Specifications | |
| Screen size | 15 inches |
| Resolution | 1024 x 768p |
| Storage | 8GB + unlimited cloud storage |
Aura Carver Gravel
Best value
| Pros | Cons |
| Free unlimited cloud storage | Needs internet |
| Smart cropping and adjustment | |
| Incredibly well-received | |
| Great pricing |
For one of the most popular and real customer approved digital photo frames, you’ll need to look at the Aura Carver Gravel. It’s a cheaper, sort of pared down version of the Aura Mason, but not by much. The resolution drops slightly and the coloration and design of the frame border is a bit more understated. The rest is in tact; the auto photo cropping around faces, adjustments for ambient light, the auto-off at night so it can even be in your bedroom, and the all-important subscription-free cloud storage? All there.
Even the ways it scales back from the Aura Mason are not so intense. It is important to remember that a small screen at a distance will look as if it has a higher resolution than one held at arm’s length. Similarly, the more classic black design is, well, more classic. You’ll probably like it. And, in fact, for both of these factors it is clear that the people that own Aura Carver Gravel also like it. It is one of the highest rated digital photo frames, likely as a result of the great price cut for very little downside. So, unless you’re really sensitive to resolution issues, you should expect to like this digital photo frame as well.
| Key Specifications | |
| Screen size | 10 inches |
| Resolution | 1280 x 800p |
| Storage | Cloud |
Samsung The Frame 32-inch
Best extra large multi-use
| Pros | Cons |
| Anti-matte, anti-glare screen | Expensive? |
| QLED display | |
| Also works as TV, game station, and Samsung Health companion | |
| Customizable bezel |
If you want an extra large display, you might actually consider using one of the best TVs instead. And, if like many modern families, you’ve ditched the TV altogether, picking up a non-invasive, art-focused TV for your home just might be the ticket. Samsung’s The Frame is a series of TVs, consisting of many sizes, though the best digital photo frame likely comes in the form of this 32-inch frame that has all of the advantages of the best QLED TVs with the bonuses of a matte finish, non-invasive single-wired design, and flush-to-the-wall build.
While most often advertised as a TV for art display, The Frame is also made for photos. It’s anti-glare screen will make it viewable even in the living room, with sun exposure. Choose your own frame from multiple options including teak and a modern brown or white. The wall mount automatically rotates, much like real picture frames are made to display landscape or vertical. Meanwhile, Motion Detect technology turns the display on when you’re around and keeps it off while you’re away, extending the life of the display and saving battery life.
This is definitely an off the beaten path pick for a digital photo frame, no doubt, but it serves a unique spot and gives you a larger-than-life frame that still somehow maintains the beauty of authentic paper displays. As a result, if you’re purely looking for a display, you might consider The Frame to be quite pricey, but the 32-inch proves to have a fair price for a TV that can do other things and could easily snag a spot among the best TVs under $1,000 for its versatility. You’ll also find that storage for photos depends on how you use it, as you’ll need to share space between TV and gaming apps and photos.
| Key Specifications | |
| Screen size | 32 inches |
| Resolution | 1080p |
| Storage | Depends |
Kodak 10-inch
Best budget
| Pros | Cons |
| Touchscreen design | Limited internal storage |
| Accepts USB and SD cards | |
| Easy to transfer via Wi-Fi and Kodak app | |
| Beautiful wood frame design |
Designed by photography mainstay, Kodak, this 10-inch digital photo frame delivers a delightful touchscreen experience that can be used in landscape or vertical modes, connect with the Kodak app, and hold 16GB of photos internally (Kodak says it will hold 40,000+ photos). It will also support an external 32GB SD card. The Kodak 10-inch has a wood tone frame and a thick white internal bezel, reminiscent of what many traditional photo frames look like.
As a budget pick, you can expect that the screen quality will be somewhat lower than the competition. However, as the intended use is as a picture frame and not an in-your-face tablet, any dips in resolution will be hard to find except for the most picky. And it is still a very standard IPS screen with the LED technology you’re used to. This is a quality choice for those that want simplicity and a quality design that won’t look incredibly out of place among traditional picture frames.
| Key Specifications | |
| Screen size | 10.1 inches |
| Resolution | 1280 x 800p |
| Storage |
16GB internal |
How we chose these digital photo frames
While the unique features that make a digital photo frame stand out above others are detailed for each one above, there are still some universals that you need to be aware of before you make a decision. These characteristics are the universals that you’ll have to contend with, no matter which frame you buy.
Screen size and resolution
While screen size and resolution seem like two separate categories of consideration, for digital photo frames, they are actually intimately interlinked. The vast majority of digital photo frames are going to have display of under 15 inches, with 10 inches being a pretty typical size. In other words, not wildly different from the display on the best tablets.
As a result, you should get a display with at least the same resolution as your tablet, right? Not necessarily. Our faces are closer to our tablets, making imperfections and pixelization more noticeable. At the distance of a picture viewing, the image will appear more crisp. That is to say that a 1080p digital photo frame will appear better than a 1080p tablet, all other things being equal.
Does this mean that you should downgrade in resolution for your digital photo frame? Not necessarily. You can find reasonably priced 2K digital photo frames and 1080p ones are very obtainable. So, unless you’re looking for budget, there isn’t much of a reason to pop down to 720p, for instance. Still, the fact remains, a 10-inch photo seen from across the room is going to look more crisp to you. As a result, you shouldn’t worry as much about digital photo frame resolution as you do laptop resolution, for instance. Finally, if you’re taking the photos yourself, consider the actual resolution of your camera before making a final decision.
Storage
One of the great things about digital photo frames is how many photos you can use with them. Of course, that means that you need to contend with storage. Figuring out how much storage you need, then, can become a headache. As we’ve previously advised with iPhone storage, a 128GB storage iPhone can hold 35,000 1080p photos from a 12MP camera. The 16GB internal storage of the Kodak 10-inch WiFi Digital Picture Frame can hold over 20,000 high res. images. Many digital photo frames also accept any of the best microSD cards to accentuate internal storage.
Then there’s cloud storage and app connections. It’s surprising, but many digital photo frame companies offer near unlimited cloud storage. While this comes with the downside that now even your picture frame would need a strong Wi-Fi connection to work (consider a quality mesh Wi-Fi system) there is also the advantage of being able to quickly and automatically share photos with your family from afar. You can also avoid the whole plug-in, connect, and transfer rigamarole this way. With the cloud, everything is at hand.
Conversely, don’t get so overwhelmed by storage space that you miss the picture (literally). There’s only so many photos you need stored in your digital photo frame before extra storage becomes next to useless. If you were to display a different photo every 10 minutes for 12 hours a day for an entire year with an album of 6,570 pictures, you would only be able to see each photo a maximum of 4 times during the entirety of the year. Less is often more.
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