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Jan 20, 2024

The 2 Best Digital Photo Frames of 2023

After a new round of testing, the Aura Carver is our new top pick, and the Aura

After a new round of testing, the Aura Carver is our new top pick, and the Aura Mason is an also-great pick.

A digital photo frame lets you easily add images—including beautiful travel shots and family photos—to the frame from anywhere. Whether you’re giving a frame as a gift and plan to upload photos remotely or you just want a great frame for yourself, the Aura Carver is the best frame we’ve used. Its 10.1-inch display is sharp, bright, and vivid, and in our tests it was simple to set up. On top of that, it has a good-looking, horizontally oriented design, and fills the frame with side-by-side portrait photos, too.

We chose digital photo frames that make uploading photos and navigating the frame easy and intuitive.

We preferred frames with a 4:3 ratio (the ideal size for most photos) and minimal pillarboxing (black bars on the sides of photos).

We searched for frames with borders similar to those of a true photo frame, rather than a propped-up, shiny tablet.

We sought frames that have a minimum 1080p display and tested as high as 2K, or 2048p, resolutions.

The Aura Carver stands out for its easy setup, vivid display, pleasing design, and near-zero pillarboxing.

The Aura Carver stands out for its stylish frame and easy setup, and for having the least amount of pillarboxing compared with other frames we tried, thanks to its side-by-side method for vertical photos. It's straightforward to set up and use, and loading photos and videos remotely is a breeze—the free Aura app works with Android and iOS phones, and you can add photos through a web uploader, too. From the app's intuitive design to the frame's pared-down interface, the Carver isn't just for the tech savvy.

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The Aura Mason shines when it displays vertically oriented photos, and its vivid, 9-inch display fits nicely on smaller tables and shelves.

*At the time of publishing, the price was $180.

The Aura Mason was our pick for a long time, and it's still a great frame we recommend. It particularly excels at displaying vertical (aka portrait) photos, thanks to its 9-inch display and 4:5 aspect ratio, and it's easier to fit on tables and shelves since it's smaller than the Carver. The Mason can rotate to be in either portrait or landscape orientation, but we found the Carver's size to be a better fit for landscape photos, and the Mason tends to have more pillarboxing.

The Aura Carver stands out for its easy setup, vivid display, pleasing design, and near-zero pillarboxing.

The Aura Mason shines when it displays vertically oriented photos, and its vivid, 9-inch display fits nicely on smaller tables and shelves.

*At the time of publishing, the price was $180.

Nena Farrell has covered technology and connected home products since 2016, originally at Sunset Magazine (where she was an associate home editor) and now as an updates writer on the audio, visual, and smart-home team at Wirecutter.

Brendan Nystedt contributed to an earlier version of this guide. He's been an enthusiast photographer and a writer covering consumer electronics and tech for the better part of a decade. Nystedt has worked for Wirecutter, Reviewed, and Wired, and he has written for numerous other outlets.

While preparing this guide, we consulted reviews both from owners and from trustworthy outlets, such as Wired and PCMag. Unfortunately for the layperson shopping for these devices, there are many SEO-driven clickbait blogs offering hands-off reviews. We ignored those websites.

Digital photo frames can bring great meaning and value to many folks—tech savvy or not—and they often make a great gift. There are several types of people we think would enjoy having a digital photo frame in their home:

After years spent testing cheap scanners, we’re certain that the Canon CanoScan LiDE 300 strikes the best balance between image quality, speed, size, and price.

The simple design, high-quality results, free cloud storage, and $0 price make Adobe Scan an excellent choice.

Before I started the 2021 update to this guide, I did about five hours of research on sites such as Amazon, Best Buy, and B&H Photo to see what new models were available. I went through owner reviews, looked for top sellers in the category, and generally tried to suss out which frames and manufacturers were worth a closer look. In 2022, I spent about five additional hours researching and reviewing the newest models available using these same methods.

Previous research indicated that Wirecutter readers were most interested in digital frames measuring 8 to 11 inches diagonal. This display size makes the most sense because it's significantly bigger than the average phone screen yet small enough for you to tuck the frame away in a corner or set it atop a bookcase. Style is subjective, but it was also a factor, albeit a minor one, in our decision-making process.

A display's aspect ratio is important to consider. For example, 16:9 frames are often too narrow to show most digital photos without pillarboxing the image (adding black bars to either side). A 4:3 ratio is the ideal ratio that we looked for in frames. Additionally, we looked at each screen's resolution: When even most smartphone cameras can shoot at least 10-megapixel images, it hardly makes sense for us to test anything below a 1080p display (which equates to a measly 2 megapixels). There are also a number of frames with 2K, or 2048p, displays, which we considered as well, but ultimately we don't think most people need that high of a resolution in a photo frame—or to pay the price tag that comes with it. None of our picks are 2K screens, but if it's something you’re interested in, we cover a few good 2K options we like in Other good digital photo frames.

We also considered how easy it was for more than one person to use the frame. Being able to collaborate on adding photos is a useful feature for households with multiple people who want to share the frame, or for older relatives and family members who might want photos added by far-away loved ones.

We looked at nearly two dozen of the top frames and then, according to the above criteria, winnowed down the pool to eight new frames for testing in fall 2021, one more in summer 2022, and three in fall 2022: the Aura Carver, Aura Carver Mat, and Nixplay 10-inch Touch Screen Photo Frame - Classic Mat. We also retested the Aura Mason in both 2021 and 2022 to compare it to newer models.

We put each digital picture frame through a battery of tests. While examining everything from the setup process and display quality to the design, ease of use, and even the quality of its automatic brightness adjustment, I took notes on each frame's strengths and weaknesses. I then uploaded to each frame an identical set of 98 photos from my iPhone library and Google Photos account. These photos included professional images from my wedding, in addition to newer smartphone and older digital-camera photos.

In my own home, I installed the frames in several locations to gauge clarity, brightness, and glare in different ambient lighting. I also made sure to view each frame straight on and at increasingly oblique angles to see whether the contrast decreased or any of the colors shifted. This process also helped me gauge the ease of installation and any possible snags related to each frame's required power adapter. After narrowing the initial pool of contenders, I installed the top three at a family member's home across town to test how easily I could control them remotely, as well as to record my relatives’ experiences using the frames and compare them against my own.

Most frames now include video capabilities, and all four of the frames we tested in 2022 have the ability to showcase videos alongside photos. I uploaded the same 10 videos, shot on various iPhones and a GoPro, to the frames, testing for upload limits, playback ability, sound quality, and how seamless (or irritating) the overall experience was.

Photographs are in a funny place when it comes to privacy. On one hand, we share them constantly on social networks and with friends. On the other hand, they’re deeply personal, and many people would prefer their private photo collections stay private. As a result, we expect digital photo frames to meet a certain baseline of privacy and security. To assess this, we read through publicly available security and privacy documentation for each of our picks, and we sent a security questionnaire to the companies that make them. One company—Aura, which makes our two picks—responded, while the maker of our now-previous budget pick, Aeezo, did not.

Aura told us that it doesn't share or sell customer data for advertising purposes, and that photos are encrypted in transit and at rest on Aura's servers. Aura's engineers can access your photos to troubleshoot issues only at your request, and any photos deleted from the Aura app are also permanently removed from Aura servers and frames. Aura uses facial recognition for its Smart Suggestions feature, which processes locally on the customer's device to suggest adding more photos of a certain person to a frame. (Customers can opt out at any time.) We also appreciate that Aura includes a more readable summary of its practices at the top of its privacy policy and offers help guides explaining how to control your data and permissions.

We previously recommended Aeezo frames in this guide, but the company didn't respond to our security questions in June 2022, and as of November 2022 we still hadn't heard back. While our testing shows that Aeezo uploads all appeared to stay within the local network, just as the company describes, the fact that Aeezo didn't respond to us signals that it doesn't take security seriously. If you’re not bothered by these privacy concerns, we still include the Aeezo frames in Other good digital photo frames.

The Aura Carver stands out for its easy setup, vivid display, pleasing design, and near-zero pillarboxing.

The Aura Carver combines attractive hardware and simple software to create a digital photo frame that is the easiest to set up and operate, and at a great price. We found the quality of its screen to be on a par with that of pricier frames. You go through the setup process on your Android or iOS device, no clunky remote required. If you’re primarily a phone photographer, you should be able to have your pictures up on this frame in a relatively short amount of time.

The setup was the simplest of the frames we tested. Once you download the Aura app, pair your phone to the frame, and connect it to your Wi-Fi network settings using your phone, you’re all set. (I did have to wait for the frame to power up and download a recent update, but it hasn't needed any other software updates since, and I was still able to get the frame up and running in about five minutes.) One of the few steps between turning on the device and adding photos is the option to send invitations to family members and friends via text so they can upload their own pictures (you can also set up the Carver as a gift for someone else; more on that below). In addition, you won't have to do anything on the frame itself with a remote control because there isn't one. Aura frames have touch bars on top of the device that let you control basic functions, while setup and other controls are found in Aura's smartphone app. And the Carver frame's slim top makes it easier to find the touch bar compared with the Aura Mason.

The Carver's resolution is a little lower than the Mason's—1280×800 versus 1600×1200, respectively—but I didn't see an obvious drop in image quality. It still looks sharp, has excellent contrast, and displays colors well. From older digital-camera pictures to professional wedding photos, the images looked as great as we’ve ever seen them on a digital screen, without the typical blue undertone that you’ll find on a tablet or other digital frames we’ve tried. The Carver has a 16:10 aspect ratio, but I found that the wider ratio meant the entirety of my wedding photos always fit on the screen, so no guests were cut out. It also meant that when two vertical photos were displayed, they had a 4:5 aspect ratio. The automatic light sensor worked well in our trial runs, cranking up the screen's brightness to combat sunlight. It also tended to pick up light from a different room better than the Mason's sensor; when these frames were in my dining room, for example, the Carver stayed on with light spilling in from the kitchen, but the Mason did not.

Compared with a lot of other products in this category, with their plastic frames and borders that often look closer to a tablet than a decorative photo frame, the Carver has an aesthetic that combines form and function quite well. The frame has nifty features, such as touch-sensitive strips that let you mark favorite photos and go forward and backward with a swipe. (The strips take a little patience to work—we recommend moving slowly when using them.) Yet the grooved, textured plastic makes the Carver look like a nice frame you might buy for a print photo. Instead of relying on a flimsy stand to prop itself up, its thicker base makes it more stable, and there's nothing to assemble beyond plugging in the power cord.

Once the Carver is up and running, you have many display options to choose from. Working with its default settings, you get behavior that's more suggestive of a real picture frame than a digital one—the only giveaway is when it switches to side-by-side mode. You’ll find no cheesy animations between photos like on other frames we’ve dismissed, only simple fades and swipes. The Carver does a remarkably better job than competitors at automatically cropping photos to fit on the screen, ensuring the subjects are nicely centered. It's also easy to re-crop an image within the app if it doesn't automatically focus on your favorite part (but based on my experience, you will need to do this very rarely). Its "Photo Match" mode—which places two portrait-orientation photos next to each other to fill the landscape-oriented screen—did a fairly good job at pairing together photos of my infant son or from my wedding. Other times the pairing was a little more random, but I didn't find that too bothersome.

All Aura frames, including the Carver, can play videos, and you can upload them the same way you add photos (you can't, however, use auto upload from a Google Photos folder; you can only add videos manually). The Carver puts vertical videos into Photo Match mode, placing them side by side with another video or a portrait-orientation photo. I noticed the frame often paired two vertical videos from my wedding, or a video of my son next to a portrait-oriented image of him. The Carver includes a built-in speaker to allow you to hear sound from your videos (if you choose to turn sound on), and the speaker was solid enough in our tests that we could hear both voices and background sound or music. You turn on sound manually for each video by tapping on the touch-sensitive strip, versus there being an on or off sound setting overall. If you don't intervene, the video will play once silently and then freeze for the rest of its time on screen, unless you tap the touch-sensitive strip to replay it with sound on. All replays will include sound, but the next video the Carver shows will return to the muted auto-play setting. Aura will remember the volume level you selected, though volume can also be controlled on screen or from the app when a video plays.

With other video-capable frames I tested, a common flaw was that if you left the sound on, the frame would occasionally burst into sound and video when you were least expecting it—but this doesn't happen with Aura's frames. If there are two videos side by side, the Carver will silently play the one on the left first, followed by the one on the right, and then leave both as still frames for the rest of the time on screen.

A nice surprise about Aura's frames: Unlike every other brand of frame we tested, the Carver and other frames in the Aura family are compatible with Apple's Live Photo feature. So you’ll see such images come to life for an instant when they first appear on the display, similar to the video experience.

Aura's software helps you easily set up the Aura Carver as a gift. Using the app, scan a QR code on the box to pair it with your account. That lets you invite family members to contribute photos before the recipient unpacks the frame and plugs it in. You can also have the frame shipped directly from Aura and use the company's email-setup process to associate it with your account while the frame is in transit. Though we didn't try the gift-setup method ourselves, we do appreciate Aura's focus on the gift angle. This is a feature other frames don't have (to replicate the experience, you have to prepare the frame yourself manually and then give it as a gift afterward).

The Carver also comes in a Mat version (it costs $30 more), which has two frame layers that look like a mat picture frame instead of the textured frame most other Aura frames have. It's up to you if you think the aesthetics are worth the slightly larger investment; in our tests the only difference we noticed between the two is that the Carver Mat's ambient-light sensor occasionally picked up light better than the standard Carver. Besides that, they’re identical in quality and experience.

Unlike the Aura Mason, the Carver's aspect ratio isn't our preferred 4:3, but we found that both landscape and portrait photos still fit nicely on screen.

If you don't want to see photos placed side by side, you can turn off the Carver's Photo Match mode in the app. But without it, there's large pillarboxing on either side of portrait photos. We also found that turning off this setting wasn't instantaneous—it took several minutes for the frame to recognize the change.

The Aura Mason shines when it displays vertically oriented photos, and its vivid, 9-inch display fits nicely on smaller tables and shelves.

*At the time of publishing, the price was $180.

Like the Aura Carver, the Aura Mason has attractive hardware and simple software, but with a smaller, 9-inch screen. Its more-petite footprint means it can fit better on smaller end tables and shelves than our main pick. Unlike the Carver, it can physically rotate from either portrait or landscape mode like a real picture frame, but we noticed it was more prone to pillarboxing (adding black boxes to either side) when showing a photo that didn't match the frame's orientation.

The thick, grooved frame gives the Aura Mason a pleasing look and, like our top pick, makes it easy to install since it comes in a single piece (beyond the power cord). It's also able to rotate, so you can switch from portrait to landscape orientations by simply picking up the frame and changing which side it sits on. Switching from one orientation to the other worked quickly and fairly seamlessly in our tests; the two sides are weighted appropriately to act as the base for either orientation. The touch strips are located in the middle of the frame's sides, so if you don't have a view of the top, they might be a little harder to find than you expect compared with those on the slimmer-topped Carver.

The frame's screen has a vivid 1600×1200 resolution and a 4:3 aspect ratio, which is the preferred size for most photos. We found photos looked especially great when viewed in portrait orientation, but the Mason's landscape mode is a little short compared with the Carver's and might not fit a large, vertical shot as nicely. The Mason has a technically better resolution and aspect ratio than the Carver, but we didn't find the improvements noticeable during everyday use.

However, the Mason was more likely to have pillarboxing or strange cropping, which was noticeable anytime we saw the frame. The Mason automatically crops photos to fit on screen, but the results were mixed compared with the consistently nice crops on our main pick. Photos containing several people were problematic for the Mason; sometimes the frame would center on the people in focus, other times on people on the side of the photo. And sometimes the frame would choose not to crop, resulting in pillarboxing. This is fixable in the app, where you can manually adjust the cropping of any individual photo quite easily. But it happened to so many photos that it would have been time consuming to fix them all. And if you upload a large batch at once, or connect it to a big Google Photos album, you might slowly find you have quite a few photos to fix once they display on the screen.

Overall, though, if you have a smaller space to place a digital photo frame or think you (or your gift recipient, as this frame can also be set up as a gift) will prefer the frame in portrait mode, the Mason is still a great choice for a digital photo frame. Aura also makes the Mason Luxe, a 2K version of this frame, which we cover in Other good digital photo frames along with other 2K options.

If price is the most important consideration: Our previous budget pick, the Aeezo Portrait 01, was bumped to this section after we didn't hear back from the Aeezo team about its security policies. This budget frame looks good, especially for the price, with a matte black frame that looks higher quality than many others on the market. It also does a nice job cropping photos without pillarboxing. But its main downside is the uploader, which functions similarly to uploading a post to Instagram. We hope to hear back from the Aeezo team and reconsider this frame as a future pick.

If you want a budget 2K frame: The Aeezo Dream Plus is a 2K frame that currently retails for just $170—cheaper than many frames with lower-resolution screens. Like the Portrait 01, the Dream Plus has an annoyingly Instagram-like uploader but also an easy-to-use frame, which can rotate and allows you to customize a photo's arrangement on screen. The Dream Plus has a clearly nicer screen at a price similar to that of our picks, but it also has a shiny border, which looks a bit more like a tablet than the stylish frames of our other picks and recommendations. We wouldn't call a 2K screen a necessary investment, but if you’re looking for 2K quality on a budget, this frame might be worth considering.

If you want a great 2K frame: The Aura Mason Luxe has everything we like about the Aura Mason, from the easy uploading to the great aspect ratio, but with a 2K screen (and a higher price tag to match). The Mason Luxe's screen is a clear improvement when you place the two models side by side, but we wouldn't call it necessary—one of our testers commented that they didn't feel the need to see themselves in such high resolution.

If you want an eye-catching frame in a color other than black: The Nixplay 9.7-inch 2K Ultra Photo Frame, our previous also-great pick, is now sold only with a large silver or gold mirrored frame. Its design is beautiful, and the screen is fantastic. And the NixPlay experience is fairly easy to navigate, with app and email uploading options. But the thick frame leads to a worse motion sensor, so this model is off more often than not, and it uses a remote. The shiny silver frame also easily shows fingerprints. And this frame is expensive, retailing for $300, though it's often on sale for around $265.

If you have smart products in your home, you might own—or be interested in owning—a smart display powered by Amazon Alexa or Google Home. Smart displays like the Amazon Echo Show or Google Nest Hub allow you to have photos as the main screensaver, resulting in something similar to a photo frame. Our smart-display picks are nearly all cheaper than our digital photo frame picks, but the trade-off is a smaller, dimmer screen.

Also, the experience isn't completely similar, and you have to make certain sacrifices when you swap a smart display for a digital photo frame. All of our photo frame picks have higher-quality screens than the smart displays. With the exception of existing Google Photos users who own a Google Assistant–powered smart display, you won't find smart displays any easier to upload to and use than a digital photo frame.

Both smart displays and digital photo frames offer an easy way to bring a stream of photos into your daily life. Here's how to choose which one is right for you.

People have many screens in their lives. Some of them are big and some of them are small, but if you’ve recently upgraded to a newer tablet, you might consider using your old one as a digital photo frame. For this purpose, we’d recommend using an older retina iPad, since Apple's displays offer good viewing angles and are bright enough to fight glare. The iPad's built-in Photos app has integration with iCloud and will remain synced to your phone's pictures, if you choose to use iCloud. Plus, the iPad has a nice slideshow mode that shuffles, crops, and animates your pictures.

You might be tempted to use one of Amazon's cheap Fire tablets as a makeshift picture frame, but our advice is not to bother. Even though these tablets have IPS screens and are certainly affordable (especially around the holidays), their screens are too dim and offer poor viewing angles.

Skylight now offers a product called Skylight Digital, which also offers to turn an existing screen into a digital photo frame. But the compatibility is limited—it's offered only on Fire TVs and TVs using a Fire Stick.

We haven't tested the Aura Buddy frame, but it appears to be extremely similar, if not completely identical, to the Aura Carver Luxe, both in size and in the stationary style of its screen. Its differences are a special color and other minor details designed for pet owners. It retails for a price similar to that of the Carver Luxe, which is the same size as our picks but boasts a higher-resolution display of 1920×1200. However, while the Carver Luxe is still available as of this writing, it's available only while supplies last, and we expect it to be out of stock soon.

Based on our testing, the Aluratek 8-inch WiFi Digital Photo Frame isn't worth it. It has a 4:3 ratio, and while most landscape photos fit nicely, there was a lot of pillarboxing on portrait (aka vertical) photos. Also, this model has clunky menus and a shiny frame, which makes it look more like a propped-up tablet than anything else. We don't recommend buying it, despite the relatively moderate price tag.

Nixplay's 10.1-inch Smart Photo Frame is a larger version of the Nixplay design. Unfortunately, we’ve found that the display is noticeably worse on this model than on previous 10.1-inch Nixplay widescreen frames. Not only does the screen have a less-natural aspect ratio for traditional photos, but its lower resolution (1280×800) and less-punchy colors also make it less compelling.

The Touch is a touchscreen version of Nixplay's 10.1-inch frame. Sadly, this model has a noticeably worse display and the same unnatural aspect ratio (16:10) for most photos, leading to a large amount of pillarboxing. This frame was also the least responsive to light, and it needed to be manually turned on and off each day.

The Nixplay 10-inch Touch Screen Photo Frame - Classic Mat is a solid enough frame, and we found the aesthetics a little nicer than Nixplay's other offerings. The frame's base was stable and easy to secure, something that wasn't as true for other Nixplay models. The frame's screen skewed blue, however, and for a lower price you can get our pick instead.

The Pix-Star 10″ Cloud & Wi-Fi Digital Picture Frame has a ton of overwhelmingly positive reviews on Amazon, and its features are impressive: In addition to photos, it displays weather and email, and it even plays internet radio. But its ugly design, clunky software, distracting transitions, and low-res, 1024×768 screen negate anything good. It also has the most sensitive sensor of any frame we tested; that meant it usually turned back on right after we turned it off (I had to place the remote in an area of the room where I could turn off the screen without triggering the frame's motion sensor). Simply put, this frame's price just doesn't seem to align with what you get.

The Skylight Frame, which is highly rated on Amazon, is a mixed bag. It looks well designed from the front, and it has a touchscreen that makes setup a snap. But we prefer other frames to this one. This is a landscape-oriented frame, and it doesn't place portrait photos side by side, so you see a large amount of pillarboxing on any non-landscape photo. It has a 10-inch screen but a huge amount of frame, which brings the overall size to 14 inches; this seemed unnecessarily large compared with the size of other frames. Plus, at nearly every step of using the Skylight, you’ll find yourself getting prompted to upgrade to the Skylight Pro service (nearly $40 a year) for features like uploading videos or organizing your photos into albums. The Skylight app, for instance, is available only with the Pro service. Skylight has an updated version of the frame for 2022, which it said has hardware upgrades, but we decided against testing it, as we don't expect hardware upgrades to change how we feel about the software and size.

This article was edited by Phil Ryan and Erica Ogg.

Nena Farrell

Updates Writer

Nena Farrell was an updates writer covering smart speakers, wireless TV headphones, tabletop radios, and digital photo frames, among other things. She was previously an associate editor at Sunset, and is currently a writer and reviewer at Wired.

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