Honorable Mentions
• Skylight 10-inch Frame for $170: This frame was a previous honorable mention, and it’s still a solid frame. We like other frames better for the price, including the new Skylight Frame 2 (especially with its Snap Frame accessories).
• Cozyla frames: We tried a few from this brand. Photo quality was great and there were solid features like only showing photos that match the current orientation of the frame. I found the app to be frustrating, however, and it comes pre-loaded with unnecessary art images. You can hide them from your frame, but there was no obvious way to remove them from the app entirely. If you happen to find one at a super discount, grab it, but other than that, I’d wait for an update.
• myFirst Frame Doodle for $129: This frame is aimed at kids, with its cover you can draw on and an app feed that family members can use for photo sharing and chatting. But it’s too expensive for the quality. It was slow and not as straightforward as Aura and no matter how many times I deleted photos from the library, they kept returning.
Photograph: Nena Farrell
• Pexar 2K Digital Picture Frame by Lexar for $160: This frame can rotate to be either portrait or landscape mode, and has a little stand that attaches via magnet for either position. It’s a fine frame, but the screen isn’t as nice as those for a similar price. The Pexar is made by Lexar but uses a third-party app, Frameo, which works fine but has a weirdly Instagram-like uploader that’s limited to 10 photos.
• Simply Smart Home 8-inch frame for $160 and Aeezo 9-inch frame $110: These will do the job, but their apps aren’t nearly as streamlined as their pricier counterparts. They’re better than the Atat below, but, like Cozyla, they cross the $100 threshold. If you can spend a little more, the $150 Aura is a much better buy.
• Monster 8-Inch Digital Frame for $70: We used to recommend the Monster as the best cheap option, but as of this publication, it’s not available. The touchscreen was noticeably faster, and the 1280p screen gets you crisp photos. You can use Google Assistant or Alexa with it too. It had a limit of 4,000 photos, whereas Aura offers unlimited storage, but that’s still a huge amount of photos to display.
