The Second Aura Photo Frame Based on E-Ink Technology Is Significantly Improved and Has Become Much Cheaper.
Last year, Aura released the Aura Ink, its first digital photo frame to use an e-ink display rather than the LCD screens common in other devices, making it a market leader (this year alone, Aura customers have already downloaded over a billion photos). When I reviewed the original 13-inch Aura Ink last year , I recommended it, albeit with some significant reservations. Today, Aura announced the second generation of the 10-inch Ink photo frame , and while I wouldn’t say they’ve solved all my problems, the new device is significantly improved—and much cheaper.
The Benefits of E-Ink (and Disadvantages)
Most digital photo frames resemble an iPad with a decorative border. They’re great for displaying hundreds of photos in vibrant colors, but not everyone appreciates the look or the fact that they always need to be plugged in. An e-ink photo frame, on the other hand, uses a low-power screen like the one found in the Kindle Colorsoft—less vibrant, but more paper-like and much closer to the look of a traditionally printed photo. Aura Ink is a great choice if you want a digital photo frame that looks more like a “real” photo, doesn’t require a network connection, and isn’t backlit like a tablet (though there is a backlight, it compensates for the fact that color e-ink screens don’t reflect light well, so your photos may appear too dark without additional backlighting). You’ll still get all the benefits of an LCD photo frame like the Aura Aspen, including the ability to upload photos from anywhere using the universal Aura app (you can now even send them as text messages directly to the frame), but you’ll only need to charge it once every few months.
Now for the downsides: while most digital photo frames let you switch between photos with a swipe, Aura Ink is much slower—switching from one photo to another takes about 45 seconds. While an LCD display can accurately reproduce the colors in your photo, e-ink uses a “dithering algorithm” to blend tiny pixels to create the illusion of different hues (“millions” of pixels, according to Aura). In practice, this means that up close, your photos will look quite grainy, and the colors won’t be nearly as vibrant as on your phone’s screen.
The 10-inch Aura Ink offers a number of significant improvements.
Overall, the Aura Ink is a great product, as long as you know what you’re buying, and the new 10-inch model offers significant improvements over the original 13-inch model released in 2025:
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The resolution has been increased from 150 ppi to 200 ppi , so your images appear more detailed and less grainy. (While the difference is difficult to capture in a photo, I definitely see the improvement when comparing images side by side.)
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Instead of the six primary colors available in older models, the 10-inch Aura Ink camera mixes nine different hues to approximate the colors in your images, providing greater color accuracy and improved contrast.
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The transition effect between photos has been updated and now looks more deliberate—like waves of color moving across the screen, rather than a series of gradually intensifying flashes.
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It’s much cheaper: $349 versus $499 for the 13-inch model—though that’s still significantly more expensive than the most popular Aura model, the 10.1-inch Aura Carver, which starts at about $200 less.
An excellent choice for the right person.
I write a lot about e-ink devices, from e-readers to tablets, and my main point, especially regarding color devices, is that they do a great job, but before you spend money, you need to understand what you’re going to use them for. Aura Ink will never look as bright and colorful as a photo frame with an LCD screen, and if you want a frame that can cycle through images every few minutes or even play videos, you’ll need to look elsewhere (to maximize battery life, Aura recommends switching photos on the Aura Ink no more than 12 times a day).
But if you want to display photos that look more like the ones you had hanging on your walls as a kid, in a frame that doesn’t have to be plugged in all the time, you’ll probably like it, provided you can stomach the $350 price tag.