The Aura Mason is the best digital photo frame in the world right now, which means it’s taken the top spot in our guide to the finest home displays for you and your family’s snaps.
What’s so good about it? It combines a stylish, minimalist design with superb image quality, thanks to its 1600 x 1200 resolution and impressive viewing angles.
In our full review, we said: “Digital photo frames ship in a range of display sizes but, at 9 inches, the Mason hits the sweet spot: it’s small enough to be subtle yet still offers plenty of space for photos to really shine.
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- Read our in-depth Aura Mason review
“Detail is excellent and colors are vibrant but balanced, with a dash of added pop enhancing depth and countering the slightly reflective screen coating.”
We also particularly liked the Aura Mason’s design. Unlike a lot of generic digital photo frames, it has a freestanding design (in both landscape and portrait) that means it doesn’t need a stand at the back. This means it can fit on shelves or other tight spots where other photo frames might struggle to fit.
The flip-side of this design is that you can’t change Aura Mason’s viewing angle, though this shouldn’t be an issue for most people, particularly as the viewing angles are so good even at 80-degrees to the display.
How do you get your photos onto the Aura Mason? Once you’ve connected it to your Wi-Fi network, the Aura Frames app (iOS/Android) lets you choose images from your camera roll, or cloud services like iCloud or Google Photos. Choose the ones you want and they’ll appear in a slideshow in a few seconds.
If you’ve got some snaps stashed on a computer hard drive instead, there’s also a web uploader – every Aura Mason comes with unlimited free storage and any photos are stored in Aura’s secure cloud (though it makes sense to back them up elsewhere, of course).
Despite its slightly limited customizability and the fact that it only ships with a US wall plug (which is slightly annoying for those outside the US), the Aura Mason does enough to earn five stars and become our number digital photo frame.
