The best digital frames for 2024

Using an Aura frame felt like the company looked at the existing digital photo frame market and said “we have to be able to do better than this.” And they have. The Carver Mat is extremely simple to set up, has a wonderful screen, feels well-constructed and inoffensive and has some smart features that elevate it beyond its competitors (most of which don’t actually cost that much less).

The Carver Mat reminds me a little bit of an Amazon Echo Show in its design. It’s a landscape-oriented device with a wide, angled base that tapers to a thin edge at the top. Because of this design, you can’t orient it in portrait mode, like some other frames I tried, but Aura has a software trick to get around that (more on that in a minute). The whole device is made of a matte plastic in either black or white that has a nice grip, doesn’t show fingerprints and just overall feels like an old-school photo frame.

The 10.1-inch display is the best I’ve seen on any digital photo frame I’ve tested. Yes, the 1,280 x 800 resolution is quite low by modern standards, but it provides enough detail that all of my photos look crisp and clear. Beyond the resolution, the Carver’s screen has great color reproduction and viewing angles, and deals well with glare from the sun and lights alike. It’s not a touchscreen, but that doesn’t bother me because it prevents the screen from getting covered in fingerprints — and the app takes care of everything you need so it’s not required.

One control you will find on the frame is a way to skip forwards or backwards through the images loaded on it. You do this by swiping left or right on the top of the frame; you can also double-tap this area to “love” an image. From what I can tell, there’s no real utility in this aside from notifying the person who uploaded that pic that someone else appreciated it. But the swipe backwards and forwards gestures are definitely handy if you want to skip a picture or scroll back and see something you missed.

Setting the frame up was extremely simple. Once plugged in, I just downloaded the Aura app, made an account and tapped “add frame.” From there, it asked if the frame was for me or if I was setting it up as a gift (this mode lets you pre-load images so the device is ready to go as soon as someone plugs it in). Adding images is as simple as selecting things from your phone’s photo library. I could see my iPhone camera roll and any albums I had created in my iCloud Photos library, including shared albums that other people contribute to. You can also connect your Google Photos account and use albums from there.

One of the smartest features Aura offers is a continuous scan of those albums — so if you have one of your kids or pets and regularly add new images to it, they’ll show up on your frame without you needing to do anything. Of course, this has the potential for misuse. If you have a shared album with someone and you assign it to your Aura frame, any pictures that someone else adds will get shared to your frame, something you may not actually want. Just something to keep in mind.

My only main caveat for the Carver Mat, and Aura in general, is that an internet connection is required and the only way to get photos on the device is via the cloud. There’s a limited selection of photos downloaded to the device, but the user has no control over that, and everything else is pulled in from the cloud. Aura says there are no limits on how many images you can add, so you don’t need to worry about running out of storage. But if you don’t want yet another device that needs to be online all the time, Aura might not be for you. Most other frames I tested let you directly load photos via an SD card or an app.

The Aura app also lets you manage settings on the frame like how often it switches images (anywhere from every 30 seconds to every 24 hours, with lots of granular choices in between) or what order to display photos (chronologically or shuffled). There’s also a “photo match” feature, which intelligently handles the issue of having lots of images in both portrait and landscape orientation. Since the Carver Mat is designed to be used in landscape, the photo match feature makes it so portrait pictures are displayed side-by-side, with two images filling the frame instead of having black bars on either side. It also tries to pull together complementary pairs of images, like displaying the same person or pulling together two pics that were shot around the same time.

Overall, the Carver Mat checks all the boxes. Great screen, simple but classy design, a good app, no subscription required. Yes, it’s a little more expensive than some competing options, but all the cheaper options are also noticeably worse in a number of ways. And if you don’t want a mat, there’s a standard Carver that costs $149 and otherwise has the same features and specs as the Caver Mat I tested.

If you’re looking to spend less, PhotoSpring’s Classic Digital Frame is the best option I’ve seen that costs less than $100 (just barely at $99). The PhotoSpring model comes with a 10.1-inch touchscreen with the same 1,280 x 800 resolution as the Carver Mat. The screen is definitely not as good as the Carver, though, with worse viewing angles and a lot more glare from light sources. That said, images still look sharp and colorful, especially considering you’re not going to be continuously looking at this display.

PhotoSpring’s frames are basically Android tablets with some custom software to make them work as single-purpose photo devices. That means you’ll use the touchscreen to dig into settings, flip through photos and otherwise manipulate the device. Changing things like how often the frame changes images can’t be done in the app. While doing things on the frame itself are fine, I prefer Aura’s system of managing everything on the app.

However, PhotoSpring does have a good advantage here: you can pop in a microSD card or USB drive to transfer images directly to the frame, no internet connection required. You can also use the PhotoSpring app to sync albums and single images as well, which obviously requires the internet. But once those pics have been transferred, you’re good to go. Additionally, you can upload pictures on a computer via the PhotoSpring website or sync Google Photos albums.

As for the PhotoSpring hardware itself, it looks good from the front, giving off traditional photo frame vibes. The back is rather plasticky and doesn’t feel very premium, but overall it’s fine for the price. There’s an adjustable stand so you can set the frame up in portrait or landscape mode, and you can set the software to crop your photos or just display them with borders if the orientation doesn’t fit.

PhotoSpring also has a somewhat unusual offering: a frame that has a rechargeable battery. The $99 model just uses AC power, but a $139 option lets you unplug the frame and pass it around to people so they can swipe through your photos albums on the device. This feels like a niche use case, and I think most people will be better served saving their $40, but it’s something to consider.

One of my favorite things about PhotoSpring is that they don’t nickel-and-dime you with subscription services. There aren’t any limits on how many images you can sync, nor are things like Google Photos locked behind a paywall. The combo of a solid feature set, a fine display and a low entry price point make the PhotoSpring a good option if you want to save some cash.

If you want a device that works great as a digital photo frame that can do a lot more than the above options, consider Google’s Nest Hub Max. It has a 10-inch touchscreen with a 1,280 x 800 resolution and can connect to a host of Google services and other apps to help you control your smart home devices. It also works great for playing videos from YouTube or other services, or streaming music thanks to its large built-in speaker. At $229, it’s significantly more expensive than our other options, but there’s no question it can do a lot more.

From a photos perspective, you’ll need to use Google Photos. If you’re not already using the app, switching your library over might be too much of a task to make it worthwhile. But if you do use Google Photos, signing in with your Google account when you set up the Hub Max makes accessing your images quite simple. You can pick specific albums, have it stream your entire library or pull things from various recommendations it offers up.

Once that’s set up, you can customize the slideshow as you’d expect — I set mine to come up by default after the Hub Max was dormant for a few minutes. I also removed everything from the display except the photos. By default, it shows you a clock and the weather forecast, but I wanted to just focus on the pictures. I do like the option to show a little more info, though.

As for the screen itself, it has the same relatively low resolution of the other digital photo frames I tried, but it handles glare very well. And the built-in ambient light sensor automatically adjusts brightness and color temperature, which I enjoy. It keeps the Hub Max from feeling like an overly bright screen blasting you with light; it recedes into the background well.

Of course, the Nest Hub Max has a lot of voice-activated tricks via the Google Assistant. My big question is how long the Hub Max will be supported, as Google is clearly planning to phase out the Assistant in favor of Gemini, and I’m not convinced that the Hub Max will ever support that new AI-powered tool. Beyond the Assistant, you can get a variety of apps on it like Netflix and YouTube, stream music from a bunch of apps, see video from your Nest Cam or make video calls via the built-in camera.

If you’re going to buy a Nest Hub Max, it shouldn’t be just for its digital photo frame features, even though those are quite solid. It’s best for someone well-entrenched in the Google ecosystem who wants a more multi-purpose device. If you fit the bill, though, the Nest Hub Max remains a capable device, even though it’s been around for almost five years.