Aura recently introduced its newest product, the Aura Ink frame, a premium, revolutionary digital photo frame featuring a $499 price tag. This new model, which has a dual color e-paper display and real time wakeup & sleep features, is a big move away from Aura’s usual LCD-based lineup. The Aura Ink frame is designed to enhance photo sharing and connectivity among loved ones, providing a unique viewing experience.
The Aura Ink frame stands out with its 13.3-inch display, boasting a resolution of 1600 x 1200 pixels and a 4:3 aspect ratio. The frame incorporates state-of-the-art Spectra 6 technology. It is equipped with a six-color ink system including white, black, red, yellow, green, and blue. By rapidly combining these colors together, this inventive process makes it seem like there are millions of colors. To that end, it provides better saturation and contrast for a more vivid photo presentation.
Similar to the technology used in the Kindle Colorsoft e-reader, the Aura Ink frame is adept at showcasing images in a way that is both vivid and engaging. Its brightness level is purposely reduced—about one-sixth that of an ordinary LCD display. As Jensen noted, “It’s a very subtle light compared to an LCD. It’s maybe a sixth of the brightness of an LCD.” This design decision rounds off extremely flat corners, yielding a more comfortable viewing experience, particularly in darker conditions.
Our frame updates its photo content automatically at night, so every day users have the newest, most relevant, beautiful images to catch their audience’s attention. This can be set to trigger 12 times per day, but the more it’s adjusted, the shorter the battery life will be. While its cordless construction, which makes the Aura Ink frame super easy to move around, does mean it needs to be recharged every so often.
Aura’s desire to improve on the traditional digital photo-sharing experience can be seen in their vision for the product. Jensen emphasized the importance of fostering connections, stating, “We think that this space of sharing—not just photos, but connecting with loved ones—is really underserved.” He said that this space has already been “badly monetized by advertising.” This industry knowledge has highlighted an opportunity in the market that Aura will be addressing with its disruptive hardware.
The Aura Ink frame is currently available at Aura’s website. To this end, and as part of its larger Mobility as a Service (MaaS) strategy, the company has been forging ahead with software plays that go well beyond bikes. “We’ve done a lot of prototyping around software that’s not just tied to frames,” Jensen mentioned, highlighting Aura’s forward-thinking approach.
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