Aura offers a $499 e-ink digital photo frame that lets you work wirelessly

Aura introduces its latest model, the $499 Ink Frame, which brings a 13-inch color e-paper display to the company’s LCD-based lineup. This technology, similar to that found in the Kindle Colorsoft e-reader, uses a six-color ink system to create the illusion of millions of tones. More importantly, the use of e-ink technology allows the frame to finally become wireless.

This makes them perfect for hanging in your home in places where a wire screen might look bad, such as a living room wall, stairway, or anywhere else where wire might ruin the aesthetic.

The company, founded by early Twitter employees, had wanted to work with e-ink technology for some time, but it wasn’t up to the task of sharing color photos taken with your smartphone. But as e-ink systems evolved, Aura changed its mind.

The new frame uses Spectra 6 technology that provides six primary colors – white, black, red, yellow, green and blue – with better saturation and contrast, making it more adept at displaying images.

Additionally, Aura has added a front light to the frame, inspired by the Kindle Paperwhite. This helps improve contrast, notes Eric Jensen, Aura co-founder and CTO.

“It’s a very subtle light compared to an LCD screen. It’s probably one-sixth as bright as an LCD screen,” he told TechCrunch in an interview. “People often don’t notice there’s a light until they’re in a dark room and then it goes out,” Jensen adds.

On top of the Spectra 6 technology, Aura has built its own audio stability algorithm, which uses error distribution.

“We had to go back to the old dithering algorithms used in newspaper technology, where we had to figure out how to blend these dots to simulate other colors,” Jensen says.

Although e-ink technology means you can work wirelessly, the frame still needs to be recharged sometimes, which means you have to remove it from time to time to turn it on. However, Aura claims that the frame can have up to three months of battery life, so this isn’t a major inconvenience. (We haven’t had the frame long enough to report on battery life at this time.)

To reduce its energy needs, Ink uses motion and sensors to turn off the light when no one is around. And in the accompanying mobile app, customers can also choose to configure their own on/off schedule, if they prefer.

Like other Aura frames, the Ink has an upgraded look and feel with a graphite-inspired frame, paper-textured mat, and glass front, making it feel more like a traditional picture frame than cheap tech bought online. (As it should, given the price.)

The framework itself 13.3. inches with a resolution of 1600 x 1200 and an aspect ratio of 4:3. The box includes wall mounts, a stand, and a charging cord. Aura says the frame can be used in portrait or landscape mode, and including the screen and frame, the ink is 14.1 x 11.4 x 0.6 inches.

The frame also includes a USB-C port, a status light, and control buttons for navigating through your photos. If you don’t want to manually adjust images, you can rely on the frame updating to the latest image in your pre-configured rotation overnight.

In tests, the frame provided a more muted color than existing Aura frames, but this also made it fit better next to printed photos on the wall. Depending on the image, it may not be immediately obvious to guests that it is an e-ink frame from a distance.

The only thing that might bother you at first is the image uploading experience. It causes the screen to flash frequently, with a yellow light, which can be annoying. But Jensen says the frame updates its images overnight, so customers don’t have to see that transformation.

“It’s a bit of a paradox,” he admits. “It’s definitely a trade-off with this technology.” “You can set it up to 12 times a day, if you want, but that has a trade-off with battery life. The more times it changes, the more battery it consumes, of course.”

The company believes customers may end up being more selective about how many photos they add to the frame as a result. Maybe they’ll just add one photo they always want to display, and then change it when they’re ready for a new photo.

Aura raised $26 million in 2022 after 1 million frameworks were sold and an app used by 3 million users. (Families often use the app together, for example, to add new photos to a frame dedicated to grandparents.) Earlier this year, the company closed $60 million in growth capital investment from the LAGO Innovation Fund. Today, the company has sold “single-digit millions” of tires and is profitable. Its app has seen 1 billion photos shared so far as well.

Although the founders, Jensen and CEO Abdul Chaudhry, hail from the early days of Twitter, Aura’s focus is now more on private social networks built between friends and family who use the Aura app and devices to share photos.

“We think that this sharing space — not just photos, but communication with loved ones — is really underserved,” Jensen says. “And it’s clearly not monetized well by ads.” “The combination of hardware and that space works really well as a business,” he adds.

The company still considers itself a startup, continuing to develop new products and thinking about updates to Aura that could expand beyond tire management.

“We’ve done a lot of prototyping around software that’s not just tied to tires,” he points out. However, the company is concerned that focusing on a private photo network alone may not be a good business.

“We’re selling a hardware product that has a very straightforward value proposition: no subscription, unlimited photos. This works well with a private photo network. We’ve seen a lot of companies try a private photo network on their own in the past but not be able to find a business model for it,” says Jensen.

The Ink Frame is on sale starting today On the Hala website.

Updated to correct “double digit” to single digit millions for profitability.