Aura presents its newest model, the Ink box $499which brings a 13-inch color e-paper display to the company’s otherwise LCD-based lineup. The technology, similar to that found in the Colorsoft Kindle e-reader, uses a six-color ink system to create the illusion of million tones. More importantly, the use of e-ink technology allows the frame to finally be wireless.
This makes it ideal for hanging in your home in places where a wired screen might look unsightly, such as a living room wall, a staircase, or anywhere else a cable would ruin the aesthetic.
The company, founded by early Twitter employees, has wanted to work with e-ink technology for some time, but it wasn’t yet able to share colorful photos taken on your smartphone. But as e-ink systems have advanced, Aura has changed its mind.
The new frame uses Spectra 6 technology that delivers six primary colors — white, black, red, yellow, green and blue — with better saturation and contrast, making it more capable of displaying photos.
In addition, Aura added a front light to the frame, taking a cue from the Kindle Paperwhite. This helps improve contrast, notes Eric Jensen, Aura co-founder and CTO.
“It’s a very thin light compared to an LCD. It’s maybe one-sixth the brightness of an LCD,” he told TechCrunch in an interview. “People often don’t even notice it has a light on until they’re in a dark room and it goes off,” Jensen adds.
On top of the Spectra 6 technology, Aura has built its own proprietary dithering algorithm, which uses error diffusion.
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“We had to go back to the ancient splitting algorithms from newspaper technology, where you had to figure out how to combine these dots to simulate other colors,” says Jensen.
Although the e-ink technology means you can go wireless, the frame still needs to be recharged from time to time, meaning you’ll need to take it down from time to time to activate it. However, Aura claims the frame can get up to three months of battery life, so this isn’t a huge inconvenience.
To reduce its energy needs, the ink uses motion and sensors to turn off the light when no one is around. In the companion 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 bezel, paper-textured mat and glass front that make it look more like a traditional frame than cheap tech bought online. (As it should, given the price.)
The framework itself is 13.3. inches with a resolution of 1600 x 1200 and an aspect ratio of 4:3. The box includes wall mounting hardware, stand and charging cable. Aura says the frame can be used in either portrait or landscape mode, and including the screen and frame, the ink measures 14.1 x 11.4″ x 0.6″.
The frame also includes a USB-C port, a status light, and button controls for moving between your photos. If you don’t want to manually adjust photos, you can rely on the frame updating to the latest photo in the preset rotation overnight.
In testing, the frame produced a more muted color than existing Aura frames, but that also made it fit better next to printed photos on the wall. Depending on the image, it may not even be immediately obvious to visitors that this is an e-ink frame from a distance. (We haven’t had the box long enough to report battery life at this time)
One thing that might frustrate you at first is the photo loading experience. It causes the screen to flash repeatedly, in a yellowish light, which can be frustrating. But Jensen says the framework updates its photos overnight so customers don’t have to see that transition.
“The transition is a little jarring. It’s definitely a trade-off with this technology,” he admits. “You can adjust it up to 12 times a day if you want, but that conflicts with battery life. The more times it changes, the more battery it uses, obviously.”
The company believes customers may end up being more selective about the number of photos they add to the frame as a result. They might add just one photo that they want to always appear, then change it when they’re ready for a new one.
Aura in 2022 raised $26 million after reaching 1 million frames sold and an app used by 3 million users. (Families often use the app together, for example, to add new photos to a frame given to grandparents.) Today, the company has sold “double-digit million” frames and is profitable. His app has seen a billion photos shared to date, too.
Although founders Jensen and CEO Abdur Chowdhury hail from the earlier days of Twitter, Aura now focuses on the private social networks created between friends and family who use Aura’s app and devices to share photos.
“We think this space for sharing — not just photos, but connecting with loved ones — is really underserved. There’s obviously no ad monetization,” says Jensen. “The marriage of a hardware device and this space works really well as a business,” he adds.
The company still considers itself a startup as it continues to develop new products and study updates to the Aura app that could expand beyond frame management.
“We’ve done a lot of prototyping around software that doesn’t just tie into frameworks,” he notes. However, the company worries that focusing on a private photo network alone might not be such a good business.
“We’re selling a hardware product that has a very simple value proposition: no subscription, unlimited photos. That works really well with the private photo network. And we’ve seen a lot of companies try the private photo network on its own in the past and not be able to find a business model for it,” says Jensen.
The ink skeleton is out today on the Aura website.
