Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsBEWARE: Not compatible with older routers
Reviewed in the United States on January 16, 2022
I bought two of Aura Photo Frames: one for my parents and one for my wife's parents. Neither of them were impressed with the Aura at first, but they are liking it better as they use it more.
Problem #1: The Aura is too expensive to have the following problems.
Problem #2: The Aura would not work for my wife's parents because it was not compatible with their WIFI router. The only solution was to purchase and install a new router for them. I was able to make it work, but it wasn't easy. The moble app hides the features needed to fix a problematic setup. But those features are in the app...just keep digging.
Problem #3: The Aura does not have a touch screen. Instead it has two swipe bars: one on the top and one on the side of the frame. The swipe bars only work well when the Aura is on a table or counter. Otherwise, it is awkward to swipe to the next picture. But the worst part is the Aura designers tried to build in multiple features into the swipe bar. So different movements open and manipulate a menu. If your hands are not steady, like our elderly parents, it works poorly and is aggravating. A touch screen woyld be better.
Problem #4: The phone app does not let you add captions, audio clips, or metadata to pictures. This is a big issue because you can't tell your loved ones anything about a picture, such as where it was taken and who is in the picture.
Problem #5: Videos take a long time to download and this makes them basically unusable. The Aura has a small local cache and, thus, requires a good Internet connection to download videos and pictures. It relies completely on the cloud. If your network goes out or Aura goes out of business, Aura devices have little value.
Problem #6: the Aura moble app does not integrate with Microsoft One Drive. This makes it harder to get pictures from One Drive into Aura. Luckily, there is a reasonable workaround. In One Drive, you can download the picture into the mobile phone's download folder. The Aura can upload it from there.
SUMMARY
The Aura's screen makes pictures look fabulous. If you want a hands off slideshow, the Aura works well. My favorite feature is using the mobile app to make the Aura display a specific picture. It is also easy for multiple family members to use the app to share pictures with the Aura - this is the Aura's best feature. It turns the Aura mobile app into a mini Facebook without all the ads and problems of Facebook. It would be amazing if Aura would let us add captions and audio messages to each picture.
WISHLIST
I wish the Aura had the following:
1) a touchscreen for easy swiping. A touchscreen would make it much easier for owners to add comments, audio clips, and metadata to pictures, to delete pictures, to search for specific images, to display multiple images on a page, and to manage device configuration without a mobile app.
2) the ability to add beautiful captions, metadata, and audio clips to photos
3) compatibility with more WIFI routers
4) bigger display with high resolution (at least 15 inches at 2K but 20 inches at 4K would be best)
5) Integration with Microsoft One Drive
6) Large local cache (at least 64 GB) for playing videos and making the Aura usable when the local network is down, the cloud is unavailable, or Aura goes out of business.
7) USB connector for uploading pictures locally and as a source for displaying more pictures.
8) replaceable outer picture frame for better compatibilty with a room's style.