There’s a new breed of digital photo frame in town, and while you can stick your phone’s photos on it, iOS owners may have the easiest time.
Pictures of the family are nice and all, but the classic photo frame can be so much more these days. While the simple print-out sitting in a simple frame is a hallmark of so many homes, a digital variation can deliver more, well, variation.
But if an electronic photo frame feels like something from before a good decade ago, back when screens weren’t super amazing, you could be excused for thinking they weren’t still a thing.
Rather, they’ve returned to life with the help of WiFi, and depending on who you get them from, they may be able to show those photos in an automatically updated way.
Smart displays from Google and Amazon can have images loaded onto them from their respective services, as can the Facebook Portal, while Samsung’s The Frame TV can receive images and art from services around the world. And they’re not the only gadgets to jump into this world.
Netgear started dabbling in this last year, with a 27 inch photo frame designed for showcasing art. At a hair under $1200, the first Netgear Meural wasn’t something for everyone, really competing with TVs able to show pictures like Samsung’s Frame TV, but in 2020, it appears Netgear is changing its approach to photo frames.
This year, it has a smaller model, with a 15.6 inch Meural WiFi Photo Frame, supporting artworks from around the world, strips of Peanuts comics, and your own photos.
Getting your own photos on the smaller Meural, however, doesn’t appear to be as seamless as just connecting it to a photo library from your Google account, though, making it a little less friendly for Android owners. However iPhone owners can use an app, with Netgear confirming to Pickr that it can support Apple shared albums on iOS 14 and higher, doing this through the app, and even supporting Apple’s Live Photos from the iPhone.
As such, sending your own photos to Netgear’s electronic Meural photo frame will likely happen through the app, whether you’re on iOS or Android, giving you some idea of how you’ll get your photos to the frame. Outside of your own photos, the 15.6 inch Meural supports art and imagery from around the world.
“With our new Meural WiFi Photo Frame we’ve created a new way to enjoy and relive those special memories,” said David Henry, Senior Vice President for Connected Home Products and Services at Netgear.
“With the added capability to invite family and friends from around the world to create and share photo playlists and albums, this new premium photo frame will also help to keep people close in a time when we all need to stay connected,” he said.
One upside to Netgear’s new photo frame is the price, which is almost a third of what its 27 inch model was priced at last year, set to $499 in Australia, and is available now.
