The best digital photo frames in 2026

As lovely as it is to have hundreds of photos dotted around the house, you don't always have enough space to display absolutely everything. That's where one of the best digital photo frames comes in. It displays a series of different photos (with space for hundreds) so that you don't have to replace photos when you want something new.

There are tons out there, though, and working out which you should buy is a tricky task. So we've tested a whole bunch of digital photo frames, rated them, and put them on this list so that we can show you the best for your needs.

Our favorite at the moment is the Aura Aspen, a photo frame that boasts a bright 11.8-inch display. It's one of the highest-resolution frames we've tested, and it works over WiFi to easily add and remove photos. There are plenty more besides if it's a little too expensive for you — these are the best digital photo frames you can buy.

The best digital photo frames you can buy today

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Best overall

The Aura Mason was our previous top pick among the best digital photo frames, but Aura is discontinuing that model and replacing it with the Aura Aspen, which has everything we loved in the Mason — primarily, its beautiful 1600 x 1200 screen — and expanding it to a larger 11.8 inches.

Just like the Mason, the Aura Aspen delivers outstanding images that are crisp, vibrant, and colorful. Its anti-glare screen also enabled us to see pictures easily even when we were at extreme angles to the frame.

As before, it also supports both video (limited to 30 seconds each) and sound, as well as still images. It syncs seamlessly with iCloud and Google Photos; we especially liked that it can update automatically if you add photos to designated folders.

The Aspen is incredibly easy to set up, whether it's for yourself or as a gift for a parent or relative. Touch bars along the top and side of the frame let us switch between photos with just a swipe — and no touchscreen means your oily fingers won't mar the display.

While you can set the Aspen up in portrait or landscape mode, there's no option to mount it on the wall — you'll have to spring for the pricier Aura Walden for that. And, while you get unlimited cloud storage for photos, there's no local storage on the Aspen itself, which means that if your Wi-Fi connection goes down, you won't see any images on the frame.

Aura makes two other photo frames that we like: The Aura Walden ($249, Amazon) has a larger 15.6-inch, 1600 x 1200 display, and the Aura Carver ($139, Amazon) has a 10.1-inch display, but with a lower 1280 x 800-pixel resolution. The company will continue to sell the Aura Mason ($199, Amazon) until inventory runs out.

• Read our full Aura Aspen review

Best value digital photo frame

Our best budget pick among the best digital photo frames, the PhotoSpring 10 costs less than $100, but delivers a lot for the money. You can choose to either display it with its classic black picture frame, or remove it to reveal a more modern white frame.

In our PhotoSpring review, we were impressed by the build quality of the device and how nicely the plain white frame sets off our images. Currently, this frame is for tabletops only, but if you wanted to mount it to your wall, the company advises you purchase a separate power cable with a 90-degree magnetic connector.

While its resolution of 1280 x 800 is lower than the Aura Mason, we still found it pleasingly sharp and colorful enough for our photos and videos. High-resolution videos of up to five minutes in length (or 1GB file size) play automatically in an integrated slideshow, though the frame does not recognize Apple’s Live Photos as videos, only stills.

PhotoSpring’s flexibility extends to the various ways you can access photos, allowing the user to send up to 30MB of photos directly to the frame via email, proprietary app, text, photos app share button, or from a browser. All media uploaded to the frame is automatically stored on the device.

A subtle green dot at the upper right corner expands various on-screen controls and hides them when not in use. It's not the easiest to get to grips with at first, and it may require you to check the instructions. However, when you discover it and tap, it will show the current image zooming out to reveal handy on-screen controls. These will let you hide, delete, alter rotation, favorite, adjust formatting, or mail images to or from the frame. A settings menu facilitates the management of cloud accounts like Google Photos for sync or backup or Flickr for sync.

The interface also lets you invite friends to upload images to your frame, change brightness and volume levels, schedule the frame on and off, and set up parameters for viewing slideshows and onscreen EXIF info for each image. We tested the Premium version of the frame, which features four hours of battery life, as opposed to the standard version, which you must keep plugged in.

PhotoSpring is easy to use, with most tasks accomplished with a quick tap and simple on/off switches — ideal for non-technical folk. Image quality is high resolution for the frame’s size, and because you can schedule on-off intervals, a motion sensor is not sorely missed.

• Read our full PhotoSpring 10 Digital Photo Frame review

Best non connected

The Atatat Digital Photo Frame impressed us with the quality of its visuals, offering a vibrant display without artificially punching up the colors. While its screen is small, the widescreen format gives shots the impression of being bigger than they actually are. It’s quite a versatile design too, with calendar utilities and the ability to play images, movies and music over a slideshow.

This model comes with a separate remote control rather than a touch screen, so you don’t need to worry about fingerprints marring the screen. It’s also very easy to set up and intuitive to use, as there’s no software or app connectivity necessary; simply plug in a memory card or USB drive, and the Atatat frame does the rest. This makes it perfect for the non-tech-savvy members of the family.

Bear in mind that there’s no internal memory, so you’re limited by what your SD card or USB thumb drive can hold. Having said that, at less than $70, this is a great entry-level digital photo frame that will cover the basics and do it well. You can find it in 7, 8, and 10-inch sizes.

• Read our full Atatat Digital Photo Frame review

Highest resolution

Our smartphone cameras can take pictures at increasingly high resolutions, so it's about time that digital photo frames caught up. The Pexar by Lexar has a resolution of 2000 x 1200 pixels, which is one the highest among the frames we've tested, and it really showed off our photos well. Not bad for the price.

We also liked that you don't need to subscribe to any service to use the device, although some features, like batch upload files, does require a subscription. Still, with 32GB of onboard storage, plus an SD card slot and USB, you can load decades worth of photos onto the device locally. And, that also means it will continue to show photos, even if you're not connected to the cloud.

We were really impressed not just with the resolution, but also the colors displayed on the Pexar's 11-inch screen. However, despite it being a matte finish, it was susceptible to glare, and its touchscreen was a real fingerprint magnet. If you have a stylus, we suggest using it, as we did. We also wish it could connect to either Google Photos or Apple Photos, to make it easier to upload our favorite pics.

The Pexar is available with either a black or a Sand frame, and the company also makes a smaller 10-inch model, albeit with a much lower resolution of 1280 x 800.

• Read our full Lexar Pexar 11-inch Digital Frame review

Best for hanging on a wall

The Aura Ink 10 has a fun trick up its sleeve. Thanks to its snazzy ePaper display, which uses barely any power, you don’t need to have it plugged into the wall to show off your favorite photos. Instead, you just have to plug it in every three months or so. A clean look, then, and it looks like a more traditional picture frame as a result. If you’re a “wire-free” type household, that’s a big bonus.

The ePaper display also makes images look more like printed photos as opposed to pictures on a screen. It does have a couple of drawbacks, though. For one, images look more washed out, and the display struggles with brightness and high contrast. A closer look shows better quality than previous screen iterations, but it's by no means perfect—there’s definite graininess.

But it's far more colorful than the prior model, with 9 colors instead of the first generation's 6. That means more vibrant-looking images, especially when coupled with the backlight that illuminates when someone is nearby the frame. We particularly like the screen refresh animation, which, rather than a sudden flash and shift in image, ripples across the screen from one corner. It’s less jarring and looks really nice.

It’s very expensive, mind you. One of the most expensive options on the list. But it’s a great choice if you’re looking for a digital photo frame that doesn’t look like a piece of tech. It’s a refreshing change to the otherwise “techy” look of similar products.

• Read our full Aura Ink 10 review

Best for grandparents

The Skylight Frame is one of the best you can get for those who are not particularly tech-savvy, especially the grandparents. It provides all of the high-end specs you would expect, including a detailed 1280 x 800 resolution display, Wi-Fi connectivity, touchscreen control, and video playback, while still being easy to access and use. We reviewed the 10-inch model, but the company also offers a 15-inch version (with the same resolution) for $299. Considering the higher price — but not crispness — the 10-inch version is the better buy.

Photos can be uploaded via email or through the Skylight app. Organizing the images once they’re in your library is straightforward too. You can create albums, rotate images and even crop shots by pinching the screen. It also saves images to the internal 8GB of storage so you can keep viewing them should the Wi-Fi stop working.

Keep in mind that there’s no ambient light sensor and no motion sensor. That means it’s not exactly energy-efficient. You will have to adjust the screen's brightness manually and rely on the sleep setting to switch it off.

Unlike most other digital photo frames, you won't have access to every feature unless you pay for a subscription, which costs $39 per year. That means you can’t upload and view videos, store and back up photos in the cloud, or add photo captions.

These restricted features are why the Skylight Frame is lower on our list. However, if you won't miss them, this frame offers a brilliant balance of image quality and ease of use.

• Read our full Skylight Frame review

Best AI frame

Some photo frames want to use AI to “enhance” your photos, animating family photos and bringing dead relatives back to life. Creepy. Amazon has taken a different approach with the Alexa Photo Frame. Rather than a ghoulish approximation of grandma blowing out the candles on her 90th birthday cake, it curates your photos across your Prime storage and displays them with similar ones.

It’s a far better implementation of the technology, and it can make for some emotional moments while you watch the shifting images. It even matches images to the season or specific themes. You might find images of leaves falling during fall, or beach images in the summer.

If there are images of your kids doing similar activities in different stages of their lives, it might put the images together to show you what's changed. It’s a very smart way of using AI to enhance the viewing experience without encroaching on the unsettling.

It’s not perfect. When asked for images of the tester's daughter, it showed images of old ladies and random kids instead. It was easy enough to fix, though.

While it can act as a speaker, it should not be used as one. Instead, use the microphone on board to ask Alexa for things. It sounds bad. Thankfully, you can turn off the microphone should you be worried about the frame listening to you.

The screen itself is attractive and bright, and made all our images look great sitting on a sideboard. It’s not quite as high-res as other frames, but it looks perfectly serviceable. The main feature is the AI curation — and at that, it's very good.

• Read our full Alexa Photo Frame review

Also tested

How we tested the best digital photo frames

We test the best digital photo frames on a variety of criteria.

Image quality

First, we assess at image quality and aspect ratio. The digital recreations of photos must look sharp and realistic, while maintaining a natural-looking crop. We look for a high resolutions with colors that ‘pop’.

Ease of use

Ease of use is another element we consider while reviewing the best digital photo frames. If a frame is simple and intuitive to set up and navigate, it often has more value. However, an expansive offering of connected features is important, too. For instance, does it offer motion sensors and , if speakers are included, how is the sound quality? We think most of the photo frames on this list strike a solid balance.

We didn’t forget about the basics either. When is comes to uploading and removing images from the gallery the process should be seamless, ideally with compatible Cloud services.

Storage

Additional specs we look at are storage and sensors. Some digital photo frames feature onboard memory, while others rely on Wi-Fi streaming, USB thumb drives or camera SD cards. If you must use a camera card or a USB stick, be sure that the frame's body adequately keeps them out of sight.

Meanwhile, a motion sensor is practically a must. Digital photo frames do not need to waste energy by playing all day long if no one is in the room to view them.

Design

Apart from the images themselves, a photo frame has to look good on its own. Higher-end models have a more refined finish, while cheaper ones tend to look plasticky. We even assessed the stability of the frame and the likelihood of a messy display if it features a touchscreen.

Extra features

Many frames offer calendar, clock, reminders, games, calculators, weather app widgets and speaker ports. These features aren't expectations, but make nice extras.

How to choose the best digital photo frame

Resolution

First of all, you need to consider how crisp you'd like your photos to be. Regardless of how much you're looking to spend, the images should look realistic and appear of a high quality on your display. You should be aiming for a high resolution. We recommend 1280 x 800 as a bare minimum, but 1920 x 1080 or 1600 x 1200 will get you much nicer-looking images.

Size

Digital photo frames are generally the size of a regular photo frame, typically ranging from 5-6 inches to upwards of 10 or 11 inches. You're not necessarily getting a higher-quality frame if you invest in a larger one, though you may appreciate a larger display that's easier to view from a distance.

If maximizing visibility is paramount, we recommend pre-measuring the spot on your shelf or mantle where the frame will go and opting for the largest size that can fit into that space.

Your (and your parent's) technical know-how

You should also take account of how technical you — of your parents or grandparents are — and where your photos are stored. If you don't want to spend hours on the phone playing tech support because they don't know how to connect the frame to Wi-Fi, you may want to go with a simpler model.

Non-connected frames tend to be the easiest to use because you don’t have to set up accounts or networks to transfer the images. Instead, you can insert camera cards or USB thumb drives directly into the frame and load up to 32GB of footage.

However, if you do opt for a connected frame, these offer much more flexibility in sourcing and sorting your images, whether from social media sites or directly from your phone. If your images are scattered on social media rather than concentrated on thumb drives, you will be better off with a connected digital photo frame.

Should you pay for a subscription?

While most of the best photo frames can be used without a subscription, others will require them to use some of their features. For instance, Nixplay offers two subscription plans, starting at $19.99/year, which lets you connect its frames with Google Photos and Dropbox.

Similarly, Skylight's photo frame requires a $39/year subscription to use many of its features.

Digital photo frame FAQs