Using an Aura frame felt like the company looked at the existing digital photo frame market and said “we have to be able to do better than this.” And they have. The Carver Mat is extremely simple to set up, has a wonderful screen, feels well-constructed and inoffensive and has some smart features that elevate it beyond its competitors (most of which don’t actually cost that much less).
The Carver Mat reminds me a little bit of an Amazon Echo Show in its design. It’s a landscape-oriented device with a wide, angled base that tapers to a thin edge at the top. Because of this design, you can’t orient it in portrait mode, like some other frames I tried, but Aura has a software trick to get around that (more on that in a minute). The whole device is made of a matte plastic in either black or white that has a nice grip, doesn’t show fingerprints and just overall feels like an old-school photo frame.
The 10.1-inch display is the best I’ve seen on any digital photo frame I’ve tested. Yes, the 1,280 x 800 resolution is quite low by modern standards, but it provides enough detail that all of my photos look crisp and clear. Beyond the resolution, the Carver’s screen has great color reproduction and viewing angles, and deals well with glare from the sun and lights alike. It’s not a touchscreen, but that doesn’t bother me because it prevents the screen from getting covered in fingerprints — and the app takes care of everything you need so it’s not required.
One control you will find on the frame is a way to skip forwards or backwards through the images loaded on it. You do this by swiping left or right on the top of the frame; you can also double-tap this area to “love” an image. From what I can tell, there’s no real utility in this aside from notifying the person who uploaded that pic that someone else appreciated it. But the swipe backwards and forwards gestures are definitely handy if you want to skip a picture or scroll back and see something you missed.
Setting the frame up was extremely simple. Once plugged in, I just downloaded the Aura app, made an account and tapped “add frame.” From there, it asked if the frame was for me or if I was setting it up as a gift (this mode lets you pre-load images so the device is ready to go as soon as someone plugs it in). Adding images is as simple as selecting things from your phone’s photo library. I could see my iPhone camera roll and any albums I had created in my iCloud Photos library, including shared albums that other people contribute to. You can also connect your Google Photos account and use albums from there.
One of the smartest features Aura offers is a continuous scan of those albums — so if you have one of your kids or pets and regularly add new images to it, they’ll show up on your frame without you needing to do anything. Of course, this has the potential for misuse. If you have a shared album with someone and you assign it to your Aura frame, any pictures that someone else adds will get shared to your frame, something you may not actually want. Just something to keep in mind.
My only main caveat for the Carver Mat, and Aura in general, is that an internet connection is required and the only way to get photos on the device is via the cloud. There’s a limited selection of photos downloaded to the device, but the user has no control over that, and everything else is pulled in from the cloud. Aura says there are no limits on how many images you can add, so you don’t need to worry about running out of storage. But if you don’t want yet another device that needs to be online all the time, Aura might not be for you. Most other frames I tested let you directly load photos via an SD card or an app.
The Aura app also lets you manage settings on the frame like how often it switches images (anywhere from every 30 seconds to every 24 hours, with lots of granular choices in between) or what order to display photos (chronologically or shuffled). There’s also a “photo match” feature, which intelligently handles the issue of having lots of images in both portrait and landscape orientation. Since the Carver Mat is designed to be used in landscape, the photo match feature makes it so portrait pictures are displayed side-by-side, with two images filling the frame instead of having black bars on either side. It also tries to pull together complementary pairs of images, like displaying the same person or pulling together two pics that were shot around the same time.
Overall, the Carver Mat checks all the boxes. Great screen, simple but classy design, a good app, no subscription required. Yes, it’s a little more expensive than some competing options, but all the cheaper options are also noticeably worse in a number of ways. And if you don’t want a mat, there’s a standard Carver that costs $149 and otherwise has the same features and specs as the Caver Mat I tested.
