Most importantly, Aura places high emphasis on sharing its frames with multiple users. The company's software component has been simple and straightforward from the start. Luckily, the Aura mobile app has an easy-to-understand interface. It wouldn't matter how good the screen on the Mason Luxe frame looked if the software were a pain to use. This Live Photos feature isn't important enough for me to consider it valuable, but for people who do, it works fine here on the Mason Luxe. Personally, I'm a little more traditional in liking only still images displayed in a frame. I don't even really like having the short clips of Live Photos play, despite loving Live Photos on my phone. I do think having support for videos is an important feature of Aura frames in general, but I stopped videos from playing automatically by changing the auto-play videos setting in the Aura app. Videos, or even Apple Live Photos, can be replayed by tapping the touch strip on the top of the frame and then sliding a finger to navigate to the Replay option. Once a video plays, it shows the first frame until it switches to the next piece of media. Videos can play automatically when their spot in the photo rotation comes up. The frame could provide sufficient viewing for a living room space with a small group of people crowded around it. The Mason Luxe at full volume doesn't distort and still has a decent sounding quality to it. At its maximum setting, the frame's speaker is louder than my iPhone 13 Pro playing audio at full volume. The Mason Luxe has a perforated area on its back, where the speaker resides. (Frames without a speaker will play videos silently.) It seems this feature is still being ironed out as the latest iOS app from the App Store I downloaded still retains the notice "Add Photos" despite its supporting uploading 30-second videos. As of September 2021, all frames from the company can support videos, but only revised hardware will have a speaker to play audio from videos. The other enhancement to the Mason Luxe version of this frame comes in the form of a rear speaker for videos. Though occasional glare might be the only disappointing aspect I had noticed about the product over the course of a couple of weeks.īecause the frame's screen is shiny, there's the possibility for it to catch some glare in bright environments. In a bright and sunny location, it might present some viewing problems. The Mason Luxe screen does have the possibility to catch glare. Its stonelike border is fashionable, if not a little thick. It does pack in enough pixels to be confident about how it looks, though. The Mason Luxe's glossy screen isn't trying to fool anyone about its being digital. Meural's large digital frame has an anti-glare IPS liquid-crystal screen with its TrueArt technology so that photos look more like they were printed and are physical objects. These two frames represent very different products, however. I do have Meural's 15.6-inch Smart WiFi Photo Frame, which has a 1920 x 1080 resolution. I don't have the standard Mason frame to compare it with directly. I can only comment on the look of the Mason Luxe. There are many more similarities than differences between the two versions. The other main differentiator at launch is that the Luxe version has a speaker to play audio.īoth versions of the Mason frame have unlimited photo storage and can rotate to landscape or portrait orientation, adjust slideshow speed, shuffle photos and use the iOS or Android mobile apps. The Mason Luxe retails for $249.99 and sits alongside the regular $199.99 Mason frame.įor reference, the basic Mason frame measures only 9 inches on the diagonal, while the Mason Luxe is 9.7 inches and has a higher resolution. I'll focus on its Mason Luxe version since it's the newest and a premium option. TYLER HAYESĪura sells a few different sizes and styles of digital frames. The Mason Luxe frame by Aura can be used in landscape or portrait orientations.
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