You’d think making a good digital picture frame would be easy. All you need is a good screen and a seamless way to get images to the device. Combine that with an inoffensive, frame-like design and you’re good to go.
Despite that, Amazon is positively littered with scads of digital photo frames and I can tell you that many of them are awful. It’s basically the 2020s version of what we saw with knock-off iPods back in the 2000s. There are loads of options that draw you in with a low price but deliver a totally subpar experience that will prompt you to shove the thing in a drawer and forget about it.
The good news is that you only need to find one smart photo frame that works. From there, you can have a pretty delightful experience. If you’re anything like me, you have thousands of photos on your phone of friends, family, pets, vacation spots, perhaps some lattes or plates of pasta and much more. Too often, those photos stay siloed on our phones, not shared with others or enjoyed on a larger scale. And sure, I can look at my photos on my laptop or an iPad, but there’s something enjoyable about having a dedicated place for these things. After all, there’s a reason photo frames exist in the first place, right? I tested out seven smart photo frames to weed through the junk and find the best digital frames worth buying.
What to look for in digital picture frames
While a digital photo frame feels like a simple piece of tech, there are a number of things I considered when trying to find one worth displaying in my home. First and foremost was display quality and size. I was surprised to learn that most digital photo frames have a resolution around 1,200 x 800, which feels positively pixelated in 2024. (That’s for frames with screen sizes in the nine- to ten-inch range, which is primarily what I considered for this guide.)
But after trying a bunch of frames, I realized that resolution is not the most important factor; my favorite frame has a 1,280 x 800 resolution. More important than sheer pixel density are things like reflectivity, brightness, viewing angles, color temperature and so forth. A lot of these digital photo frames were lacking in one or more of these factors; they often didn’t deal with reflections well or had poor viewing angles.
A lot of frames I tested felt cheap and looked ugly as well. That includes lousy stands, overly glossy plastic parts and design decisions I can only describe as strange, particularly for items that are meant to just blend into…