Aura Walden vs Skylight: which is the best digital photo frame?

There’s a lot to love about digital photo frames – namely that someone other than you gets to see the thousands of photos you have gathering digital dust on your smartphone’s camera roll. When it comes to making an impact with your images, we say bigger is best, which is why we’ve chosen the Aura Walden 15in and the Skylight 15in frames to go head-to-head.

The Aura Walden costs $299/£299, has a 1 year warranty and unlimited cloud storage. We like that, in contrast to the SkyLight Frame, happily, Aura doesn’t charge subscriptions or fees for their frames. Instead, users get unlimited photo and video storage and feature updates at no extra cost – perfect! 

On the other side of the ring, the Skylight is a cheaper in the UK at £249/$299.99 in the US and has a much better 3-year warranty but lesser 16GB storage. We like that family members can all send photos to your frame via your Skylight email. An alert pops up on the frame when new snaps are waiting and pressing the heart button lets the sender know you appreciated it. 

As well as being the same size, both WiFi frames can display photos and videos, offer app and email upload and have a classic look. With introductions done, read on to find out which is most worthy of your hard earned cash…

Design

Walden’s 15-inch screen has a 4:3 screen ratio, as per smartphone cameras, and is encased in a lovely white textured border with slim black frame – it has a classic, quality look.The triangular metal stand  supports the frame in portrait and landscape formats, and it comes with wall fittings, too. 

The 15in Skylight Frame has a 16:9 aspect ratio, which is more suited to video playback than photos. It has a sleek design with a slim black frame surrounding the screen, which incorporates a fresh white border. You attach the substantial metal stand using the included screws, or wall hang with the included fittings. 

Design winner: Aura Walden

Display

Despite the relatively low 1600 x 1200 pixel resolution on the Aura Walden, my photos actually looked detail rich. The interactive touch bar on the top of the frame is intuitive to use and the matte-finish screen didn’t suffer from glare during testing. Videos play well, with decent sound, with the option to add a border to compensate for the ratio difference. 

Impressively, the Skylight Frame displays photos in incredible detail and I had no problem with glare either. I loved that this is a touchscreen display, adding another easy way to control the frame, which somehow seemed immune to fingerprint smudging. I found the aspect ratio a strange choice though, as none of my images fitted the frame exactly. 

Display winner: Aura Walden

Usability

Using the Walden really couldn’t be simpler. Use the Aura App to share photos and video (web and email are other options). The frame does a great job of auto-adjusting brightness and cropping is a cinch in the app. You can invite friends and family to share media and there’s also a nice option to set the frame up as a gift with pre-loaded photos, too. 

Skylight is super simple to use, I favoured sharing photos via the app, as I always do, but email works well too. However, the fact there’s a Skylight Plus subscription (£3month/£39year), without which means you can’t access some key features including displaying video is a major drawback and plain frustrating. 

Usability winner: Aura Walden

Overall winner: Aura Walden

The Aura Walden is the better of these mighty 15-inch frames but if you’re heavily into video you might prefer the Skylight’s proportions, assuming you don’t mind paying the subscription that is…