Forget about those old-school photo albums and forget about having your dad scroll through pictures of you on a small smartphone screen. Just get your dad a digital picture frame this Father’s Day.
Digital picture frames are definitely more expensive than your traditional photo frames, but they’re also better in several ways. Many can automatically update with new photos from a shared photo album in the cloud and some of our recommendations double as smart displays/speakers.
We’ve rounded up six digital picture frames that will work for any dad out there, from the technology-challenged to the ones who already have smart home setups.
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Thee Google Nest Hub Max is technically a smart home display, but it’s also arguably the best digital photo frame money can buy. If dad already has parts of the Google Nest ecosystem, this is the easiest way to display family photos. The Nest Hub Max has a larger screen, built-in webcam, and better-sounding speakers, but if dad doesn’t need all the extras, the Nest Hub 2 (frequently on sale for around $60) is also highly recommended as a digital picture frame. Heck, even a first-gen Nest Hub (usually on sale for $40-50) is a terrific value.
If your dad uses Alexa instead of Google Nest, Amazon’s Echo Show 8 is a good option. Like the Nest Hub, it’s a smart display, but with Amazon Photos, it doubles as a digital picture frame. One nice feature: It has an adaptive color feature that can adjust photos based on the room’s lighting. Depending on your budget, you can also get dad the 10-inch or 15-inch version; the form factor’s slightly different, but they all work great as digital picture frames.
Aura’s Mason frames are one of the most popular digital picture frames out there, with its Wirecutter recommendation and more than 5,000 reviews. The Mason frames come loaded with features like the ability to rotate it for portrait orientation photos, an adjustable slider for slideshow speed, and a built-in speaker. There’s also a deluxe version that costs a little more but has 2K resolution.
Nixplay went with touchscreen capability for its digital photo frames to make things a little easier to set up and adjust. This digital frame can also be oriented in both landscape and portrait, but has software that uses AI to automatically center the people in a photo. The Nixplay Touch Screen Photo Frame even has a motion sensor that wakes the frame when someone is in the room and puts it to sleep when there’s no one around.
The Pix-Star Easy Digital Frame definitely didn’t go for the traditional photo frame look here, but it is almost as wide as a laptop. This digital frame comes with a remote control and has 8GB of internal storage and can link to an album on social media to automatically update and download new pictures to display.
Going off previous options, you can see that digital photo frames can get pretty expensive. But they don’t all have to be. If you’re just looking for the most affordable, simple way to get an automatic slideshow going for your dad, there’s the Aluratek Digital Photo Frame. You have to dump photos into it via USB flash drive or an SD card and it gets the job done for a quarter of the price. This one also doesn’t look like a digital screen.
