Aura Photo Frame: the Best Valentine Gift That Will Last All Year Long

This list is late, but the presents will are timeless

Most folks who do what I do churn out timely holiday lists to help you buy stuff, whether that’s for Thanksgiving Black Friday, Christmas or the holiday of love, Valentine’s.

Because of the newsletter schedule, posting on Saturdays, my list coincides with the actual un-official holiday, which means that most of you reading won’t have time to go out and buy some of this stuff.

But that shouldn’t stop you, because my top pick is fantastic any time of the year, and will last a lot longer than chocolates or perishable flowers.

The Auru Photo Frame starts at $149

When looking at presents, I’m always through a photographic lens, and I’ll always tell you that a photograph is truly the best present in the world. It captures a time and place and showcases the people you love. I also love holiday cards, the classics that are printed on paper and can be showcased on a mantle.

And let’s face it, can anything can top a framed photograph?

How about a whole bunch of them, presented in what’s hands down the best digital photo frame I’ve seen since the category first presented itself over twenty years ago.

It’s called the Aura Digital Photo Frame, it starts at $149, has a ten-inch screen and promises easy set-up.

On that I concur. No digital product I’ve opened up over the last two decades has been as simple.

I remember when you had to put images on a memory card and insert it into a frame to see your photos. Or jump through a bunch of new password hoops before it could get up and running.

With the Auru, the photos make their way to the frame via an app. You select your wifi network and type in the wifi credentials, and now you’re connected. There is no separate registration and passwords required.

From there, you can upload photos (and videos!) directly via the app, or just create an album in your iPhone or Android Camera Roll and have them beamed over. You can choose to send everything new that you snap on the phone, or just the ones that you deem “favorites.”

You can text photos directly to the frame. So if your Valentine is a parent who would enjoy seeing photos of the grandkids, you can set up the frame to get all new shots of the kids, or text new photos directly to it.

Best of all, no monthly subscription is needed to use the frame.

So, a great gift for moms, dads, grandparents and the rest of us, as it shows our love every day. As much as I’m a chocolate freak, I’ll take the frame please.

(I’ve had the Google Nest Home product for several years and while the audio and video portions are fine—”Hey Google, play KPCC on TuneIn Radio",” the photos that get shown are frustrating. You can tune it to your Google Photos selections, but then, even if you try to personalize it, you end up seeing certain photos over and over again, and can’t fine tune it. We got so sick of seeing our son’s wedding photos, we switched to the generic artwork section. No offense Sam and Nagisa.)

No such issues with the Aura, which is basically half the price of the Nest Home product and way more versatile photographically.

Have you heard of the Love Box?

This is a similar idea to Aura, a personalized group of changing photos in a little box with a heart on it. It’s cute and could be a popular gift. The box starts at $150 for the color edition, and like Aura you can text and e-mail photos, but the box only shows a handful of them. You can also send handwritten notes and drawings. There’s also an optional $25 yearly subscription for extras, like an AI assistant. It’s only sold online, so you’ll probably miss it for this year.

Roses

Some of you reading this will feel the need to run out and buy roses today, and if you’ve put it off, or are sending them outside your zip code, remember there is a massive price difference between shopping locally or using a service to send flowers.

Amazon owned Whole Foods is offering two dozen roses for $29.99 if you’re a member of the Prime program. The same two dozen from 1-800-Flowers is $100.

If you want to send them somewhere locally (not out of town), have you considered Instacart? I found roses for $30 from the local Ralph’s market in Los Angeles, and it grew to just $33 once the fees were added. A way better deal than 1-800-Flowers if you ask me, and comparable to the Whole Foods price—but hey, you don’t have to drive there to pick them up.

My valentine gets the gift of travel, as she will be joining me on the next big Photowalks trip, as we head off to the south for some history, photo opps, fried chicken and family time. Next stops: Atlanta, Charleston, Savannah and St. Augustine. If you’re in any of those places, let me know so we can say hello!

Brian wins the last Best Western Gift Card

Huge congrats to Brian P. for winning the last of our five-week long Best Western gift card giveaway.

Brian, from Lexington, South Carolina, gets $250 to spend a night or two at one of the 4,000+ Best Western hotels of his choice.
“We love concerts, vacationing and spending time together as a family,” he says, and with spring break coming up, “Perfect timing for the gift card” he adds.

Brian uses an iPhone 15 Pro and Canon EOS Rebel T6i and follows Photowalks on Substack and YouTube.

Thanks to everyone for entering the giveaway, and hope to see you on the next one.

I leave you with one of those crazy ChatGPT “Create a cartoon of me based on my LinkedIn profile,” images that are sweeping the internet. Note to ChatGPT: I haven’t used a traditional camcorder in years, I’m not a fan of gimbels, I do love a GoPro and there’s nothing like a fine Squirt.

On that note, thanks as always for taking the time to read, watch and listen.

Jeff