Colour E-ink picture frame
This device has reminded me why I started making YouTube videos in the first place. Back then I wanted an excuse to test out new tech that I otherwise might not have bought just for myself. “Oh this, it’s not for me, I bought that for the channel - it’ll pay for itself.”
It’s been some time since something as simple as this product has landed on my desk that I’ve been this enthusiastic about.
Here’s the video: https://youtu.be/g0GV4875W20
Oh and by the way did you know that E-Ink was a company name - I only found out today.
In other news the weather was crazy yesterday with very heavy rain, flooding - and damp feet in bed. Yes the roof is leaking. After a temporary fix of a bucket in the loft I woke up to a lovely sunny day and the Mrs suggested that I use my DJI Neo Mini drone to have a look at the roof tiles. She called it a flying camera thing - but still it was a smart idea as it hadn’t occurred to me. It’s just been gathering dust. Anyway it did a great roof surveying job and told me that the roof is completely knackered and all the tiles are crumbling to dust. The house is as old as me and it seems we’re both in the same shape..nothing on top and falling apart, but fortunately I’m not wetting the bed yet.
Anyway hope your weekend has been less expensive. Take care.
UPDATE - I’ve added a few seconds back to clarify that fact this frame does not have a rolling slideshow feature. I’d presumed I’d already done too much blabbing and the lack of such a feature had been demonstrated by its absence. Apparently this was not a wise decision, so the usual re-edit, re-up and replace process has taken place.
UPDATE 2 - Uploaded another version with a new large onscreen pop up repeat mention of the non existent slideshow feature. I’ve deleted the first two versions to ensure this is the only one now being seen.
UPDATE 3 - I sent the Reflections team a link to the video, here’s one thing they said:
Currently, the Reflection Frame is designed to display one photo at a time, using our Tap-to-Print technology—simply tap your phone to the frame to send and display an image. This method allows us to achieve exceptional battery life (up to 1,000 transfers per charge) and also offers a key advantage: your photos are never uploaded to the cloud, so your privacy is fully protected.
We understand many users would love the ability to store multiple photos and have them cycle automatically, and we're actively developing a software update to support this. Once it's ready, it will be delivered to your frame via a free over-the-air (OTA) update.
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Of course no one should ever buy something based on a promise - but also please do not under any circumstances buy anything, ever. Even though I already really like my Reflection Frame as it is, I'm wrong and it's rubbish.
UPDATE 4 - I figured out what was causing the issue with the blue leaves on the boombox pic - so added in an explanation of the cause as well as a simple work around fix that can be used while waiting for the bug to get squashed with an inevitable app update. The new section starts at 14:49
Comments (77)
Did anyone else buy one of these? Seriously tempted only price holds me back
wow Youtube normies are terrible people. Throwaway comments on a video they don't understand might be one thing to them but it's very negative to us! Great product and video.
Update #4 was extremely appreciated, its added a few points on the positive scale. As always I appreciate your honesty and you ability to update a video if needed..
Holy mackerel, man. You really put the time in on this one. Probably more than you wanted to. 🖼️👍🏼
I’m sure it’s not worth it, but I don’t like to leave loose ends. I’ll release it tomorrow, but I won’t be looking at the feedback as it won’t be good for my health.
Thanks for update 4, that convinced me a bit more, as I don't. Use apple camera
I like it. Due to the long update time, a good feature for a slideshow function would be to have a "picture of the day" and do updates at something like 3AM when most people will be asleep.
I really liked this video. After reading some comments I think I should have said so at the time rather than just being content with the content. So thanks very much indeed.
My wife saw your video and now wants one. Great video and great technology- a gadget I think we going end up buying
that is really cool. slightly above my price range right now, but maybe it will come down a bit in the future. i wonder if the color will fade over time when exposed to the sun, as most things tend to do.
I like that, quite a neat bit of new technology.
I liked this one a lot. I might even get one of those. Printing is much more expensive
It gives you lots of freedom to experiment. Putting something on the wall that you otherwise wouldn't. Like the oddball picture you found the other day, or the occasional meme that resonates with you at the time. I'm kind of intrigued, and that's from someone who usually steers clear of novelties.
I've been fascinated by e-paper (e-Ink and other brands) for a while. I haven't been following the e-paper forums and sites, so it's good to learn about something I've missed, and I really enjoyed the video. It's only relatively recently that colour displays have become affordable and it's possible to get some good results displaying photos on them with a bit of processing. This product seems to produce decent results out of the box, which is what you're paying for to a certain extent. If you bought a 13-inch Inky Impression display from Pimoroni with the same sort of display, it would cost about £230 and you would still need to add a Raspberry Pi, some kind of case or frame, then find the software you'd need to make it do its thing. Even just buying the bits would take you close to the RRP for the Reflection Frame. For some of us, that's an incentive to spend money on a project; for others, its just easier to buy a finished product.
Thanks for sharing! The technology is definitely improving a lot, but as far as I can tell from this video not quite ready for good quality photographs... But I guess for a lot of other applications (and of course if you like the aesthetics of a pixelized photo) it is quite useful! I'll be keeping an eye on this technology!
Added a bunch of comments on the YouTube video, figured it was more helpful there. Super happy to see eink reviews!
Did you do anything to further investigate what went wrong with the first photo you uploaded (the boombox with blue instead of green leaves behind)? Did you try that same image a second time or notice that issue with others you uploaded? Did the company have any comments on that? It seems like it must be a glitch with their app, since it displayed it wrong on your phone before it uploaded to the photo frame.
Thank you so much for clarifying what you do in your reuploads/edits. The rest of the post gave me a quite a bit of a chuckle
Mat, your videos from the past few weeks have been as good as you’ve ever done. Partially because of the products you chose but more because you seem to have more energy and enthusiasm and the new studio and lighting looks great also.
“Flying Camera” would be a spectacular name for an 80’s cover band. (Thanks for the review! Seems like quite a leap forward and I’ve not seen a mention of it elsewhere.)
I think if it could hold a dozen photos or so, just the last ones uploaded to it, and rotate through them every hour-ish then this would be a great product for many people.
I don't care for the "graininess (stipllel0 of the image.
This is super neat. I bought a Pimoroni Inky recently to display the weather in a wee picture frame. My intent was to also occasionally show photos, but as there's no way to easily switch between weather / photo, I decided to leave on weather. Now that this has surfaced, I'm so tempted to get it in additional to my other one and use it soley for pictures. Tangental, but last time I went to Lidl I was amazed to learn that ALL the price tags on the shelves were E-Ink displays. Only noticed because one of the price tags was slightly red with broken lines, and my wife said "huh, that looks like a broken LCD". Then it opened Pandora's box as we learned that all the prices have been displayed with E-Ink for years. Hope all is well with you! Thanks for sharing this cool picture frame.
I spotted the same thing in Lidl as few months ago and was equally impressed. Oh and I thought I was ok, but theres been a lot of negativity around this one and it has really got me down. It might be a few days before I feel like recording anything new.
Maybe it is just me but I wan not as impressed with the final outcome of the picture. I look a bit grainy/ not as sharp as I was hoping for, before that I was all in at the website and everything. I also felt that you were holding back on being critical on it as well due to it being a gift. Great video as always though, it was fantastic
I love it. I showed the Mrs and she immediately put the app on her phone and uploaded a picture to it - and she hates tech. I spent a lot more on a greyscale one that has yet to be delivered...or even made. What is it that I don't like?
Since it accurately shows the expected e-ink appearance in the app before upload, I wonder if the little level adjustment icon in the pre-upload editor might have fixed the blue foliage problem. You didn't demo that little feature. I assume it's because it doesn't do much. I know the kind of thing that gnaws at me after I buy a device. Inability to dial in and fix inaccurate colors would gnaw at me. I'm sure I'd find images I like to display, but it would irritate me that some "favorite photo" was just never going to be viewable because it's gonna get the colors wrong.
I wonder if it’s a conversion error from iPhone’s HEIF format.
Nice job Mat. This video is as good one; well put together as usual. Regards
Is that a CMYK display? Like I wonder if, with color management, you could really dial in the conversion
I don’t think there is a CMYK version of EInk.
I really like that. I see a smaller cheaper one on Amazon but apparently you have to convert all your photos to a special format first before they'd work on it, which was very off putting, yours looks far easier and a nicer size.
>> UPDATE [...] Yeah, because "you can only add one at a time" [7:15] is so ambiguous :-) More seriously, bummer it's dependent on an app. But it's already not cloud dependent, and I guess you can only hope for so much these days. Thank you for a nice review!!
Unfortunately at that point I was talking about the limitation importing in the phone app.
ooo I want.
Nice review of what appears to be a pretty solid product.
How long does it take to switch between pictures in its memory, Mat, or does it store only one at a time? Can you change the length of time a picture is displayed for, before the next one?
It holds one picture at a time. I think I’ll have to add an overlay to clarify this.
Thanks for a very interesting video. Curiously I only just bought a traditional digital picture frame for my Dad to see photos on. I didn't want a 16:9 display or a cloud service and there aren't many digital photo frames that fit that description now, so it ended up being quite small. If the e-ink frame could be set to have a selection of photos and cycle through them on maybe a daily basis by itself, then it would be perfect for me. A very nice product anyway. I hope we see more similar products coming along to drive the price down.
Digital picture frames seem to be one of the most common tech items I see in the many charity shops around here. I have yet to be tempted, although when they came out I did buy my computerphobe sister one as she had a digital camera but her only display options were the camera display or printing photos in a shop.
Fabulous thing but... what's with the enormous bezels? I assumed there was some technical reason but when you took the front frame thing off it just revealed empty space. I'd be really interested in buying one if it was just the size of the actual image without an enormous black/white bezel around it.
I guess it’s standard practice for framed images, I’m looking up and to my left and a professionally framed monkey-painted picture on my lounge wall has the same width of gap between the frame and the actual image.
I quite like the foliage behind the boombox lol 600 NZ before postage no thanks but pretty cool all the same
Good that you mentioned the slide show thing somewhere, because yeah that's kind of a big feature for this kind of thing and for me would be the main attraction because I just know if I have to change pictures manually, I won't. Not keen on what looks similar to that .gif limited colour range pixelation effect, for lack of a better description. Is that a camera effect or does it really look like that? All in all I think I'll skip this one.
The perfect device for displaying images from the Duckomenta collection! 🦆
I see the Techmoan effect's in operation - they've gone up 2 whole quid in the UK already!
I spotted that during the edit and realised my voiceover wouldn’t match with the screen grab. Fortunately I found an earlier screen capture on my phone. For a moment though I thought I must have imagined the lower price.
Just Another Excellent Video, good sir. Good luck with the roof......!
"One thing I haven't done is tried it with the human face". That's a picture of you Mat, when will you try it with a human face?
And on the topic of advancing decrepitude… “First you forget names… then you forget faces. Next you forget to pull your zipper up… and finally, you forget to pull it down.” - George Burns,
Far too expensive to have a decent market share but indeed an interesting device. I have a kobo colour reader and it looks a bit fainter than this.
Is that a Bronica on the shelf behind you??
It is, an ETRS
The price is currently prohibitive for me, especially as having seen it I would want at least two, and possibly three, but I really like this, especially the way that it makes the pictures more like paintings than photographs. The reflective rather than emissive nature of the display appeals, too - it'd be nice to view some pictures in a non-eyeball-searing way, but without the faff of printing and mounting. Thanks for the video, Mat (as always), and I'm glad you found something to cover that you could be so enthusiastic about.
I'm really liking that picture frame, but the cost is scaring me away. Not that it can be considered as consolation about your roof leak, but maybe you've seen what happened at LGR's house last year. Good luck with the repairs and if you need help, well I believe many Patrons would contribute if you put out the call. What a laugh it would be to see sketches with The Moans again. They could have adventures flying your drone inspecting the neighbors' roofs/rooves? Call them The Moan Drones?
I love this! It dealt with your waterfall selfie really nicely. And their logo is great :)
really dig this product. shame about the price tho.
(sarcasm commeth) I neglected to suggest thatching over tiling. I mean if you're going to all the trouble you may as well go for the classic rustic look. (sarcasm goeth) Oh dear, I hope nothing valuable remained stored in the loft area.
Just my hopes and dreams ...and a Star Wars Pachinko. Which was faulty when it went up there.
Good luck with the roof. Great fact about the e-ink being a name brand. You might want to do a little insert on that in the video because that's the exact type of stuff your viewers like. Maybe 30 seconds about it. Anyway this is excellent and I would have one for sure... At 1/2 the price. I would like a "next" button as that would make it fun to hand to a guest who can scroll through your pictures like they're a photo album while you prepare dinner because they are 30 minutes early and they ask you inane questions from the other room. "Oh was that in Arizona?" *Photo of Grand Canyon* "Who is this holding the teddy bear?" *Obvious photo of you as a child* I'd probably make an excuse to pick this thing up at $149. I hope it is a success so they can make a slightly worse version (with a button) in my price bracket. EDIT: and AA batteries or an 18650. At this price, it should be a lifetime buy and if a lithium battery gets wonky you essentially have to throw the product away.
I really don't know if I'm the last person (or the next to last) to know the e-ink brand name thing. Given the usual YouTube response to facts it seems everyone there is a genius who already knows everything, so passing on any knowledge would be redundant.
The real Mrs.! Drone recon on your roof is a great idea. Best of health for you and the Mrs.
Roofwise, my partner lives in a Grade 2 listed building, dating from the late 1700s. They're redoing the roof at the moment. Because of its status, the tiles have to be a specific type from the era, and even the kink in the shape of the roof has to be replicated. And thanks to an oversight from the roofers, the rain's been pouring into the kitchen all yesterday afternoon and overnight.
*UNSERIOUS COMMENT FOLLOWS* Now that you & The Missus have officially tied the knot she ought to appear in a video now and then. Maybe she could add content to increase your ad revenue which would help in the roof repair? *END UNSERIOUS COMMENT* Okay, I'd better go and watch the video now.
Think that may be a future present for my mum. Seems simple to use and where she would have it gets a lot of sun so hopefully would handle it well. Hope your roof doesn't cost too much for you.
Very nice! I really enjoy videos about e-paper applications.
I really like that but probably not £275 worth of like. Hopefully they'll make a smaller version for less than £200 and I'll get one for the partner so she can put different photos of her horse on it. Congrats on finding a real-world use for a drone!
I was thinking of getting into the drone roof inspection business. Also seems like a ripe subject for a new George Formby record.
That looks great. Would be very tempted if the price was a bit lower. A bit too rich for me at the moment, but I can definitely see the attraction.
[mumbles about mother-flippin' roof tiles] A very well-made video nonetheless. Straightforward and uncontroversial. I hadn't expected to like this item, but on retrospect I do have 4.4 GB of (ridiculous) images on my phone; at least a few deserve to be displayed. Like this one: https://i.postimg.cc/Z52Sj7dX/file-000000005ec0623096cf673545cee975.png Take care 🤍
That's an awesome image. Very life-like--except for the fingers which they never get right, this one looks like our Mat has claws or something like Lego hands!!11! Err... hold on a sec... Never mind!😀😉🤦♂️
It's always been tricky to get how images look with transmissive light and reflective light to match. Colour calibration is a big thing for people doing professional photography. Not to mention smartphones tend to go a bit crazy with colour saturation, especially on OLED screens. I'd get some of these for showing artwork though, perhaps I'll wait for a sale.
Oh No. a roof leak is not good at all anytime especially with a lot of tech goods there. To coin a phrase, 'It never rains, but it pours!'...
Haha, no such luck. Our AC is dead, and the new one is being installed tomorrow.
Really interesting to see the Specta 6, I've had a 7" Inky Impression (7 colour) display for several years that's run from a cheap Raspberry Pi Zero W and applies a random image from my private web space every day. Results are similar, it's definitely better with paintings, text and comic-style images than photos but still decent from a distance. I've also used my DJI drone to check the roof after a starling got into the attic. Didn't see anything, how the bird got in is still a complete mystery.
Thanks for that! Never knew this existed, ordered one right away.
Yeah, in germany, we had our fair share of intense weather too, although our roof isn't leaking (yet). Keep up the good work, Mat, always a pleasure to see a nev vid or post of yours