Looking for Gift Ideas? Try Meural
For some folks on your holiday gift list, you know just what to buy. Maybe you’ve had an idea for some time. Or maybe they came right out and told you what they wanted.
And then there are the friends and relatives for whom, despite your best efforts and intentions, you still don’t know what to get. Well, here’s one item that is helping me scratch a few of those head-scratchers off my list: Netgear’s latest digital art offering, the new Meural Wi-Fi Photo Frame. It’s on sale for the holidays at $249.99.
Netgear unveiled the new, more economical unit this summer. The Frame’s 15.6-inch display is smaller than the two Canvas II models, which are 21.5 inches and 27 inches. The Canvas II displays, which came out about a year ago, are purely intended for wall mounting.
But while the Frame’s size makes it more suitable to personal photos than the Canvas II displays, it’s still a fair bit larger than many of the available wireless digital photo frames, which are in the 9- to 10-inch range and cost about $150 to $200.
The Frame has a built-in stand so you can put it on a table or desk or hang it on a wall, either in portrait or landscape mode. It plugs into an electric outlet, so you have to factor that into your placement. You control everything through the Meural smartphone app, sending photos or art to the Frame over Wi-Fi.
The app works well, and gives you great control over what’s displayed, for how long, and how bright. You can set up collections that cycle through based on your schedule, or your mood. The built-in storage (8GB, half of which is available for images) gives you plenty of room for your collections. And you can swap content in and out as you like.
If you’d like to download and build art collections from the masters, Netgear offers individual images for a few dollars apiece. Or grab as many as you like — as often as you like — with a membership. That costs $8.95 a month, or $69.95 for a year. (But if you’re giving the Frame as a gift, then the subscription’s not really your problem now, is it?)
There are lots of search options. You can grab collections from specific museums, for example, like the Yale University Art Gallery or Madrid’s El Museo del Prado. Or you can choose specific artists or select different movements and periods.
Honestly, I expected to shrug when Netgear sent me the Frame. We have screens everywhere — TVs, laptops, desktops, tablets and smartphones. So who needs another for digital photos?
But I was wrong. We’ve really enjoyed the Frame. It was fun deciding what photos we wanted to put in the Frame. And then we pared that down by what turned out to be, like, suitable for framing. We also grabbed a few pieces of art from the Meural library, and mixed them in as well.
Indeed, the Frame is really an attractive and enjoyable addition. And, likely something that special someone doesn’t yet have. Just saying.
