<\/i><\/i><\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div><\/div>About fifteen years ago I bought my Mum a digital photo frame for Mother’s Day. I loaded it up with a bunch of photos from family holidays transferring them onto a compact flash card that would spend the rest of its days randomly throwing up images to a pitiful 8″ LCD that was barely visible if not being stared at dead-on.<\/p>\n
It was garbage, cool for the time and full of promise, but mostly garbage and the lofty promise of digital photos replacing their printed counterparts has largely been laughed out of existence.<\/p>\n
Despite everything digital frames have forged on. And whilst many remain small and cheap, the top-end of the market has evolved, none more so than Netgear’s Meural.<\/p>\n
The roots<\/h2>\n
Acquired by the router manufacturer in 2018, Meural started as an independent project to develop a high quality digital display for up-market artwork. The device would open a portal into the art world for its owner, unlocking thousands of renowned artworks that would be rendered on a near canvas-like display.<\/p>\n
Specifications<\/h2>\n
At its heart the Meural is nothing more than a computer running a single application that displays a selection of curated artwork.<\/p>\n
Inside is a 1.8GHz quad-core ARM processor with 8GB of storage that runs the Meural’s OS and allows it to download art over Wi-Fi (a\/b\/g\/n\/ac) either from Netgear’s vast selection or your own that you upload via the Meural companion app.<\/p>\n
In Australia we only have the 27″ model, which is available in three different frame colours: white, black & walnut. A smaller 21″ model is available in the US, but there’s no word on if and when we might see that here.<\/p>\n