Last year we had a bit of fun talking about a digital canvas that came in from the company Meural. It was a giant photo frame essentially that reacted to the light of the environment and gave the user a number of controls to customize the display with. It allowed them to display their favorite artwork as well as any other image they wanted, like family photos, all while being nested into a frame and mimicking a painting on the wall as well as it could.
Meural has come a great distance since then adding many new features like Amazon Alexa support, and most recently have now been acquired by Netgear. You will now find them included in the logo, showing how much interest Netgear had in Meural’s product, and how far they are willing to go to back it up.
The first generation frame that we got to play with was an amazing device that did everything it promised. You are able to control the image on the display with a wave of your hand, as well as pull up stored information (ie, bio) on the current image, and even run through some of the settings. The quality of the image was quite nice despite the display only being 1080p, and the only feature that wasn’t alway on top of things was the quality of the WiFi on board, which sometimes dropped connection (a lot in the beginning). Since then, they have tweaked the firmware a bit allowing for a more fluid connection, and with these newer generation models having Netgear give them a boost, this should no longer be a concern.
Since then, Meural frames have continued to sell strong, and they have expanded their catalog of downloadable art (including all of the historical paintings that most anyone can identify) so much that they had to start charging a small fee to turn it into a subscription feature (while still providing a selection of 100 pieces already installed on the frame to begin with for free).
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