First off, one of my passions is photography. It is the thing that allows me to capture memories while helping me take a renewed look at my surroundings. The Meural isn’t like any photo frame I have had, to say the least. I have had the kind that you load up photos via an SD card slot, but the Meural connected easily to my network and allowed me to put my photos in a more prominent spot with ease using an iPhone.
For full disclosure, I received this for free (though, I pay taxes on it) in exchange for a review (for Amazon) and I may get paid if you click and buy from Amazon links.
We decided to put the Meural on the mantle over the fireplace in landscape orientation (it has a stand that can be oriented in landscape or portrait). It makes quite the impression! Of course, I have to hide the cord to the outlet as best as I can. I wish they had used a regular plug at the end because the cable isn’t long enough to take the heavy plug to the ground and it is pretty ugly hanging in midair, so the solution I have come up with is to wind up the cable behind the frame while running a longer extension cable from the power to the back of the frame. Not a big deal, but a much longer cable would have been much appreciated.
That being said, I have tried many of the different options in the app. I have uploaded 84 photos and two videos without much hassle. I have an Orbi Network in the house that is pretty fast, so adding photos to a playlist and sending them to the canvas has been pretty easy and fairly quick. It does show the photos in my folder by organizing them for view by when they were taken, but sometimes that makes it easier to find photos, so it has it’s up and downside.
The frame gives you a lot of options. You can only show photos with the same orientation as the frame or let it show everything with bars on the side, when necessary (we use “contain”, which I think works best if you have photos with different orientations). They let you chose white, gray, or black for the side bars. I see some light bleeding in on the black, which is typical of LCD frames, but if that annoys you, white and gray are good substitutes. We have it on gray for now, but will probably change it periodically. The white looks great, too, if you want to give it some “pop”.
The other very cool feature is that you can set it to go off when the room is dark. That means it will put the frame in standby for the night without having to turn it off manually. Heck, I have mine setup so that I can tell Alexa to “turn off Canvas” or “turn on Canvas” by voice, so that is an option, as well.
While I am not using the art they have available, the samplers they provided are very nice and they look spectacular on the frame. I would guess that some people will find it useful to pay more and join their club to get discounts on more classic artwork.
The one feature that takes some time to master is the gestures. I have the best luck when I use the back of my hand slightly above or to the side of the frame. It is less hit and miss now than when I first got it.
I could go on and on, but the thing I mainly want to say is that photos look amazing on it. I found the app easy enough to use and I love the ability to load up short videos alongside my photos!! While the app may take a bit of time to get used to, the gestures are a little awkward, and the cable is too short for my needs, I have to admit that I still love this thing! In fact, I highly recommend it for photographers that want to showcase their photos/short videos, as long as they can live with the issues I mentioned.
For full disclosure, I received this for free (though, I pay taxes on it) in exchange for a review (for Amazon) and I may get paid if you click and buy from Amazon links.
We decided to put the Meural on the mantle over the fireplace in landscape orientation (it has a stand that can be oriented in landscape or portrait). It makes quite the impression! Of course, I have to hide the cord to the outlet as best as I can. I wish they had used a regular plug at the end because the cable isn’t long enough to take the heavy plug to the ground and it is pretty ugly hanging in midair, so the solution I have come up with is to wind up the cable behind the frame while running a longer extension cable from the power to the back of the frame. Not a big deal, but a much longer cable would have been much appreciated.
That being said, I have tried many of the different options in the app. I have uploaded 84 photos and two videos without much hassle. I have an Orbi Network in the house that is pretty fast, so adding photos to a playlist and sending them to the canvas has been pretty easy and fairly quick. It does show the photos in my folder by organizing them for view by when they were taken, but sometimes that makes it easier to find photos, so it has it’s up and downside.
The frame gives you a lot of options. You can only show photos with the same orientation as the frame or let it show everything with bars on the side, when necessary (we use “contain”, which I think works best if you have photos with different orientations). They let you chose white, gray, or black for the side bars. I see some light bleeding in on the black, which is typical of LCD frames, but if that annoys you, white and gray are good substitutes. We have it on gray for now, but will probably change it periodically. The white looks great, too, if you want to give it some “pop”.
The other very cool feature is that you can set it to go off when the room is dark. That means it will put the frame in standby for the night without having to turn it off manually. Heck, I have mine setup so that I can tell Alexa to “turn off Canvas” or “turn on Canvas” by voice, so that is an option, as well.
While I am not using the art they have available, the samplers they provided are very nice and they look spectacular on the frame. I would guess that some people will find it useful to pay more and join their club to get discounts on more classic artwork.
The one feature that takes some time to master is the gestures. I have the best luck when I use the back of my hand slightly above or to the side of the frame. It is less hit and miss now than when I first got it.
I could go on and on, but the thing I mainly want to say is that photos look amazing on it. I found the app easy enough to use and I love the ability to load up short videos alongside my photos!! While the app may take a bit of time to get used to, the gestures are a little awkward, and the cable is too short for my needs, I have to admit that I still love this thing! In fact, I highly recommend it for photographers that want to showcase their photos/short videos, as long as they can live with the issues I mentioned.
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