Amazon’s first digital picture frame lets you add voice notes to photos

is a senior reporter who’s been covering and reviewing the latest gadgets and tech since 2006, but has loved all things electronic since he was a kid.

Amazon’s screen-equipped smart speakers have long been able to display your family’s photos, but its new Alexa Photo Frame is purpose-built for that task. It’s designed to compete with other digital picture frames from companies like Aura, and Amazon’s incorporates a smart speaker with access to Alexa Plus’ capabilities through voice commands. However, unlike the Echo Show and Amazon’s other smart home hubs, the Alexa Photo Frame only ever displays your photos, and you’ll never be served an ad.

The Alexa Photo Frame is available starting today; it’s $199.99 for a black frame or $229 if you want to upgrade to a frame made from birch or walnut wood. It pulls images from Amazon Photos, which offers unlimited storage for Prime members, but otherwise the frame doesn’t require a subscription. The Amazon Photos app can back up photos from your Android or Apple devices and pull images from iCloud Photo, but importing from Google Photos isn’t supported yet.

The frame has a 10-inch touchscreen display with a “semi-matte, anti-glare finish” to simulate the look of physical prints. A light sensor adjusts the display’s brightness throughout the day, and it sits on a detachable stand.

You can select specific people or albums through Amazon Photos, or let Alexa Plus curate what’s displayed. Alexa selects the best images based on lighting, when people are smiling, and the current season, so you may get more Halloween costumes this time of year, while intelligently skipping images like receipts or screenshots. Alexa can also display similar photos with unique connections as side-by-side pairs, such as pics of a child 10 years apart with a similar pose. If there’s something specific you want to see, like last summer’s beach trip, you can just ask Alexa to dig those up.

You can use the Amazon Photos app to add voice notes to images that will play through the frame. An option to record them on the frame itself is coming later. If you plan to buy the Alexa Photo Frame as a gift and purchase it through Amazon, you can preload photos or albums with voice notes that play once the recipient sets it up.

Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.