- This new Bloomin8 E-Ink Canvas frame comes in several sizes and lasts for a year on a charge
- You could easily place one on your wall and have it rotate through shared images via an app upload or through an SD card
- These screens also fit into a popular IKEA frame
Digital photo frames are eye-catching pieces of technology for the home, but they come with challenges like power cables and the need for constant connection to the cloud.
What if you could place digital images throughout your home – on every wall – and none of them needed wires or full-time internet connectivity? That would be the new Bloomin8 E-Ink Canvas from Arpobot.
Unveiled in a Kickstarter program this week, the new full-color E-Ink displays are designed to fit inside some standard art and photography frames, including the RÖDALM series from IKEA.
Based on E-Ink’s Spectra6 technology, the Bloomin8 rechargeable displays support full color and 200ppi of resolution. More importantly, they can hold an image indefinitely, which means you only need power to change the display image. A Bloomin8 E-Ink Canvas can operate, according to Arpobot, for up to a year on charge.
It’s a rare consumer use for the all-color Spectra6 panel, which E-Ink has traditionally pitched for commercial use (think advertising displays). But it’s certainly not the only one.
Bloomin8 will compete with the PocketBook InkPoster we saw at CES 2025. It also uses E-Ink Spectra6 technology, and its accompanying app offers a vast library of images.
When we wrote about it in January, there was no mention of AI image generation. We also don’t know about their ability to support IKEA frames.
Load and lock-in
Images can be sideloaded through the Bloomin8’s integrated SD slot, which I know is a rather retro function. In the years before connected devices, many of the original photo frames relied on SD cards for their photo libraries. However, Bloomin8 also accepts image updates from its dedicated app on your smartphone (iOS or Android).
Even so, since it’s not connected to the cloud and doesn’t need the Internet for its photos, the Bloomin8 E-Ink Canvas does not draw power while displaying an image. That’s the benefit of E-Ink; once the image is drawn, it stays visible on the display even without additional power.
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The matte images we’ve seen thus far look quite good, though it does take a few moments for the E-Ink to fully resolve and saturate the image. It’s also worth remembering that E-Ink is a reflective technology and, like a painting or a photo, is only illuminated if you cast light on it. We don’t yet know how well the imagery will hold up in all lighting situations.
If you don’t have any art or photos you want to use or have something completely else in mind, the Bloomin8 app can generate AI imagery that you can upload to one of the canvases.
The Bloomin8 panels come in three sizes: 7.3 inches ($167), 133 inches ($349), and 28.5 inches ($999), which means you have many options for mixing up your living room photo collage wall. These are all Kickstarter prices, and retail will be more expensive.
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