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Pixar Starlight 15.6-inch Digital Photo Frame: Review
The Pixar Starlight 15.6-inch Digital Photo Frame is an innovative photo frame built on the third-party Frameo platform. While its premium styling and large, glare-free display are undoubtedly a visual treat, the feature most likely to draw admiring comments from visitors to your home will be its rear-facing wall light, described by manufacturer Lexar as a ‘world first’.
If you’ve read my past reviews of digital photo frames built on the Frameo platform, you’ll be familiar with how easy the app is to use. Adding users is a cinch. You simply tap ‘Add Friend’ on the frame, and it generates a code. Once you or your loved ones have downloaded the app, you can enter the code, and you’re good to go.
Sending photos to Frames has improved since I last used the Frameo app. You can still choose 10 photos to send at a time or in the Frame+ app for £1.99/£0.99 a month or a year to unlock unlimited sending. Can upgrade for £16.99 / £7.99. Once you’ve chosen which frame you want to send the photo to, you can add captions and adjust their alignment. In a significant improvement over the previous version of the app, you can now manually choose the positioning of photos in both landscape and portrait orientation, ensuring that your snaps are taken exactly how you want them.
Once my image was loaded onto it I was generally impressed. It certainly gives some of the best digital photo frames a run for their money. From a good viewing distance, my black-and-white shots of Puente Romano in Córdoba look crisply detailed. Up close, though, it doesn’t always seem that precise—an inevitable side effect of its larger screen size, which gives it a pixel density of 141 ppi rather than the amazing 212 ppi of the Pixar 11-inch Digital Picture Frame.
Another area where it falls a little short of the fine example set by its predecessor is color balance. One of the things that blew me away about the old Pixar frame was its impressively vibrant colors, but the Starlight seems more muted to me. Even compared to my iPhone 16 Pro’s screen—not notorious for its highly saturated colors—the barbie pink of camellias or the flamboyant gold of rhododendron blooms looks more conservative and less vibrant. It’s not off the mark, but it’s enough that photos look a little more subdued than we’d like.
Despite these minor misses, the Pixar Starlight’s performance is still impressive, giving your photos plenty of pop. In large part, that’s thanks to the frame’s bright display and highly vibrant, contrasty images—even if colors look a little dull from time to time, the photos I upload still look bold and assertive, making for an impressive focal point in my living room.
Naturally, this is helped by the design of the Pixar Starlight 15.6-inch digital photo frame, which is pretty flat. This 15.6-inch screen is bright and almost entirely free of glare—in fact, it’s so immune to all the artificial light in my office that it’s as if it’s subject to some kind of quantum tunneling effect where light passes straight through.
The frame is also a stunner. Its wood grain finish is beautiful and feels pleasantly tactile, while the bezels around the screen are nicely textured to mimic a proper mount. Admittedly, the plastic it’s made from doesn’t feel as authentic as the paper-like effect on the Aura Aspen, but the overall effect feels more premium than previous Pixar 11-inch digital picture frames.
Given its name, you might not be surprised to hear that the Starlight’s biggest new feature is the backlight. I didn’t quite notice it when I saw the frame stand-mounted or under bright light, but mounted on the wall or in the evening, it looks picture perfect. Honestly, this makes the frame a statement piece on its own. I do wish there was an option to change the warmth of the backlight, though, as it might seem a bit cool for the kind of soft amber light I prefer after dark.
Ultimately, I feel like the Pixar Starlight 15.6-inch is the hard-hitting sequel to Pixar’s breakthrough album, the Pixar 11-inch Digital Picture Frame. It’s more ambitious, more modern and yet compromises on some of the things that made its predecessor such a hit. It still features heavily on my list of favorite digital photo frames but for £159.99 / £149.99 you can snag its durability instead.
Pixar Starlight 15.6-inch Digital Photo Frame Review: Price and Release Date
- Launched on November 6, 2025
- 9 retails for £349.99 / £349.99
Released on November 6, 2025, the Pixar Starlight 15.6-inch Digital Photo Frame is available in both the US and UK for a list price of £9,349.99 / £349.99.
Although it’s not exactly cheap, it’s still reasonably priced. For example, the Aura Aspen costs $229 (about £175) for a smaller 11.8-inch display, although it offers better pixel density and color reproduction. By contrast, the much larger 27-inch Netgear Mural Canvas II will set you back $599.99 / £649.99—for that cost, you get great features and better color, yet it has a much lower pixel density as a result of its bulk.
Pixar Starlight 15.6-inch Digital Photo Frame Review: Specs
Dimensions | 7.1 x 10.2 x 1 inches (180 x 259 x 25 mm) |
Display size | 15.6 inches |
Resolution | 1920 x 1080, 144 pixels per inch |
Aspect ratio | 16:9 |
Touch screen | yes |
voice | Built-in speaker |
familiarity | Portrait or landscape |
Storage | 64 GB |
contact | Wi-Fi, SD card, USB-A, USB-C |
Should I Buy Pixar Starlight 15.6 Inch Digital Photo Frame?
Attributes | Note | Classification |
|---|---|---|
Features | The Fremo app is easier to use than ever, thanks to new settings for cropping your photos. | 4/5 |
Design | The Pixar Starlight is wonderfully designed, with a beautiful wood grain frame, textured white bezels and that cool backlight. | 5/5 |
performance | Impressively bright and glare-free, the Starlight delivers crisp, contrasty images—it’s just a shame that its colors can occasionally look a little subdued compared to other frames. | 4/5 |
Price | Along with the increased price and build quality, Pixar has also lost some detail and color accuracy, which is a real shame. But it’s still not a bad frame for such spending. | 4/5 |
Buy it if…
If you don’t buy it…
Pixar Starlight 15.6-inch Digital Photo Frame Review: Also Consider
| Header Cell – Column 0 | Pixar Starlight 15.6 Inch Digital Photo Frame | Ora Aspen | Pixar 11 inch digital picture frame |
|---|---|---|---|
Dimensions | 7.1 x 10.2 x 1 inches (180 x 259 x 25 mm) | 12.7 x 10.1 x 1.1 inches (323 x 257 x 28 mm) | 7.4 x 11.2 inches (18.9 x 28.4 cm) |
Display size | 15.6 inches | 11.8 inches | 11 inches |
Resolution | 1920 x 1080, 144 pixels per inch | 1600 x 1200, 170 pixels per inch | 2000 x 1200, 212 pixels per inch |
Aspect ratio | 16:9 | 4:3 | 5:3 |
Touch screen | yes | No | yes |
voice | Built-in speaker | Built-in speaker | Built-in speaker |
familiarity | Portrait or landscape | Portrait or landscape | Portrait or landscape |
Storage | 64 GB | Unlimited cloud storage | 32 GB |
contact | Wi-Fi, SD card, USB-A, USB-C | Wi-Fi | Wi-Fi, SD card, USB-A, USB-C |
How I Tested the Pixar Starlight 15.6-Inch Digital Photo Frame
- Tested over several weeks
- Uploaded a range of color and monochrome images
- Many years of experience working with photography
I spent several weeks testing the Pixar Starlight 15.6-inch Digital Photo Frame. To test how easy it is to use, I first set up the frame and added several users to it. I then sent lots of images, both individually and in large batches, using the Fremo app, to see how each image fit and aligned before I did so.
I made sure I uploaded a variety of images to test how the frame’s display performed against various benchmarks. To test its resolution and contrast, I used a variety of black-and-white images, from the mountains of the Scottish Highlands to Spanish architecture. When evaluating its color performance, I used dynamic shots of flowers, blossoms, and fireworks, comparing its color reproduction against my iPhone 16 Pro’s screen.
Not only have I tested more than half a dozen of the best digital photo frames released over the past 18 months, I’m also a keen photographer, having taken over 40,000 photos on my Canon SLR and iPhone 16 Pro. On top of that, I spent over a decade working in print publishing, which meant managing and evaluating photography as it translated into another medium.
- First review: November 2025
- Read more about How do we test?
