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Pexar Starlight 15.6-inch Digital Photo Frame: Review
The Pexar Starlight 15.6″ 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 the rear-facing wall light, which manufacturer Lexar calls a “world first.”
If you've read any of my past reviews of digital photo frames built on the Frameo platform, you know how easy this app is to use. Adding users is easy. You simply click “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.
Framing photos has improved since I last used the Frameo app. You can still choose up to 10 photos to send at once, or upgrade to the Frameo+ app for $1.99 / £0.99 per month or $16.99 / £7.99 per year to unlock unlimited sends. Once you've chosen which frame you want to submit your photos in, you can add captions and adjust their alignment. A notable improvement over earlier versions of the app, you can now manually select the placement of your images in both landscape and portrait orientation, ensuring your photos are cropped exactly the way you want.
Once my pictures were uploaded to it, I was overall impressed. This certainly gives some best digital photo frames race for your money. From a fair distance, my black and white photographs of Puente Romano in Cordoba look very detailed. Up close, however, it doesn't always look as accurate – an inevitable side effect of the larger screen size, which gives it a pixel density of 141 PPI rather than the staggering 212 PPI of Pexar 11″ Digital Photo Frame.
Another area where it falls slightly short of its predecessor's excellent example is color balance. One of the things that struck me about the old Pexar frame was its impressively bright colors, but I find the Starlight more subdued. Even compared to the screen of my iPhone 16 Pro—a device not known for its overly saturated colors—the pink of Barbie camellias or the sparkling gold of rhododendron flowers look more conservative and less vibrant. It's not a lot, but it's enough to make the photos look a little more subdued than I'd like.
Despite these small missteps, the Pexar Starlight's performance is still impressive, making your photos pop. This is largely thanks to the frame's bright display and super-dynamic, high-contrast images—even if the colors look a little dull at times, the photos I uploaded still look bold and assertive, creating an impressive focal point in my living room.
Naturally, this is helped by the design of the Pexar Starlight 15.6-inch Digital Photo Frame, which is simply stunning. This 15.6-inch screen is bright and almost completely glare-free—to be honest, it's so uninterrupted by the artificial light in my office that it looks like it's undergoing some kind of quantum tunneling effect, where light just passes straight through it.
The frame is also a little stunning. Its wood grain finish is beautiful and pleasant to the touch, and the bezels around the screen have a nice texture that imitates the correct mounting. Admittedly, the plastic it's made from doesn't look as authentic as the paper effect on Aura Aspen but the overall effect still gives it a more premium feel than Pexar's previous 11-inch digital photo frame.
Based on the name, you probably won't be surprised to learn that the Starlight's biggest new feature is backlighting. I didn't notice it much when viewing the frame on a stand or in bright light, but when mounted on a wall or in the evening it looks perfect. Honestly, that alone makes the frame pop. I do wish there was an option to change the warmth of the backlight, however, as it can look a little cool for the soft amber light I prefer after dark.
Ultimately, I believe the 15.6-inch Pexar Starlight is a sophisticated follow-up to Pexar's revolutionary album, the Pexar 11-inch Digital Photo Frame. It's more ambitious, more innovative, but it also falls short of some of the things that made its predecessor such a hit. It still ranks pretty high on my list of favorite digital photo frames, but for $159.99/£149.99 you can get its stablemate instead.
Pexar Starlight 15.6-inch digital photo frame review: price and release date
- Launched November 6, 2025
- Retails $349.99 / £349.99.
Released on November 6, 2025, the Pexar Starlight 15.6-inch Digital Photo Frame is available in the US and UK with a list price of $349.99/£349.99.
While it's not exactly cheap, it's still reasonably priced. For example, the Aura Aspen costs $229 (around £175) for a smaller 11.8-inch display, although it offers better pixel density and color reproduction. On the contrary, a huge 27-in. Netgear Meural Canvas II will set you back a whopping $599.99/£649.99 – for the money you get great features and better color, but due to its large size it has a much lower pixel density.
Pexar Starlight 15.6-inch Digital Photo Frame Review: Specifications
|
Dimensions |
7.1 x 10.2 x 1 inch (180 x 259 x 25 mm) |
|
Display size |
15.6 inch |
|
Permission |
1920 x 1080, 144 pixels per inch |
|
Aspect Ratio |
16:9 |
|
Touch screen |
Yes |
|
Sound |
Built-in speaker |
|
Orientation |
Portrait or landscape |
|
Storage |
64 GB |
|
Connectivity |
Wi-Fi, SD card, USB-A, USB-C |
Is the Pexar Starlight 15.6-inch Digital Photo Frame worth buying?
|
Attributes |
Notes |
Rating |
|---|---|---|
|
Functions |
Frameo is easier to use than ever with new photo cropping options. |
4/5 |
|
Design |
The Pexar Starlight has a stunning design with a gorgeous wood frame, textured white frame and stylish backlighting. |
5/5 |
|
Performance |
Impressively bright and glare-free, the Starlight offers sharp, contrasty images – it's a shame that its colors can sometimes look a little more muted than other frames. |
4/5 |
|
Value |
Due to the increased price and build quality, Pexar has also lost some detail and color accuracy, which is a shame. But this is still a good basis for this kind of spending. |
4/5 |
Buy if…
Don't buy it if…
Pexar Starlight 15.6-inch digital photo frame review: also note
| Header Cell – Column 0 |
Pexar Starlight 15.6″ Digital Photo Frame |
Aura Aspen |
Pexar 11″ Digital Photo Frame |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Dimensions |
7.1 x 10.2 x 1 inch (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 inch |
11.8 inch |
11 inches |
|
Permission |
1920 x 1080, 144 pixels per inch |
1600 x 1200, 170 ppi |
2000 x 1200, 212 pixels per inch |
|
Aspect Ratio |
16:9 |
4:3 |
5:3 |
|
Touch screen |
Yes |
No |
Yes |
|
Sound |
Built-in speaker |
Built-in speaker |
Built-in speaker |
|
Orientation |
Portrait or landscape |
Portrait or landscape |
Portrait or landscape |
|
Storage |
64 GB |
Unlimited cloud storage |
32 GB |
|
Connectivity |
Wi-Fi, SD card, USB-A, USB-C |
WiFi |
Wi-Fi, SD card, USB-A, USB-C |
How I tested the Pexar Starlight 15.6-inch digital photo frame
- Tested over several weeks
- A number of color and monochrome photographs have been uploaded.
- Have many years of experience working with photography
I spent several weeks testing the Pexar Starlight 15.6-inch digital photo frame. To test how easy it was to use, I first set up a frame and added a few users to it. I then sent a number of photos using the Frameo app, both individually and in large batches, to see how easy the transfer process was before adjusting the size and alignment of each image.
I made sure to upload a significant number of photos to test how the frame display performed against various criteria. To test its resolution and contrast, I used a variety of black and white photographs, from mountains in the Scottish Highlands to Spanish architecture. When assessing color rendition, I used bright photographs of flowers and fireworks, comparing the color rendition with the screen of my camera. iPhone 16 pro.
Not only have I tested over half a dozen of the best digital photo frames released in the last 18 months, I'm also an avid photographer, having taken over 40,000 images with my camera. Canon DSLR camera and iPhone 16 Pro. On top of that, I've worked in print for over a decade, which means I have a keen eye for managing photography and assessing how it translates into another medium.
- First inspection: November 2025
- Read more about how we test
