Believe it or not, the photo you see above is actually a piece of tech and not merely just a work of art. I mean, in a way, it’s kind of both but you get what I mean. Netgear, well known for their WiFi routers and computer gadgets have come up with a smart frame for those of you with a penchant for famous art pieces!

Introducing the Meural Canvas, The smart art frame that brings every brushstroke to life. Imagine having over 30000+ iconic works of art and photography from the world’s museums and galleries in your house, all in one frame! Now that’s pretty crazy. The best part is, the paintings look identical to the original.

With smart home tech as popular as ever, Netgear was kind enough to send a unit of the Meural Canvas our way and boy did it add a touch of class to the office. So I suppose we should first explain what a smart canvas is. It’s basically a smart frame that allows you to access tens of thousands of iconic artworks for you to display in wherever you choose to hang the thing.

You can connect the smart frame via wifi and purchase your favourite paintings, or even display pictures from your own personal gallery, which gives the Meural Canvas a nice touch of personality. The frame comes with gesture control to make it easy for you to browse artworks and choose your favourite. We tried it out and while it wasn’t the most intuitive or responsive gesture control tech we’ve come across, it served its purpose somewhat well.

If you’re not into gesture controls, fret not. You can choose  between the Meural app, website, or Amazon’s Alexa. The app itself is easy to use and will probably be your favourite choice of the four. The frame itself comes in two styles, namely Leonora and Winslow. The one you see in the pics above is Leonora. Winslow consists of a wooden frame.

Now lets get to the tech shall we?

The screen itself is a 27 inch 1080 IPS display with anti-glare technology. So you pretty much get 1920 x 1080 full HD resolution at 300 cd/m2 brightness. It’s kind of like a Kindle’s display but better and with colour. In terms of hardware, it sports a 1.8GHz Quad Core Cortex-A17 ARM chip, 2GB of RAM and 8GB of storage. Which is impressive given that its, you know, a frame.

You must be thinking, this sounds great and all but why did Netgear make a smart frame? Here’s a quote from their website:

“We believe art is for everyone, and we’re dedicated to bringing it into homes of all shapes and sizes. To do so, we combine the best of art, technology, and design to create products that make us feel something.”

It’s hard to argue with that logic, to be honest.

The Meural Canvas can be found at Harvey Norman stores nationwide so if you’re an art buff, head on over to an outlet to check it out!