For a lot of people, a common behavior we share when buying TVs is that we mostly just look at the brand, the size and the cheapest price that we can get it for. Oftentimes, design is rarely a consideration.
That being the case, Samsung's The Frame TV might just be the perfect addition we are looking for for our aesthetic home setup.
But for many, that behavior may have changed especially during the pandemic where people have been more particular with their home spaces since that's where we’ve been spending a lot of time at.
Elevate any room with this design
From the design's perspective, Samsung’s The Frame is a TV like no other. It’s a 4K QLED Smart TV designed to blend in our homes’ furnishings with its artistic design. Putting an end to the eyesore of having a black TV box.
This particular variant that we have is a 55-inch model but this is also available at a bigger 65-inch size.
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| Samsung The Frame without the frame attachment |
Without attaching its external frame, The Frame looks like a typical TV. But having it installed, it drastically transforms it into a picturesque piece of furniture.
Obviously, there’s a lot of thought that went into this design. This frame attachment magnetically attaches to the sides of your TV with very little effort.
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| Samsung The Frame: attaching the frame |
You can easily swap out frames which you can purchase in a variety of colors.
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Blends in with the furniture with its wall mount
Ideally, this TV is intended to be wall mounted. And among the most notable features of this TV is how Samsung designed this to be mounted.
Inside its package you get the mounting kit which allows The Frame to be wall mounted with no gaps on your wall, making this a seamless part of any living room.
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| Samsung The Frame Wall-mount kit |
Unfortunately, we aren't able to mount ours because of restrictions of our condominium. But for people like us who aren't able to mount it on the wall, we do have a set of legs that we can easily snap on for it to stand firm. It’s not as nice looking as having it mounted but it gets the job done.
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| Detachable legs |
But of course, no art piece would be caught with unsightly cables hanging around it and Samsung has also designed a way to address that.
That is through this One Connect box which acts as a central hub where you can plug external sources such as gaming consoles, TV boxes, USB dongles and other compatible devices. Interestingly, I plugged an old PlayStation 3 to its HDMI and the The Frame right away recognized and even labeling it as such.
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| One Connect Box |
This attaches to the TV through a single slim and almost transparent wire. Which can easily be hidden from the viewer's sight by passing it through grooves behind the TV to keep it in place.
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| Hidden wire behind the TV |
Present at the back of One Connect box are 4 HDMI ports, a LAN port, optical audio and an antenna port. While on its side are two USB-A ports.
Now, to truly turn this TV into a living piece of art, this has a feature called Art Mode. With a single press of the power button while it's turned on brings you to its mode where the TV displays artworks made by artists around the world.
Meaning, when the TV is OFF, Art mode is ON.
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| Samsung The Frame in Art Mode |
Art Mode is arguably The Frame's top value proposition. This would most definitely be appealing to artists or photographers since you can also upload and display your own art using the Samsung SmartThings app on your phone.
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| Samsung The Frame in Art Mode |
We have paintings and photographs to choose from but we are limited only to a few choices. Through a subscription service though, users will be able to unlock more than a thousand beautiful images to display.
To add to that, this TV features a matte anti-glare display so you won't see any glare that would ruin these images and pretty much eliminate unwanted reflections.
And if you’re wondering about power consumption, while being a QLED display already makes this power efficient, Art Mode runs at a much lower brightness and power mode so users don't have to worry about power bills getting high.
In fact, we had a hard time filming art mode using our camera because it would keep on running at a very low frame rate that wouldn’t match our camera's shutter speed. That’s good news for when it comes to energy consumption.
Streamlined for streaming services
The Frame runs Samsung's Tizen OS and quite frankly it's one of the nicest user experiences I’ve ever had on any smart TV. It’s easy to navigate, runs smoothly and all the apps that we mostly need are already available.
It has the standard streaming services available like Netflix, Disney+, Prime video and many more. And all of these are integrated into Tizens UI making the experience feel more centralized as possible. Based on related videos we've watched, suggested content from different sources for which to watch next are displayed on its home screen.
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| Tizen OS |
You can also use Samsung’s assistant Bixby, by simply pressing the microphone button on the included remote and then simply saying what you want to play and where you want to play it or even search the web with it.
The included remote is also quite noteworthy, being very simple to navigate. It only has a few buttons but we're happy that the essential shortcuts are present.
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| Samsung The Frame remote control |
It charges via USB-C or if you want you can leave it beside a window and let it charge through its solar panel.
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| Back of the remote control |
Paired with the matte display means viewing angles on this TV are excellent. Being a QLED panel, blacks are as black as it can get and colors are vibrant and lively.
That also means that the image barely gets washed out when the TV is hit by a strong light source like the sunlight - a favorable benefit when it comes to both media consumption and displaying images on art mode.
Here's a close up of the display panel
By default, its Dynamic picture mode has blur reduction turned on. That kind of turns everything as if they were shot at a high refresh rate even if they weren't. I wasn't really a big fan of this because I like watching movies as they were intended to and movies are mostly filmed at a cinema standard 23.976 FPS.
Thankfully, that can be easily turned off in the settings or just switch to its Filmmaker mode as that turns if off and even adds a warmer tone which sort of makes things look more cinematic.
By sheer image quality, watching shows on this TV is a great way to relax, get our mind off of things and enjoy the day if we ever don't feel like being responsible.
Best paired with a Sound Bar
Now talking about its sound quality, on its own, the TV doesn’t sound half bad. It’s definitely better than what I was using.
But to truly elevate the experience, Samsung often offers the Samsung S801B UltraSlim SoundBar to pair with this to give the extra boost in clarity and bass.
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| Samsung S801B UltraSlim SoundBar |
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| Closer shot of the Samsung S801B SoundBar |
This TV really does turn everything to Art. From the way it displays photos, the image it produces for watching our favorite films down to the way it elevates our living room.
If you’re into aesthetics, I don’t think that that should even be a question. And much more if you are an artist yourself who would want to display your own or you appreciate art and you’d want your home to showcase that.
Honestly, more of us should have a deeper appreciation of art and if you’re already part of that, then definitely, Samsung’s The Frame is for you.
Though if you only want great picture quality for movies, this will also give you that. But you may also want to check out Samsung’s QLED and Neo QLED line as those are some of the best ones right now.
Price and availability
You can order Samsung The Frame 55-inch on Samsung's website for PhP 62,999 while the 65-inch is available on their retail partners for PhP 79,999.
The Samsung S801B LifeStyle SoundBar retails for PhP 20,998.
Click here to watch the video version of this review.