Our Brutally Honest Review of the Samsung Frame TV
All of the pros and cons about the Samsung Frame TV and how to add art, plus free downloadable still life art to display on a TV.
It’s been a little over a month since we installed our Samsung Frame TV. I wanted to give ourselves a decent amount of time to live with it before sharing an opinion on it.
(UPDATE: It’s now been a year and a half, and we still absolutely love this TV! But with a few drawbacks…)
Why the Frame TV Hype
The Frame is a TV that looks like art. The feature to display images to make it look like a framed piece of art on your wall rather than a giant black box is definitely the draw.
(Finally, someone figured out what decorators everywhere have been thinking for decades! A picture frame TV is what we’ve been wanting all along! A black rectangle right above your fireplace just isn’t nearly as pretty.)
But when we were looking at buying it, Robert was concerned about the display and if it would really deliver on experience quality. Here’s what we’ve discovered…
The Pros of the Samsung Frame TV
1. Gorgeous Design
- You can choose your own artwork to display on it or choose from the gallery in the Samsung Art Store for a monthly subscription fee. (I didn’t do the subscription because I like the flexibility of uploading public domain art I find… see the bottom of this post to snag a few art images, if you want.)
- The addition of an aftermarket wood bezel frame, which is sold separately and runs about an extra $150, makes it blend even better into whatever interior design aesthetic you choose.
2. Low Profile
- The TV is slim and sits completely flush against the wall like a framed piece of art. It’s seamless and only draws attention to itself when you want it to. (Ours is the 55″.)
- It even comes with a very thin, clear cord so that it’s easily concealed against a wall.
- Its One Connect Box can be stored out of sight so that you can easily manage other electronics that attach to it without having to run a tangle of cords to the TV screen on the wall.
3. Excellent Picture Quality
- The Frame has a QLED panel that amps up colors to make the picture vivid, high quality, and bright. We’ve tried out all of the different picture modes, and while our previous LG TV is 4 years old, it definitely has out-shown its 4K panel.
The Cons of the Samsung Frame TV
1. Installation
- Maybe this TV is quick and easy for some people to install, but that was not the case with us. To be fair, our Frame TV had to be hung on the wall above our fireplace where a brick chimney is behind, so we didn’t have the ability to cut a hole out of the wall to feed the cable through. (We chose to use a thin cord cover on ours since we had to run it a long length of the wall at different angles to feed it into our window seat.)
- The mount was tricky, but that also has to do with its design to hang the TV flush against the wall.
- UPDATE: You can now get an easel Studio Stand to mimic the look of an art easel without the need of a wall mount!
2. Not Quite Art
- To me, it’s still very possible to tell the art display isn’t an actual painting hanging on the wall. When the lights are low in the room and you’re displaying a light colored image especially, you can still see the TV screen glowing on the art display, which does still make it obvious that it’s a TV. It won’t fool many people unless your lighting in the room is just right.
- UPDATE: The new 2022 version of “The Frame” has a new matte display with anti-glare, anti-fingerprint, and anti-reflection properties to make the art look more realistic!
3. Expensive
- The reason we were willing to shell out the bucks for The Frame TV was because it is front and center in our living room smack dab at the very focal point. Having the ability to display art in that spot, was a big deal to us. But I can’t imagine buying this TV for any room where it’s not a main focal point. The price just isn’t worth that, in my mind.
Overall, we’re completely happy with The Frame, and it’s been so fun playing around with settings to add new art to it all the time.
Free Art TV Downloads
A fun feature is you can access the art store subscription to display from their database or install your own art to upload as built in home decor.
If you have The Frame yourself or if you want to use this Smart TV Art Display trick, you can get access to these 8 still life digital art prints here from Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, and Paul Cezanne that I reformatted to fit a TV screen. But they would be beautiful printed and placed in a real frame too, if you preferred.
(Access to the free downloadable art is in your email inbox, if you’re already a Bless’er House subscriber.)
You can download the art printables by clicking here or the button below to subscribe:
(If you’re already a subscriber, the direct download to the art images is in your inbox and at the bottom of every email I send.)
How to add art to the Samsung Frame TV
- Download the TV art images from the Bless’er House Printable Library in Google Drive to your smart phone’s camera roll. (Password is at the bottom of every Bless’er House email newsletter.)
- Launch the SmartThings app on your smart phone.
- Select your TV.
- Choose Art Mode.
- Click ADD YOUR PHOTOS+
- Click the photos you would like to add to your Samsung Frame TV and select the Save to The Frame button.
- The images will be accessible in the Slideshow setting.
- Tap on your preferred time setting then select Set.
- Tap on + to add a new image from your Gallery.
- Click on the Art Mode button on your Frame TV remote.
I prefer “no mat” on mine, but you can add one in your settings if you prefer that look.
Which piece of art is your favorite?
Do you have The Frame? What are your thoughts on it? Hopefully, we can make this a helpful little resource together for anyone who’s wondered about it.
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