The Frame Is a Delightful TV That Transforms Into Artwork

The Frame TV is physically designed to look as much like a piece of art as possible—from the uniform depth of the panel (it’s roughly an inch thick from corner to corner, like a traditional frame) to the customizable bezels around the screen. You can choose from modern or beveled styles in colors like beige, teak, and terracotta.

It also comes with a proprietary, slim wall-mount kit that allows it to hang flush against the wall, and the only cord is a slim, transparent cable that runs to an easily hidden box where the power and AV connections are located. The wall-mount kit is so simple to install, I was certain that it had arrived with missing pieces—but you can also pay $80 for Samsung’s TV mounting service, use the supplied TV feet to set it on a table, or upgrade to a stylish easel-type stand.

The Frame also has a matte screen rather than the glossy kind found on most other TVs, which helps it diffuse incoming ambient light and achieve a more painterly presentation.

All of these design elements work in concert to disguise The Frame as artwork and help it blend into most rooms. Setting everything up requires a bit more finesse than the average TV, but the end result is quite convincing.

In my kitchen’s case, the 43-inch Frame TV took the place of a piece of art that was roughly the same size, and after a day or so I found myself forgetting I’d even swapped them.

The Frame TV doesn’t just look like a painting. It can essentially become one.

Like almost every modern TV, this is a smart TV—and once it’s connected to the internet, it gives you access to an entire art store. When you aren’t watching video content, this TV can display a huge variety of paintings and other works of art, from seasonally themed landscapes to selections from the Tokyo National Museum. You can select the width of the matting around the artwork, as well as its color, or even upload and use your own gallery of family photos.

The Frame’s Art Mode is the final piece of the puzzle. The TV automatically switches into this low-power mode in which it drastically reduces its brightness to achieve a more natural look—keeping the artwork or photos visible without shining light into the room like a regular TV would. The matte screen does the rest of the work, diffusing light much like a traditional oil painting. You might even fool some guests (though when my mother-in-law saw it, she clocked that it wasn’t actually a painting pretty quickly).

For us, installing The Frame meant being able to enjoy a variety of convincing works of art and changing it up depending upon the meal or time of day. My 13-month-old daughter loved looking at the art, but it didn’t demand her unwavering attention like regular TV programming does. Also, the light streaming in from the nearby bay window was much less of a concern because of the matte screen. And after our daughter went to bed for the night, my wife and I had access to a fully featured Samsung smart TV right in our kitchen. We were all sad to see it go when it was time to return the review sample to Samsung.

If a fly is in the paint here, it’s that securing this experience is quite pricey. Although The Frame is available in a huge range of sizes—from a smaller 32-inch model to a whopping 85-inch behemoth that would make Michelangelo blanch—even the tiniest of them costs over $500, with the largest sizes costing multiple thousands of dollars.

During my time testing the 43-inch version, I was able to use a free two-month trial of the art store to enjoy all of The Frame’s gallery goodness—and that free trial is available to all customers. Afterwards access costs $5 a month, or $50 annually. I loved using it, and I think it would be worth the cost, but it’s not within everyone’s budget.

And though those prices might seem fair if you were buying a primary TV for your living room, it’s unlikely (and not really recommended) that you buy The Frame TV for that purpose. It’s a good-looking 4K TV in general—with good brightness, detail, and color, as well as support for high dynamic range video—but it’s better for more casual TV watching than it is for cinematic movies or prestige dramas. The matte screen that lends The Frame its signature look also diminishes its image contrast; it essentially trades away some picture quality to look more like a painting.

But if you have a room that you just can’t seem to fit a regular TV into—or you don’t want to be limited to a single photograph or piece of artwork on your wall—The Frame is uniquely positioned to meet your needs, whether they’re surrealist, cubist, or minimalist.

This article was edited by Alex Aciman and Adrienne Maxwell.