I’ve Had a Samsung Frame TV for a Year: Here’s What I Like and Dislike

I’ve owned Samsung’s unique The Frame TV for over a year. While I like Samsung’s innovative approach to helping your TV better blend into your living space, there are a few considerations you should make before buying one.

Pro: It Looks as Good as You Imagine

The Frame TV is advertised to look like you have a legitimate painting print on your wall, but it’s actually a TV, making it a seamless part of your home’s aesthetic. Every time I’ve had a friend over who hasn’t seen the TV before, they always think the TV is a painting. When I show them it’s a TV, they’re genuinely astounded.

Samsung achieves this illusion via intelligent brightness and a proprietary matte display texture. The TV intelligently adjusts its own brightness based on the light in the surrounding room, and the matte texture of the screen makes it look like a real canvas.

What about just watching TV on it, though? Well, it’s a 4k QLED display that does not disappoint. I particularly love watching nature documentaries on it because it looks like you’re right there. In fact, I broke my own rule about smooth motion and turned it on for those shows because smooth motion is remarkably good and creates wildly crispy imagery.

I didn’t notice this until a couple of months into ownership when I realized that I didn’t find myself wishing I had a speaker system or sound bar to accompany the TV. Samsung utilizes what it calls Adaptive Sound Pro, which feels like some sort of black magic that listens to your room and adjusts audio equalization and output accordingly.

The bass coming from the TV will not knock your socks off, but I don’t find that I wish I had a subwoofer, either. Show dialogue is crystal clear without being boxy or too out front of sound effects and music, and the TV’s general loudness is pretty wild—we don’t run it much above 15 most of the time.

Pro: It’s a True Smart TV With Every App You Could Want (Plus Apple TV Functionality)

Seriously, pretty much whatever app you need for streaming can be downloaded to this TV. Do you want to screen mirror from your Apple device? It can do that, too. It’s almost like having an Apple TV, actually. You can also stream and play video games right from the TV itself through the Samsung gaming hub, watch multiple shows at once with a customizable picture-in-picture setup, and the TV connects to Samsung’s Smart Things app to use your phone as a remote control.

Con: The Remote Is a Little Janky

Initially, I loved the included remote. It’s simple and sleek, not unlike an Apple TV remote, and worked like a charm. It also featured solar charging, so we didn’t need to worry about replacing batteries or charging it.

Until we did.

After about nine months of use, the remote has gotten sort of… tired. The battery life is maybe half of what it used to be, so solar charging doesn’t keep up with usage anymore. It’s also lost a lot of range. I used to be able to control the TV from anywhere in my house with a line of sight, but not so anymore. The couch is about as far away as I can get.

Granted, I can use the Smart Things app remote from anywhere in the house, but I don’t like using it because it’s not as convenient as the actual remote.

Con: Installation Is a Little Bit Difficult

The Slim Fit wall mount is clever, allowing the display to lay flush against a wall. Samsung supplies a paper template for leveling and marking where the wall mounts go, but there’s a little more to it than that.

First, it takes two people because the TV isn’t sturdy like a Target Vizio. Since it’s such a thin unit, it’s frighteningly flexible, and the larger the unit, the gentler you have to be when taking it out of the box or moving it around during installation.

Second, Samsung gets away with such a thin display because the display is only a display. The hardware that drives it lives in a separate unit that plugs into the display via a thin connector and fragile fiber optic cable. Most people mount the TV on an interior wall after building a cubby for the hardware inside the wall behind the TV. I mounted mine on an exterior wall above our fireplace mantle, and while that looks cool, the chimney prevented me from hiding the hardware in a cubby, so I had to run the cable down the wall to the top of the mantle and then over to a bookshelf.

None of this is hard to do; it’s just not a plug-and-play situation.

Con: “Samsung TV Plus” Autoplay

I sincerely hope Samsung is reading this because whenever I turn on the TV or go from art mode to media mode, it auto-plays Samsung TV Plus, which is its version of on-demand satellite TV. You can pick from channels and watch certain live programming, but generally, I don’t want it on, yet it comes on anyway, and for some reason, it’s louder than anything else. I deeply hate it.

Overall, I love The Frame TV. The pros far outweigh the cons, and it’s actually on sale right now if you want to pick one up at an impressive discount. If you’re thinking about upgrading, seriously consider getting one.