Samsung The Frame TV 50-inch
A facelift for Samsung’s fashion-first designer TV
£1,399 FROM Samsung, samsung.co.uk FEATURES QLED, 4K, HDR; TVPlus, Tizen; 50-inch; 4x HDMI 2.0, 2x USB, Ethernet, optical, terrestrial, cable input, satellite input, CI slot
Samsung The Frame TV is a TV designed as much around its place as decor as it is a display for television shows. Design-first features include sleek cabling solutions and bezel options that ape an actual picture frame, and dedicated modes for accessing iconic artworks or ‘ambient’ imagery.
The Frame is available in 43-, 50-, 55-, 65-, and 75-inch sizes (with a 32-inch model coming soon). We reviewed the 50-inch. At £1,399, it’s not the cheapest QLED in 2020 (the Samsung Q60Tis £799 for its smallest 43-inch size), so is the extra expense worthwhile?
The idea is that there are hours of the day when you’re stuck with a big black rectangle dominating your living room – which is why this set is designed to blend in with your home decor. The base body is a polished black metal: classy up close, unassuming from a distance. You can buy a variety of different coloured bezels that attach magnetically for a picture frame aesthetic. There’s space at the back for a flush wall mount to be attached, or you can attach two solid feet to the underside.
The Frame is one of the few new Samsung TVs to feature the OneConnect box; a sleek cabling solution that outsources power, HDMI, USB ports and the like to a separate piece of hardware, rather than to the TV itself. The rear of the box features four HDMI 2.0 ports (including eARC support), optical, Ethernet, CI, satellite, Air/Cable, and ExLink, with two USB ports on the side.
You get a pair of remotes: one basic remote with rubbery buttons and a full numerical keypad, and one ‘designer’ remote with a slimmed-down form factor. The sleek model is more satisfying to hold and use, and carries dedicated buttons for Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and Rakuten TV as well as a ‘123’ button to easily type in channel numbers. Samsung’s Tizen smart TV platform is one of the best in the business. App selection is easy and customisable, so if you want Apple TV+ and Disney+ ahead of Rakuten TV and YouTube, you can pin, delete and rearrange what’s on show. The design could be more streamlined, and the Samsung
TV Plus app is permanently half-visible at the bottom of the home screen though.
You get two choices for voice assistant support: Amazon
Alexa and Samsung Bixby.
Alexa works fine, and the set can work in conjunction with Amazon Echo smart speakers and other Alexa devices. Bixby isn’t quite as capable, and we don’t recommend it unless you’re sticking to simple commands that jump between apps and source inputs.
Different modes
One of The Frame’s most distinctive features is Art Mode: a setting that displays artworks, paintings, landscapes, or your own photos. Samsung has partnered with renowned museums and galleries, including the V&A in London and the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam. You technically only get 20 for free, and you need a monthly subscription to get a wider variety of paintings and the like, but there’s plenty of other background fodder to use without paying a penny.
The app’s layout could be improved: selecting Art Mode brings you automatically to a screen asking you to pay for the premium option (£3.99 per month), and the most useful sections – brightness and motion sensor settings – aren’t visible unless you scroll down to Spotlight and sift through the tabs.
According to Samsung, Art Mode uses around 30% of the power that streaming a movie on Netflix would, meaning it’s not as eco-friendly as simply turning the TV off.
Ambient Mode utilises animations and customisable colour gradients to help generate a calming atmosphere (or match wallpaper). There’s plenty to try out, including clock faces, weather info and news headlines.
The actual picture quality of the TV isn’t always up to scratch. It’s an improvement on the 2018 model, helped by a newer Quantum Processor 4K, which ensures Samsung’s usual upscaling excellence is fully on show – with both HD and 4K sources looking crisp and detailed on the 50-inch UHD screen.
Motion is highly smooth, too. The Frame automatically uses a Picture Clarity mode to aid with this, though we found motion entirely passable even without it.
Almost all the sources we tried looked great, with a few exceptions. While some QLED panels can output thousands of nits brightness, The Frame only offers a few hundred. This means the picture isn’t quite as impactful as some other Samsung TVs.
SDR (standard dynamic range) is fully capable here, with decent colour recreation – as is fitting for an artistic television. HDR is where The Frame really looks best, with Samsung’s proprietary dynamic HDR format, HDR10+, favoured by Amazon Prime Video. Skin tones aren’t always colour-accurate, and we found ourselves repeatedly switching between picture settings to amend this.
Black crushing is also pretty prevalent, with dark environments often struggling to show up clearly onscreen, and blacks and dark colours often merging into impenetrable shadow. For fans of moody dystopian sci-fi or horror movies, The Frame probably isn’t the right set for you.
Sound-wise you get a pretty standard 20W output here, without Dolby Atmos surround sound or any fancy built-in driver arrays. Sound holds up for general usage. Dialogue is brilliantly clear, with an overall balanced sound, though you can start to hear some audio distortion when you get to higher volumes. You’ll want a dedicated soundbar if you want to use The Frame for loud music or big-impact movie scores.