Is the Samsung Frame TV Worth It?

Mike and I have had the Samsung Frame TV for two and a half years. It was one of the first things I ordered right when we moved into our Hoboken apartment! It remains one of the best “buys.” (I say “buys” because I actually used credit card points to purchase on Amazon– my Chase card converts points into Amazon dollars.)

Every time a glimpse of it makes it into an Instagram story, I get a handful of people asking if it’s “worth it.” YES. It was one of those things that always bothered me– a big black rectangle eye sore just taking up space dead center in the living room. It wasn’t a huge deal in any of my earlier apartments as it wasn’t the first thing you saw when you walked in, but the TV was prominently the first thing you saw in our Hoboken apartment and that’s when I made the decision to go for the Frame.

The gist of the Samsung Frame TV is that it has a super thin profile (so it sits quite flat against the wall) and you can display digital art that looks like a framed work of art while the TV is off. It’s 100% better than a black square, though if you look closely it’s very clearly digital and not real art. But it’s fooled a bunch of people when they first walked in. (Especially guys– Mike’s friends are always like, “where’s the TV?”)

This is a fantastic compromise for couples when one partner wants a giant television for watching sports and another wants a tastefully decorated living room. (🙈)

PROS:

– The TV quality itself is great. I’m no expert, but I have zero complaints about the functionality of the TV. It works like every other smart television. We do have cable and then it’s also connected to the internet which is how we stream from Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, HBO, etc. I also really like the remote. It’s simple and straightforward.

– Aesthetically it is also really nice looking. You can swap out the color of the frame, though I do think the frame choices are expensive. We have white in our house now and had a dark brown for the Hoboken apartment. There are even more expensive options available by different companies and I honestly think if you’re handy and can do 45° angles you could DIY one for way less. Beyond the actual digital art part, I think the way it’s so flush against the wall is the best feature. It’s slim.

– The One Connect Box is genius. One way they’re able to make the TV so slim is by having the One Connect Box. It’s similar to a cable box in that it sits away from the television (ours is in the console below) and everything you would normally connect to the TV gets plugged in there. So you only have two cords running from the TV: the power cord and the One Connect Box cord. The power cord is white and the One Connect Box cord is clear. This makes it a fantastic option for renters as you won’t have a thousand black cords to handle. We hid our cords in our wall since we own our house, but in Hoboken we hung the TV against a brick wall and you could not see the cords unless you were inches away from the wall. You can see what it looks like in this Instagram Highlight I made in Hoboken.

– Uploading your own art is the best part about it in my opinion. You have access to a small bank of artwork and photographs that Samsung offers. I always like uploading my own photos from trips and I have friends who have scanned in children’s artwork (which I think is super cute). AND there are people who sell digital art and photos specifically for the Samsung Frame– if you’re looking for a specific style.

CONS:

– Samsung’s app is very annoying to use. I don’t like it at all and it can be glitchy. Luckily this is “just” a software issue and presumably could be fixed by Samsung any day now. (Though I’ve been waiting since we bought the TV in March of 2018, lol.) If you go onto any of the forums, people fuuuuuume about the lack of support from Samsung. Sometimes it’s nice to know it’s not just me when I’m having an issue, but still annoying nonetheless. Even with the issues though, they all have work arounds and it’s never hindered me completely… just added a little complication here and there. I also should note that the issues are rare– maybe four times a year total so it’s not like I’m banging my head against the wall daily.

– Uploading art can be slightly tricky. You need to have perfectly sized images to have mat options. This took me a while of digging to figure out and I even wrote it down in a saved email so I wouldn’t forget. (If you want to have a “mat” around your art, it will need to be sized to: 3840 x 2160 px. Personally I think the art looks best and most “art like” with a mat.