Turn That Television Into a Gorgeous Art Gallery With One of These Frame TVs

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TVs don’t always gel with your home’s decor—when they’re turned off, they look like several square feet of glare-filled, black screen that can dampen your colorful home. Rather than investing in some elaborate hideaway system, you can buy a frame TV. While there are only a few such products available right now, frame TVs are likely to become less expensive and more common as other brands bear witness to the success of Samsung’s model, the first to hit the market. These TVs have zero glare and you can customize the display and the bezel to match your home, with an integrated program to display photos, paintings, and anything in between even when your TV is in sleep mode.

Looking for more design-forward products? Check our picks for the best portable coffee makers, wireless keyboards, and digital picture frames.

The Best Frame TVs

• Best Overall: Samsung The Frame

• Best Standing: Samsung The Serif

• Best Upgrade: LG G2

• Best for Portrait Mode: Samsung The Sero

What to Consider

What Is a Frame TV?

Frame televisions offer a fun solution to an idle television’s otherwise dull, lifeless black screen. Acting as an elegant photo gallery while not processing video, frame TVs have artsy sensibilities, often trading black plastic bezels for a clean matte finish and easel legs so they’re propped up like a work of art. Aptly put, frame TVs are televisions disguised as art pieces.

Although Samsung produces a line of televisions called The Frame TV, colloquially, frame TVs are any device with an ambient, gallery, or art mode. These modes act as television screensavers, displaying pre-loaded photos and art pieces or personal photos from your own gallery if you so desire. Some frame televisions can also display weather info, nature scenes, interior designs, and more.

Style

For any frame TV you’re considering, ensure that it matches your living space. Some frame TVs are meant to be mounted to a wall like a picture frame (hence the name), while others are built for floor stands. These are packaged with each respective TV. However, all TVs on this list also offer customizable bezels that are sold separately, each of which can match the color, finish, or wood style of the room they’re in.

Beyond aesthetics, these TVs are flat, slim, and easy to hang. Don’t opt for the biggest one you can find as it might not harmonize with the rest of the room. They’re meant to elevate your room by hiding the fact that you even own a TV, without acting as the central centerpiece. If you want the latter for your living space, check out our picks for the best 4K TVs instead.

Quality

Resolution and panel technology are important considerations for any television set, frames TVs included.

LCD and LED, known for their brightness and durability, are the most affordable TV types. LCD displays rely on fluorescent backlights, while LEDs use light-emitting diodes, typically delivering better picture quality. They both suffer from limited viewing angles and less effective light control within an image.

Quantum Dot or QLED technology is a significant step up in quality, using minuscule particles, each a different size, to emit a unique color. This makes for a much broader and more vivid color range than LCD or LED panels. We recommend these for most budgets.

Organic Light-Emitting Display technology, or OLED for short, relies on organic phosphors, where each pixel produces its own light. They have excellent contrast, clarity, and color integrity at wider viewing angles. However, they’re also more expensive and offer lower brightness levels than LCDs. These are the best picture quality for frame TVs, as the superior panels, mini-LEDs, are not yet available for most frame models.

Resolution indicates a TV’s number of vertical and horizontal pixels in its display. The higher the screen resolution, the sharper the image quality. Modern TVs boast a resolution of 4K and we don’t recommend getting a TV below that; 720p and 1080p displays are becoming outdated as technology advances and becomes more affordable.

Screen Size

Whether you’re mounting a TV on a wall or standing it upright in your living room, consider the screen size if you want to maintain a framed TV’s elegance. These television sets can be as small as 32 inches and as large as 85 inches. A TV that’s too large can compromise a room’s cohesion, while one that’s too small can make watching it an eye-straining activity. Ensure your frame TV is tying that room together.

How We Selected

Samsung TVs are the leader in this category. But we widened the options to include a few novelty TVs and one with a top OLED display featuring thin bezels that can stand in for picture frames. Within these narrow parameters, we also accounted for various specifications, critical and user reviews, and feature sets, but held to the ability for any such TV to double as a frame fit for a work of art. While you need solid tech to meet that standard, all other considerations were secondary.

The Frame TV Series

The Frame is the most popular and design-forward pick in the category of elegant televisions. It’s made to look exactly like a picture frame, and it’s offered in seven sizes, from 32 to 85 inches.

Like other options in this space, The Frame does not feature an OLED display. While impressive, Samsung’s QLED display doesn’t offer the infinite contrast of an LG or Sony competitor. However, QLED also makes it more affordable.

The Frame includes Alexa functionality, an art store for purchasing new display images, plus it’s highly customizable, all thanks to a magnetized snap-on frame and bezels, sold separately. It features a matte display that prevents reflections and comes packaged with a slim-fit wall mount for a clean setup.

Just be wary of displaying too many deep, dark chiaroscuro paintings — according to critical reviews, the QLED display is noted to expose issues with uniform colors.

The Serif TV Series

For a more museum-style display—something that would be at home in an art studio, show, or public gathering—The Serif stands on two bipod legs, resembling an easel. More than anything, though, it’s simple. The white frame, slim legs, and basic flatscreen display are minimalist to the core, hiding all cables and connections.

It’s a bit more expensive than Samsung’s Frame TV and only comes in two sizes: 43 and 55 inches. But it features much of the same tech, including a QLED display, a Quantum 4K processor, and Alexa compatibility. The Ambient mode adds the art functionality with an added ability to mimic the wall behind it.

G2 Series

LG’s G2 series of televisions are available in “Gallery Editions” that are meant to rival Samsung’s Frame TVs, minus the customizable frame. These TVs are extraordinarily thin. There’s no gap between the bezel and the wall, which also means there’s no shadow. Furthermore, an OLED display offers unbeatable contrast levels—quite literally perfect black.

With three size options, these TVs are not exactly small—they’re likely bigger than most picture frames—nor are they cheap. The smallest of the trio is around $1,500. For the added expense, however, you get that unbeatable contrast sure to render any work of art in its darkest expressions.

Samsung The Sero

Another entry in the Samsung family of art-inspired televisions, The Sero is perhaps the most unique in the category. Available in just one size (43 inches), it features the unique ability to rotate between portrait and landscape mode. And by rotate, we do not mean the on-screen image—we mean the entire display.

The rotation feature makes it ideal for mobile content, as it can mirror images or videos from social media. A tap-to-view feature allows you to quickly cast content from your phone to the display and control its various smart features. Its use cases are admittedly limited, but we can imagine some value in social-oriented marketing or PR shops or anyone who is “very online.”

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