Do you ever think that such a large TV would be an excellent canvas to admire art on? Samsung had the same idea a few years ago, and so The Frame was born. This latest version also comes with a matte screen, quite unique for TVs, but a great choice in this case.
Samsung QE55LS03B The Frame
Price € 1,799
What Ultra HD LED LCD TV
Screen size 55 inches (139 cm)
Connections 4x HDMI (1x v2.1 (40 Gbps), eARC, ALLM, VRR, HFR 4K120), 1x optical digital out, 2x USB, 2x antenna, bluetooth
Extras HDR10, HLG, HDR10+, WiFi (802.11ac) built-in, Tizen 7.0, AirPlay 2, USB/DLNA media player, DVB-T2/C/S2, CI+ lock, Neural Quantum 4K Processor, Invisible Connection/One Connect box
Dimensions 1,238 x 743 x 228 mm (incl. foot)
Weight 17.3 kg (incl. feet)
Consumption SDR 103 (G) / HDR 191 watts (G)
Website Samsung.com 8 Score 80 
- Pros
- Access (paying) to a beautiful art collection
- Matte screen gives the impression of real paper
- Wall bracket included
- Solid contrast
- Just enough light and color for HDR playback
- Good image processing
- One Connect/Invisible Connection
- One HDMI 2.1 connection with gaming features
- Negatives
- No Dolby Vision support
- New Tizen Smart Hub is less user-friendly
Buy the Samsung QE55LS03B – The Frame at Bol.com
You hang art frames on the wall, so it should come as no surprise that Samsung has designed The Frame specifically for wall mounting. Not only is there a slim wall bracket in the box, the device itself is only 25 mm thick. Once you hang up the TV, it does indeed look very much like a modern art frame.
You can emphasize this even more by choosing a different finish. Samsung offers optional frames in other colors, but also with a slightly beveled edge. This way you give the TV a suitable look for your living room, or if you wish, even one that fits nicely with a certain work of art. The frames simply snap into place magnetically, so changing them is absolutely no chore. In the box you will also find two simple feet, so you can place The Frame on a TV cabinet even if you miss part of the concept.
Connected almost invisibly
Samsung has also had an exclusive solution for several years to simplify all the hassle with cables on your TV: the One Connect Box. And since The Frame’s goal is to fit as seamlessly as possible into your interior, it also received a One Connect box. So there is only one silver cable to the device, which provides both data and power. At the other end of the five meter long cable you will find the One Connect box where all connections are located.
It is not the new slim version as on the QN95B. Put it in the closet along with your source devices and you’re done. There are four HDMI connections, one with ARC/eARC and an HDMI 2.1 connection with 40Gbps bandwidth. It can therefore serve for a recent game console or PC and supports 4K120, ALLM and VRR (HDMI VRR and AMD Freesync).
The input lag is surprisingly low: 12.7 ms for 4K60 and 7.1 ms for 2K120. A game on The Frame: perfectly possible. You’ll also find two USB connections and an optical digital audio output. There is ethernet, wifi and bluetooth.
How extensive is that art collection?
The Frame has an extended version of the Ambient Mode that you will also find on other Samsung devices. So you can put all kinds of images on the screen when you’re not watching TV, so that the TV still adorns the room.
You can adjust the brightness and color temperature manually, but The Frame has a built-in light sensor and motion sensor so that it uses energy a bit smarter. For example, the motion sensor notices that there is no one in the room and switches off the screen after a set time. The light sensor not only adjusts brightness based on ambient light, it also detects when the light goes out completely, then turns off the screen.
But the real added value of The Frame lies in two specific properties: a matte screen, and an extensive art collection. That matte screen is a first for the 2022 model. Yes, a matte screen does slightly detract from the contrast, but it doesn’t outweigh the effect of making the screen look much more like a real canvas or paper.
Difficult mirror effects of some incident light, so typical on the glossy screens of other TVs, you will never see on The Frame. In other words, it strongly accentuates the art look of The Frame.
The extensive art collection is the real eye-catcher of The Frame, although you do have to take out a subscription (4.99 euros per month or 49.90 euros per year). You get more than 1,600 works of art from real top museums and collections, such as the Van Gogh museum, the Louvre, the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, the Prado, Magnum Photos, National Geographic, Yellow Korner and Saatchi Art.
The works are divided into many different categories such as subject, art form, color, artist. You can browse through a museum’s offerings, or look at what’s popular or new. You can also provide your chosen work with a matte, solid frame that really looks like a work of art.
The Tizen Smart Hub
In addition to that specific art function, The Frame, like the other 2022 models from Samsung, received the new Tizen Smart Hub interface that fills the entire screen. So there is certainly no shortage of functionality, just think of Airplay2, Google Cast (for Netflix and YouTube), Multiview, and of course an enormously extensive range of apps. The white remote control has a photovoltaic panel on the back and a rechargeable battery. For a quick boost of battery charge, there is a USB-C connection. The remote is simple but very functional.
Our main complaint is that the new Smart Hub interface is a step backwards in ease of use. He sometimes reacts a bit sluggishly, quite a bit of space is wasted and the organization sometimes means that you need a lot of clicks to get somewhere.
Beautiful quantum dot colors
The device can boast of the good performance of the Quantum Processor 4K. This provides nice upscaling and good noise suppression, which only makes it difficult to eliminate color strips in soft gradients. The sharpness of motion is slightly less good than the 120 Hz panel suggests, fast-moving objects have a clear blurry edge.
The Frame is not a home cinema TV, but it must of course be able to display colorful works of art. And don’t forget, you also want to watch TV on it. His achievements place him rather in the middle class.
The device has a VA panel with edge LED without local dimming. He achieves a more than decent contrast of 4,200:1. Our test model did not have perfect uniformity, in a dark test image there was slight clouding visible and on the bright test image we saw that the border around it had a faint blue tint. Both issues were not visible in regular footage.
The backlight uses quantum dots and delivers a color gamut of 87% P3. The Frame achieves a peak brightness of 540 nits, both on the 10% window and on the all-white screen. In SDR, most important for art rendering after all, the Filmmaker mode is calibrated excellently. In HDR, he leaves a few points.
Like all Samsung TVs, The Frame supports HLG, HDR10 and HDR10+ but no Dolby Vision. Given the popularity of Dolby Vision, that’s a shame, because given the brightness and color range, he would benefit a lot from it. The tone mapping takes the HDR10 metadata into account, but clips away a little bit of white nuances and makes the color reproduction a bit too weak. Black detail is also a difficult task, where you often miss the finest nuances.
Great audio results
Despite its slim profile, The Frame features a 40 Watt audio configuration with Dolby Atmos support. The Frame can also adjust the sound based on your room acoustics. In this way he achieves very solid results. The sound was pleasant, with sufficient volume and the speakers are not easily distorted. There’s even an audible surround effect for your movies. We only miss a somewhat fuller bass line, but you should not expect that from this device.
Conclusion
Samsung has succeeded in making a beautiful lifestyle TV with a unique feature set. The matte screen is not plagued by reflections, and together with the good image quality, this brings out the enormous art collection beautifully. The supplied wall bracket and customizable frames only emphasize this even more.
The Frame also provides a lot of TV or streaming viewing pleasure and offers everything needed for an evening of gaming, although we would not recommend the device for hardcore movie fans, who probably want better contrast performance. For this unique offer, Samsung asks a fairly firm price, we think it’s best to wait for a good discount.
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