Samsung The Frame 2026  TV Review

The Samsung Frame TV has sub-par peak brightness in HDR. It lacks local dimming and doesn't have the contrast necessary to bring out bright highlight details, and very bright scenes are flat and dull overall.

The posted results are with the TV in its most accurate picture mode with 'HDR Tone Mapping' set to 'Static.' Below are the results with the setting set to 'Active,' which doesn't even increase the peak brightness on this TV, and it's less accurate. Some darker scenes may still be a bit brighter with this setting.

• Hallway Lights: 427 cd/m²
• Yellow Skyscraper: 352 cd/m²
• Landscape Pool: 178 cd/m²

Switching the TV to Game Mode results in a slightly brighter image, but it's not very significant. It's still too dim to deliver an impactful HDR experience, and bright highlight details don't stand out at all.

The posted results are with the TV in its most accurate picture mode with 'HDR Tone Mapping' set to 'Static.' Below are the results with the setting set to 'Active,' which doesn't actually do much to increase the peak brightness on this TV.

• Hallway Lights: 431 cd/m²
• Yellow Skyscraper: 430 cd/m²
• Landscape Pool: 260 cd/m²

The TV's peak brightness in SDR is okay. It's bright enough to handle moderate amounts of glare with bright content. Unlike in HDR, near-black scenes in SDR are dimmed a bit. The TV doesn't have local dimming; instead, this is Samsung's CE Dimming feature, which helps reduce black uniformity issues in near-black scenes.

The peak brightness is a bit different when you switch to Art Mode. It reaches a peak of 290 cd/m², as measured with a checkerboard pattern (50% APL), and the minimum peak brightness is 8.1 cd/m².

This TV has a very good native contrast ratio, but there's no local dimming feature at all. This means that black levels are nearly always raised and look gray instead of black. Since the TV can't adjust the backlight intensity between scenes, it doesn't matter if you're watching bright or dark content; the black levels are always the same.

The Samsung Frame TV doesn't have a local dimming feature, so there's no haloing around bright objects or subtitles during dark scenes, but the entire screen is washed out.

This TV doesn't have a local dimming feature. This means that there's no distracting flicker or brightness changes as bright highlights move between dimming zones.

Switching to Game Mode doesn't result in any noticeable difference in dark-scene performance.

The black uniformity on this TV is decent. Blacks are raised, and there's some clouding throughout the screen, but no excessive flashlighting from the corners. Unfortunately, there's no local dimming feature to improve it.

The Samsung Frame TV has decent color volume. It has good coverage of the DCI-P3 color space, falling just slightly short of displaying the full range of reds and greens, but blues look good. It struggles a bit in very light scenes, so colors aren't quite as vivid. Unfortunately, it can't display much beyond DCI-P3, so its coverage of the wider BT.2020 color space is sub-par.

This TV has okay color volume in HDR. It's limited by its incomplete color gamut and low contrast, so dark saturated colors aren't displayed well.

The pre-calibration color accuracy on this TV is okay. Color mapping is great, with very few noticeable errors, and gamma tracking is excellent, but a bit high overall, so most scenes are slightly darker than they should be. The white balance is just okay, though, as there's too much blue, especially in midtones, and the TV has a very cold color temperature out of the box.

This TV is very easy to calibrate, and the color accuracy results after calibration are fantastic. The color temperature is still slightly cold, but not enough to be noticeable by most people.

Check out our full calibration settings.

The pre-calibration accuracy in HDR is decent. Like with SDR, the white balance is the most noticeable issue, and there's too much blue in midtones and slightly brighter shades. Color mapping is great overall, but reds and blues are a bit off.

This TV has excellent accuracy in HDR after calibration. Unfortunately, the white balance and color mapping didn't actually improve much, but the overall color temperature is much better.

The Samsung The Frame TV has great PQ EOTF tracking. Near-black shadow details are visibly raised, but this is caused by the TV's low contrast ratio and not the image processing. Midtones are displayed well, and there's a gradual roll-off near the TV's peak brightness. This helps preserve gradation in bright details, but slightly limits how bright they get.

The low-quality content smoothing in this TV is decent. Macro-blocking and posterization issues from streaming services are still noticeable, but slightly reduced. There's very little loss of fine details.

This TV has great upscaling. Low-resolution sources like DVDs are scaled well, with no obvious over-sharpening. Text and other fine details are easy to make out.

This TV has excellent gradient handling. There's barely any noticeable banding in most shades.

This TV has excellent low input lag in all supported modes, ensuring a responsive feel when gaming. It's a bit higher outside of Game Mode, which reduces the responsiveness when navigating menus on an external player, but it's not bad.

This TV supports all common modes, up to a maximum refresh rate of 144Hz with 4k signals or 240Hz with a lower resolution. You have to manually select 1080p @ 240Hz when paired with an NVIDIA GPU, as the format is automatically available. It works fine when forced, though. The TV also displays chroma 4:4:4 properly with all supported formats, which helps with clear text from a PC.

The TV supports FreeSync, HDMI Forum VRR, and G-SYNC Compatible, ensuring a nearly tear-free gaming experience from any VRR-enabled source. It works well across the TV's entire refresh rate range and supports sources with Low Framerate Compensation (LFC), which ensures your games remain nearly tear-free even when your frame rate drops very low.

The TV's CAD at the max 4k refresh rate of 144Hz is mediocre. Fast action is a bit blurry, especially in darker shades. There's no noticeable overshoot, though, so there's barely any inverse ghosting in shadow details.

The TV's CAD is actually a bit better when you drop down to 120Hz. Motion is fairly clear, with just a bit of blur behind fast-moving objects.

The TV's CAD at 60Hz is sub-par. It's noticeably blurry, especially in shadow details.

This TV is fully compatible with everything the PS5 offers, like 1440p @ 120Hz and 4k @ 120Hz, as well as HDMI Forum VRR. It also supports Auto Low Latency Mode, so you don't have to worry about switching to Game Mode to get the lowest input lag.

This TV is fully compatible with almost everything the Xbox Series X|S offers, including 4k @ 120Hz, HDMI Forum VRR, and FreeSync Premium Pro. It also supports Auto Low Latency Mode, so you don't have to worry about switching to Game Mode to get the lowest input lag. Of course, like all Samsung TVs, it doesn't support Dolby Vision.

The TV's relatively slow cinematic response time results in only a bit of stutter. It's mainly noticeable in very slow, wide-panning shots.

Unfortunately, adding low levels of motion interpolation doesn't do much to reduce stutter. There's very little change in the average frame hold time, so you'll still see as much stutter in slow, wide-panning shots. The feature isn't very consistent, either, which results in a slightly uneven frame pacing.

This TV automatically removes judder from nearly all content.

There's no micro judder on this TV.

The cinematic response time on this TV is poor. Most motion is very blurry.

Transitions aren't quite even on this TV, resulting in noticeable color artifacts in fast action. The edges are also slightly softer than the center, but it's barely noticeable.

The TV uses high-frequency flicker with pulse width modulation (PWM) to control the backlight. The amount of flicker varies depending on what picture mode the TV is set to and what settings you're using. It flickers at a very fast 960Hz in the 'FILMMAKER MODE' and 'Movie' Picture Mode, but most other picture modes flicker at a much slower 120Hz, which can cause image duplications or headaches if you're sensitive to flicker. If you enable the Picture Clarity settings, it also changes the flicker frequency to 120Hz. Unlike the Samsung The Frame Pro 2026, it flickers at 120Hz in Game Mode. The 'Entertain' and 'Graphic' modes available when connected to a PC also flicker at 120Hz.

The TV supports backlight strobing, more commonly known as black frame insertion (BFI). Unfortunately, it only flickers at 60Hz. The pulse timing is a bit off, but it's not too bad, and the secondary image is barely visible.

The matte anti-reflective coating on this TV does an excellent job of reducing daytime glare.

Ambient light has a slight impact on black levels, but it's not too bad.

The total amount of reflected light is great. There are no obvious diffraction artifacts like rainbow smear, and reflections aren't too distracting.

Ambient light causes a slight loss of color saturation, especially high-luminance colors.

Unfortunately, this TV has a mediocre viewing angle. The image washes out noticeably as you move to the sides, so it's not a good choice for a wide seating area.

The Samsung Frame TV has mediocre gray uniformity. There are multiple bright and dark bands across the screen, and it's very patchy overall. This is especially distracting when watching sports, but it's bad enough that you'll see it in most content.

This TV uses a VA panel with a blue-green-red subpixel layout, which can cause text clarity issues when used with a PC. Although advertised as a QLED model, the spectral peaks are fairly wide and not well isolated, with some noticeable crosstalk between greens and reds.

All of the inputs are housed directly on the back of the TV, unlike the Samsung The Frame Pro 2026, which uses an external Wireless One Connect box instead. All four HDMI inputs support the full bandwidth of HDMI 2.1, so you can take full advantage of multiple consoles or gaming PCs.

This TV supports many audio formats, including all Dolby Digital options. Unfortunately, it doesn't support DTS formats, which is disappointing, as many Blu-rays use DTS for their lossless audio tracks.

Like all Samsung TVs, this TV doesn't support Dolby Vision, but it does support the similar HDR10+.

This TV has a premium design that's meant to blend in with your surroundings when not in use. The bezels are the same thickness on all four sides and can be changed to match your decor.

The TV comes with a slim wall mount, but there are also two blade-style feet in the box if you don't want to mount. The feet can be placed in either a high or low position, so you can leave room for a soundbar if you want to.

Footprint of the 65-inch stand: 41.1" x 10.1".

Height of the 65-inch stand: 3" in the high position, 2" in the low position.

The back of the TV has a simple design. There are two cutouts near the top for the slim wall mount, but it also has standard VESA-mounting holes if you want to use a different stand. There are also tracks along the back and out the bottom to help with cable management.

This TV has excellent build quality. It's mostly made of plastic but feels fairly solid, with no obvious gaps or flaws.

The TV ships with the 2026 version of Tizen OS, but Samsung promises up to seven years of system updates.

Like most TVs on the market, there are ads throughout the TV interface, and although you can turn off targeted ads, there's no option to turn them off entirely.

The remote has a built-in rechargeable battery with a solar panel on the back of the remote. You can also recharge it via USB-C.

• Manuals
• Remote
• Power cable
• Slim wall mount brackets and mounting hardware

This TV was originally tested on firmware 1204.

The Samsung The Frame TV has a mediocre frequency response. Voices are full and remain easy to hear thanks to elevated upper mids, but a noticeable dip in the low-treble softens consonants and reduces dialogue clarity somewhat. Like most TVs, it has very limited low-bass extension, though, so action lacks any meaningful thump or rumble. It can't get very loud, either, so it's not a great choice for a loud environment.