Samsung’s The Frame has been part of the company’s TV lineup for several years, but recent iterations have introduced two key picture quality enhancements: an anti-glare screen – a feature found on some of the best TVs – and Pantone Validated certification. I’ll discuss both of those more in a bit, along with how they improve the experience of viewing artwork on The Frame TVs, but I first want to cover some exciting recent additions to the Samsung Art Store.
The Samsung Art Store is an online service that The Frame owners use to display artwork on their TVs. An Art Store membership costs $4.99 / £3.99 / AU$5.99 monthly or $49.99 / £39.99 / AU$59.90 annually and provides access to over 2,300 artworks, including selections from major museums, including NYC’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, London’s Tate Gallery, and Madrid’s Prado.
New content drops bi-weekly to the Samsung Art Store, and the past year has seen works from Salvador Dalí, the most searched-for artist in the collection, according to Samsung Art Store head of content Daria Greene. You'll also find paintings by Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring, two mainstays of the 1980s East Village NYC painting scene.
The most recent addition is 12 paintings from Hudson River School artists in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collection, which boosts the number of Art Store Met Museum offerings to 50. These range from the detailed, immersive vistas of Frederic Edwin Church to the intimate, Luminist canvases of John Frederick Kensett and George Inness. The Hudson River School addition is timed to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the Met’s American Wing, which houses the paintings and other works from the mid-17th to mid-20th centuries in 75 sprawling galleries.
How the Samsung Art Store works on The Frame TVs
The Samsung Art Store is exclusive to Samsung The Frame TVs, meaning that even other TVs in Samsung's lineup cannot access it. Once you’ve established a Membership, you can either subscribe to the Art Store to access its complete collection or browse and purchase artworks individually.
Along with the Art Store, Samsung The Frame TVs feature a pre-loaded selection of artworks you can access and display for free. You can also upload personal photos to the TV for display through a connected USB drive or by using the Samsung SmartThings app on your phone.
The Frame TVs feature a built-in sensor that automatically adjusts picture settings depending on ambient light conditions in a room. The same sensor is also used by the TV’s Night and Sleep modes, which can turn the TV on or off by detecting the presence of light or motion.
Of course, The Frame TVs also work as regular TVs for watching movies and streaming, and they even provide 4K 120Hz support for gaming.
The Frame evolved
Starting in 2023, new The Frame TVs gained an anti-glare Matte screen. This feature, which has also been incorporated in the new Samsung S95D OLED TV, is crucial for creating the illusion you’re looking at an actual painting rather than an electronic reproduction – something The Frame TVs do exceptionally well. The anti-glare screen virtually eliminates all reflections from in-room light sources, allowing textures and details in the 4K resolution images to come through clearly.
The Frame’s QLED display panel helps to convey a rich range of colors in artworks, but 2024 models also have Pantone Validated certification to ensure color accuracy, making them the first TVs to earn that certification. According to a Samsung release on its 2024 The Frame TVs, the certification process “evaluates if displays can faithfully simulate a range of physical Pantone Color cards and Pantone SkinTone color cards under CIE standard illuminant D65, which portrays illumination that is more-or-less equivalent to that of the average midday light in Western or Northern Europe.”
You can think about Pantone Validated certification as a kind of Filmmaker Mode, but for displaying art. Both are concerned with presenting images as faithful as possible to the original and involve preset settings that provide reliably accurate color reproduction. Along with the Matte screen and Pantone Validated certification, 2024 The Frame TVs also feature a 60Hz setting that lowers power consumption when the TV is in Art Mode.
Samsung The Frame TVs have evolved to the point where they’ve become a great alternative to a regular 4K TV, especially if the set will be installed as a centerpiece in a bright, multi-use room. The Frame concept has proven so popular that Samsung now also offers the Music Frame, a flat, picture frame-style speaker that can be used to display artwork and is a natural companion for The Frame TVs. And with screen sizes now ranging from 43 inches up to 85 inches, there are Samsung The Frame TVs that can do justice to a Frederic Edwin Church landscape.
