The Characteristics
(Bloomberg Businessweek) -- Like many South Korean conglomerates, Samsung Group has its fingers in many pies. It produces everything from vacuum cleaners to laptops, but it’s most renowned for video displays—Apple Inc. entrusted it to make the screen of the iPhone X. Last year, Samsung introduced the Frame, an Yves Béhar-designed line of TVs aimed at making the box itself look as good as anything shown on it. Mounted, the flatscreen hangs flush against the wall at a mere 1.7 inches deep, with edges clad in magnetic woodgrain or white bezels to give it the look of a piece of art. The only clue to its technical nature is the One Connect box, which integrates all those extra wires into a single cable.
The Competition
Although it’s not the first TV to go with a picture-frame aesthetic, Samsung’s Frame (the 55-inch pictured is $1,999) is the most elegant and convincing of the genre. That said, much of what you’re paying for is design. It comes with 4K resolution and Dolby Digital Plus sound, but the edge-lit display is arguably a step down from Samsung’s 55-inch Q6F, which costs $400 less (but looks very much like a big black box). If a thin screen is more important, the 65-inch $8,000 LG Signature LED TV W is only 0.15 inch deep, half the thickness of an iPhone X. The effect is more like hanging a really expensive poster, instead of a framed photograph, on your wall.
The Case
The Frame’s Smart Hub interface gives remote-control access to streaming platforms in excellent resolution. On Amazon Prime Video, the opening shots of Nicolas Winding Refn’s The Neon Demon provide a lurid demonstration of the set’s deep blacks and gamut of vivid hues. The high resolution comes in handy when the screen is set to Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights, one of hundreds of works in the TV’s subscription-based Art Store. Installation is simple, but if your wall space is at a premium, mount it on the easel-like, cable-hiding Studio Stand ($599). Either way, your TV is camouflaged in plain sight, until you hit the remote.
To contact the author of this story: Matthew Kronsberg in New York at matt.kronsberg@gmail.com.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Chris Rovzar at crovzar@bloomberg.net, James Gaddy
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