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Samsung 50-Inch Class Frame Series – 4K Quantum HDR Smart TV review

Samsung 50-Inch Class Frame Series – 4K Quantum HDR Smart TV has great peak brightness in SDR and decent reflection handling, so it can handle a bright environment as long as there’s no direct sunlight. It has a few great gaming features, including an HDMI 2.1 port for 4k @ 120Hz gaming and variable refresh rate support. Sadly, it has narrow viewing angles, and HDR doesn’t add much, as it has no local dimming feature and just okay peak brightness in HDR. More features covered in Samsung 50-Inch Class Frame Series – 4K Quantum HDR Smart TV review.

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Pros & Cons

PROS

  • Displays deep blacks.
  • Great response time.
  • Can display 4k @ 120Hz.
  • VRR support.

CONS

  • No local dimming.
  • Doesn’t handle direct reflections well.

Samsung 50-Inch Class Frame Series – 4K Quantum HDR Smart TV review

Build

The Samsung The Frame TV’s build quality is excellent. It feels well-built overall, and it doesn’t flex or wobble much. However, it requires a lot of force to push the plastic piece covering the One Connect port on the TV inwards enough to plug the cable. Also, the borders seem to scratch easily, and they feel loose as if they might fall off. 

Stand

Footprint of the 55 inch stand: 35.2″ x 9″.

They lift the TV by about 3.5 inches. They’re very sturdy, and the TV doesn’t wobble much. You can also mount the TV on a studio stand, like a painting on an easel, although the stand is sold separately.

Design

The Samsung The Frame’s design is very similar to its predecessor, the Samsung The Frame 2020. It still features the One Connect box so that there’s only a single cable leading to the TV. The borders are slightly thicker than other 2021 Samsung QLED TVs but are still very thin. You can customize the bezels so that they fit in better with your existing decor. However, you have to purchase the white, beige, or brown ones separately, and you have to install them yourself.

Connectors

We received reports that updating the firmware to version FW 1566 breaks the HDMI 2.1 support. We updated our TV to the latest firmware (FW 1805), and we checked to see which resolutions it supports. It still works with 4k @ 120Hz signals with proper chroma 4:4:4, and any other HDMI 2.1 signal from our PC, like 4k @ 120Hz with 10 and 12-bit color depth. We also confirmed it still supports 40 Gbps bandwidth, as you can see here. However, there were issues with 4k @ 120Hz HDR games from the Xbox Series X, which is explained in the Advanced Console Compatibility section.

  • HDR10  Yes
  • HDR10+  Yes
  • Dolby Vision  No
  • HLG  Yes
  • HDMI 2.0 Full Bandwidth  Yes (HDMI 1,2,3,4)
  • HDMI 2.1 Class Bandwidth  Yes (HDMI 4)
  • CEC Yes
  • HDCP 2.2 Yes (HDMI 1,2,3,4)
  • USB 3.0  No
  • Variable Analog Audio Out No
  • Wi-Fi Support Yes (2.4 GHz, 5 GHz)

Viewing angle

This TV has sub-par viewing angles. It’s better than the Samsung The Frame 2020, but the image still looks inaccurate when viewed from the side, so it’s not ideal for a wide seating arrangement. The 43 and 50 inch models are advertised to have worse viewing angles, but we’re not sure by how much.

Brightness – Samsung 50-Inch Class Frame Series – 4K Quantum HDR Smart TV

The Samsung The Frame TV has impressive SDR brightness. It’s very similar to the Samsung The Frame 2020, but small highlights aren’t dimmed unnecessarily by the TV’s CE dimming (also known as Frame dimming). It’s bright enough to overcome glare in most viewing environments, as long as there’s no direct sunlight on it.

We measured the SDR brightness after calibration in the ‘Movie’ Picture Mode with the Color Tone set to ‘Warm 2’ and Brightness set to max.

If you want a brighter image and don’t mind losing a bit of image accuracy, set the Picture Mode to ‘Dynamic’ and Brightness to max. We reached 590 cd/m² in the 10% window with these settings.

Resolution

The Samsung The Frame TV supports most common resolutions. Except for 1440p @ 120Hz, chroma 4:4:4 is displayed properly in any other supported resolution, which is essential for clear text when using the TV as a PC monitor.

Color gamut

The Samsung The Frame has a very good color gamut. It has excellent coverage of the DCI P3 color space used by most current HDR content. Coverage of the wider Rec. 2020 color space is mediocre, but it can display a wide color gamut. Sadly, the TV’s tone mapping is worse than the Samsung The Frame 2020, especially in the reds, which have a noticeably pink tint.

Refresh rate

The Samsung The Frame TV supports FreeSync variable refresh rate technology to reduce screen tearing when gaming. It doesn’t officially support G-SYNC compatibility, although some users have reported that it works. We tried it with our RTX 3070 at 60Hz and 120Hz; there was a lot of tearing in our pendulum demo, but none in Destiny 2. It’s similar to the Samsung QN90A QLED‘s behavior.

Gaming mode – Samsung 50-Inch Class Frame Series – 4K Quantum HDR Smart TV

The HDR brightness in Game Mode is a bit brighter than outside of Game Mode, but there’s frame dimming in the 2% windows, which means small highlights in dark scenes appear dimmer. The EOTF doesn’t follow the curve as well as outside of Game Mode; all scenes appear darker than they should. If you want to make HDR brighter in Game Mode, set Contrast Enhancer to ‘High’ and ST.2084 to max.

We measured the HDR brightness in Game Mode with Brightness and Contrast at max, Color Tone set to ‘Warm 2’, Color Gamut set to ‘Auto’, and all other processing disabled.

Response time

The response time is great, resulting in very little blur behind fast-moving objects. It’s very similar to the Samsung The Frame 2020, but there’s less image duplication because its backlight flickers at a much higher frequency than its predecessor. Unfortunately, like most VA panels, dark scenes have a significantly slower response time and more overshoot, resulting in a longer trail behind dark objects, commonly known as black smear.

Samsung 50-Inch Class Frame Series – 4K Quantum HDR Smart TV customer review

Great looks, okay picture, okay software!

Just know that you are buying this TV for the looks. Period. The image is average, the Samsung software is average. If you are thinking that this TV will give you an amazing picture and quality, you can get a cheaper TV with better image quality. I use mine in my home office as a second screen and I connected an AppleTV to it for movies and other channels. For how I use it and based on the fact that I was looking for that Frame look, it works great. The attached TV mount is great to have the TV fully against the wall but be careful installing the OneConnect Box, the fiber optic cable is very expensive if you break it. If you’re not a handy person, I suggest you hire someone to install it and hide the cable. I read a lot of reviews about complains with the software and the artwork, and yes, it is a pain. You’ll have to be patient. Apart from the ‘Art Mode’, I really like Ambien Mode but it is not as simple to get to as Art Mode. In general, I am very happy with the purchase because I researched a lot and I had the right expectations for what I was getting and paying for.

By JayGar3 at Best Buy

Alternate of Samsung 50-Inch Class Frame Series – 4K Quantum HDR Smart TV

Sony A90J OLED 4K HDR TV:

Last year, we declared Sony’s XBR A8H OLED TV as the most cinematic 4K TV, thanks to the subtleties in detail that Sony was able to extract from its OLED panel. This year’s pick, the Bravia A90J Master Series, deserves the title of most cinematic TV for very similar reasons.

If you checked out our description of the LG G1 Gallery Series above, you know that it’s LG’s brightest OLED TV to date, thanks to the new LG OLED Evo panel and LG’s picture processor. Well, Sony has always had a way of squeezing even more performance from a given panel than LG, and the A90J exemplifies this capability.

Through specialized heat sinks, Sony can run the A90J’s panel longer and harder without damaging the OLED material itself, which leads to an exceptionally bright image — brighter even than the G1. And when you layer on Sony’s latest Cognitive Processor XR — a computer brain that Sony claims works a lot like a human brain — you’ve got what our reviewer described as the “best picture quality I have ever seen […] this TV is now the benchmark, and it’s going to be hard to beat.”

Yes, the same reviewer said something similar about the G1, but in fairness, he had not reviewed the A90J yet.

The A90J also scores very highly when it comes to sound quality. Sony’s Acoustic Surface Audio+ turns the entire OLED panel into a speaker, while its XR Surround makes that sound feel as though it’s coming from all around you — perfect for virtualized Dolby Atmos without a soundbar. But given that most A90J buyers will be running an A/V receiver for their sound, it’s pretty darn cool that the A90J has its own center channel speaker terminals, which lets you use the TV as a replacement for your existing center channel speaker.

With Android TV (and the new Google TV experience) running the user interface, it’s like having a top-notch streaming media device built-in, plus Sony has embedded Apple’s AirPlay and HomeKit in addition to Google’s Chromecast, leaving no stone unturned in terms of wireless device connections.

There are really only two drawbacks to the A90J, and one of them may not matter to you at all: There’s no VRR support for now, which gamers should be aware of, as it might affect their favorite games. The other is the price. At $4,000 for the 65-inch model, the A90J is very, very expensive.

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