I agree the frame is fantastic. There will be competitor offerings announced at CES so we should see comparable products at lower prices in the near future.
As for microLED, I don’t see it making much of a difference, if any. The new Sammy and LG OLEDs are as bright as LED TVs (if not on paper, certainly in real life) and PQ has gotten so good across the board that most people can’t even distinguish between mini LED and OLED today.
Ah no, that's not why I want microLED. I have an LG G3 in my lounge now and it's unbelievably bright for an OLED. For me MicroLED isn't about the brightness, it's about the lack of burn-in. You couldn't do a Samsung Frame type display with OLED as the static image would burn in. Burn in isn't nearly as bad, in my experience, as people claim (I'm on my second OLED in my lounge and my computer monitor has been a 42" LG C2 OLED for almost a year and a half now and I've not experienced any burn-in on any of my devices. But, it would definitely be a problem on a display that is literally designed to display a static image 99% of the time. MicroLED doesn't have that weakness, so you could theoretically have all the benefits of OLED without the downsides of burn-in. At that point, I'll be happy to replace the OLED in my lounge, which I'd love to do as I'd love to get rid of the black void!
I'm looking for a display for my small business lobby that will allow me to rotate through pre-loaded content -- pictures, facts about our business, current events, etc, etc. Would this do that? How does this differ from say the LG Gallery type TV (if at all?). Sorry if I am thrown off by the name "Frame" if in fact it is a TV.
What you're looking for is basically just a signage display. But any non OLED TV would work fine for that coupled with a low powered computer. Samsung do specific signage displays that are designed to be run 24x7 too. The Samsung Frame would be no better than any other TV for what it sounds like you want. Their main benefit is 'blending in' so you don't notice them when not in TV mode. A cheap, bright LED TV would likely be fine for your needs. Don't buy an OLED for that, whatever you do as you'll get burn-in if it's always the same few static images. Tangentially related to what your needs, you might like to have a look at Samsung's Flip line of business displays. They're basically digital whiteboards. The only reason I mention it is we use a couple of them in our office but when not in use as a whiteboard, we have them set to display a static image that has various company information on. It's just an image that I put together and has some info for the company and scannable QR codes that people could use to access various online documentation - company government rating, communication app etc.
Is there anything you don't like about the Frame? Or that merely bugs you? Any thoughts/knowledge of the Frame's power consumption when active?
I almost purchased one a couple years ago to have a running display of my photographs. But wondered if the novelty would eventually wear off. Or would become boring, being just another shiny thing that will lose its luster over time.
In the meantime... I've matted/framed and hung around 150 of my photos around the house. Something I and visiting guests still like after a year. But I'm still intrigued by the Frame and actually have an empty spot on the wall where it could go and work well with my framed photos on the wall.
Thanks in advance for your thoughts!
I've never monitored the frame's energy usage but I'm sure it'll be in-line with the stated levels in the tech specs. You can set it to only turn on (and stay on) if it detects motion in the room. I turned this off as it means that it'll flick on when you enter a room, which breaks the 'magic' in my opinion. So ours are always on. They're still set to turn off when it's dark though.
Yes and no in regards to the shinyness. It quickly became something that just blended into the room and we haven't changed the artwork from the one that we first picked. But that's kind of the point; it just becomes a normal part of the room decor. We use it as a TV only once in a blue moon now too but that's more down to our tv habits. It hasn't worn off in terms of being amazing tech. We got a second one a couple of years later and I'm kind of tempted to get one of the latest generation models because they now have this fantastic matte surface that makes it look
even more like artwork. I'd been talking to a friend a year or so ago about these displays and how I thought they were great. When we went to his house a few months ago for a small gathering, I noticed that he'd got one of them himself. It was the current model and he'd set it to display a photo he or his wife took on one of their recent holidays. He didn't have the border option set on so it was all just a photo and it honestly looked like it was just a large framed photo print on board. None of the other guests realised it was a TV until I asked him if it was one of the new Frames and he'd said yes.
One day, if money becomes less of an object, I'd be very tempted to get like three of them and mount them in portrait mode at the back of my office where I currently have some poster prints. Then I could effectively change the posters every now and then digitally, which would be quite cool.
While I don't have 150 photos up around my house, I do have a *lot* of framed photos mixed with some artworks up, particularly all the way up our stairs. It's something that numerous people have commented on being really nice over the years and have then ended up doing themselves too. My aim has always been for it to effectively show a 'life lived' as is done sometimes in films. If it weren't so excessive and if the Frame came in smaller sizes (both in terms of cost and in terms of what people might think), I'd be tempted to have them throughout my house allowing for photos to be rotated once a month or something!
In terms of anything I don't like. I don't like how you're basically expected to pay an overpriced subscription for the art gallery feature. You basically get a few stock pictures to choose from but if you want to get more, you have to subscribe. I've never done this. Both of our TVs came with a different selection of stock art pieces that we happened to like so we used those. You *can* use your own custom pictures but when I tried doing it before, the app was clunky. It's since migrated to a few different apps so maybe it's better now. One irritation that I did have when I tried it out before was that if you uploaded a photo of your own, it wouldn't let you choose and add digital mount boards on the TV. The mounting boards are what sells the effect for me, so that was annoying. Apparently, a workaround was that you needed to resize your images to 3840x2160 before uploading and then you would get all the different mounting options. That was when I looked into it in 2020 and it may have been fixed/changed since then. I never got round to trying it and every time I think of it, it's after my wife is already asleep in bed so I can't go pissing around with the display.
Another thing I don't like is it's not Samsung's best LED TV technology so when it comes to use as a TV, they're not as good as the top-of-the-line QLEDs. E.g. no 60Hz, no 8k (which I think would be really nice in this kind of product) and you don't get the dazzlingly bright HDR that QLEDs can do. For the cost, I would have hoped they'd update them a bit more. I rarely use them as actual TVs though, so it's not that big of a deal. Another minor irritation is when I bought my first one, I had the option of getting a pretty decent Samsung soundbar for free as a Samsung package. However, although you can pair the soundbar with the TV and control it all through one remote, the TV doesn't turn the soundbar on or off. That just felt like a lazy amount of integration. Every time we'd use the TV, we'd have to find the soundbar remote and manually turn it on. We've since stopped using it entirely and I instead got an AppleTV and paired that with the two HomePod minis we have in our bedroom, using those as TV speakers instead. Works much better.
Lastly, don't buy the 32" Frame. It's not 4k. If it were, I likely would have already given in and bought several of them for use as digital posters or photo frames.
Oh and make most mainstream places you buy these from have package deals from Samsung where you get to choose a frame for your Frame. Those frames (clip on casing for the outside) are what make the TVs look good and on their own, they can be quite pricey. Sometimes in Black Friday sales or when these are listed on less mainstream sites for cheaper prices, they don't include these snap on frames.
Sorry for rabbiting on, but as you can likely tell, I'm a big fan of the tech!
