Samsung LS03D The Frame Series QLED 4K HDR Smart TV

I read them all, and there was resounding agreement about (1) the software being awful and (2) the picture being gorgeous. I disagree with #2.

INTERFACE: I thought they were whiners as they complained about multiple clicks, but it is truly awful, junky, BUGGY, and disorganized. It’s constantly throwing you back to other menus, and those menus are deep! This is a really expensive TV that I don’t even use because it’s such a pain to operate. Really. It’s easier to walk upstairs or grab an ipad.

PICTURE: Other people have mentioned that the first thing this TV does is steal a couple hours of your life by failing to set up the software. No. You can’t just turn on your TV and start watching. Maybe those reviews didn’t mention that, as a result, you’ve been staring at the blue screen—and truly loathing the experience—for a very long time. If you are lucky enough to get to the point where they start trying to sell you art that’s in the public domain, the blue glare is burnt into your eyeballs and you have no hope of seeing that thing as anything other than a really annoying TV.

Yes. Guests will ask about it, but not because it’s convincing—because it ISN’T convincing. If they see a static image (and especially if you forked out the extra dough to buy a frame that isn’t black), your guests will see things that don’t fit with the standard idea of a TV or computer monitor. But the screen itself has little else to offer. You can warm up the tone and turn down the brightness, but that blue glare will always shine through. (Also, if you tinker with the setting much, you’re just asking for the software to start glitching, which demands a total reset.)

This TV could truly be a joy for someone who likes to spend all their time fighting with buggy computers. Those people do exist. I’m just not one of them.

I like that it’s thin.

“I’ve been a loyal Amazon customer for years, always trusting in their service. However, my recent experience with both Amazon and Samsung has left me incredibly disappointed. I purchased a TV from Samsung through Amazon and hired a professional installer to mount it. Everything seemed fine until the One Connect box failed to work.

When I contacted Amazon’s customer service for assistance, I was met with rudeness and unhelpfulness. Instead of resolving the issue, they directed me to return it, at my age, I needed then to hire someone to not only re-package this but send it back. TV’s are large. I am 78 years old. Samsung, which I had already contacted without success. To make matters worse, Samsung insisted on the TV’s serial number, which was only accessible after the TV had been mounted. Removing the TV from the wall was a major inconvenience, and even then, Samsung’s demands for additional information made the process feel like a frustrating comedy of errors.

After wasting more time and energy, I finally secured a date for a Samsung technician to come out next week. However, I’ll now have to pay my installer to return and complete the setup, adding to the frustration and inconvenience.

This experience has shattered my confidence in both Amazon and Samsung’s customer service. My advice to others is to consider purchasing from retailers like Costco, where superior customer service is a given. As for buying TVs from Amazon or Samsung, I strongly advise against it based on my regrettable experience.

I’ve never felt compelled to leave a negative review before, but this ordeal has pushed me to share my frustration. If my installer hadn’t still been on hand, I would have been completely stranded. It’s a disheartening realization that even longstanding trust can be shattered by such poor service.”

Look, this is weird. But this isn’t a television, its a computer monitor. You can’t use this AT ALL without attaching it to a (Samsung One Connect) box the size of a toaster oven you then have to put… somewhere? There’s no way to mount it to a wall without any cables showing. This is absolutely garbage.

Do not buy this.

I only want to use the Frame to display MY art, in a rotating, random fashion. So I am not reviewing any other aspect.

It works. The picture quality seems really good. The matte screen has no reflections, and all my art is on there. But there are some issues:

– Even though I only am displaying my art locally on the machine, taken from a USB drive inserted, you MUST create a Samsung account and connect to the Internet to get this to work!!! This is INSANE. However, once you have everything set up, you can go in the settings and turn OFF the Wi-Fi, so it will not keep connecting to the Internet (you can still use the phone app as a remote through bluetooth)

– Every picture has a fake ‘mat’ on it. You can select from several or no mat. I want no mat! I want the picture to take up the whole 3840×2160 screen. There is no way to select all pictures and change it, you can only do it individually. For my 200 pictures that took a while. Yes, only need to do one time, but still a pain.

– Picture is way to dark by default, but you can change the brightness in the phone app. Make sure not to cover the brightness sensor at the bottom.
– Has 32GB of storage, so will store hundreds of 4k pictures. Just plug in a USB drive to transfer, that works easy (note 7680×4320 is the max resolution allowed to be imported). You can import from the app, but that only works on a phone, I could not get the Windows app to work.
– It can now show your pictures randomly or in sequence. The random is fairly new and was a deal breaker for me for years. There are like 6 different time settings from 3 min on up.
– The sensor to turn off when no one is around doesn’t seem to work very well.

Overall, has it’s quirks for displaying your own artwork, but it works, and is the best thing out there (now that Memento is out of business)

Overall I have mixed feelings about this TV, when dropping this kind of money on a device, $1000 as of writing this review, it’s as much about the overall experience for me, this is something that Apple get so right in my opinion. When I opened the box up I was somewhat left feeling disappointed, the packaging was awful and worse than what I have seen from Walmart TV’s, I expected from a company such as Samsung some innovative eco packaging, but instead it’s just styrofoam and sticky tape! No manual just a quick start guide, the link for downloading the manual was broken and not working, I tried customer support but that was a joke, just a bot that just sent me in circles! Setting up the TV is fairly straight forward but because this TV uses an external brick for you to plug everything into it makes placement tricky. The external brick is heavy and needs to sit on a surface which means if you are using a side board then the brick needs to sit behind or in front of the TV making it ugly and not at all attractive. The thin cable that uses a special connector is very long also making placement hard, FYI replacement cables are very expensive! I was also not impressed by the fact that the frames for this TV are $150 each from Samsung, the whole point of this TV is that it’s a picture frame, but they don’t even include one frame with the TV! The art part of the equation is a annual fee of $50! they give you some awful free graphics, but to be honest the screen savers on any PC are better. You also need an account to access most of the features of this TV! The remote in my opinion is awful, it’s white? but the TV is black? it’s small and has annoying controls with minimal buttons, to change channels you need to press a button, then press another button, then access a virtual number pad! The biggest joke with this remote is that it has a solar panel, or you can charge via USB-C cable, but it doesn’t have a battery indicator? so you have to wait till the remote stops working to find out it needs charging? I’m not going to put it on charge after every time I use it! Another issue I have with this TV is the interface, it’s horrible! cluttered with ads and what you should watch, if you want to change sources such as to use a games console it’s berried in a menu, if you have the TV on art mode and hit the home button instead of taking you to home it takes you to the art store, I find this super annoying, in my opinion the whole art thing is a gimmick hidden behind a paywall. Having said all of that the TV does have a good picture, and I love the matte screen that eliminates glare, it’s amazing and it will be hard for me to watch a TV without a matte screen now! I also like the sound from the onboard speakers, it’s not amazing but it is good for a flat panel TV. I also like that the TV comes with bluetooth, I can connect my headphones and listen and not disturb my wife, the only fly in the ointment is that there is latency, it’s not horrendous but I notice it. I think that this TV is way overpriced, I have Tv’s that cost less than half the price that have better user interface and a picture quality that is arguably as good, it all depends if you’re willing to pay for the art, if not then I would look elsewhere.

Update- I’ve had the Frame TV for 7 months and have issues with keeping my Favorites that I selected with my subscription. When I contacted Samsung, by email and thru their help line, they admitted the favorites would be deleted after a period. I had to reselect the artwork again (over 300 pieces-time consuming). The remote doesn’t always work and the TV requires turning off and on again if the artwork scrolls too long! In all, the Frame and art is a great idea…Samsung just has to work out these bugs.

I recently bought the Samsung Frame TV 32 inch with the matte screen. The five stars are because I read most of the reviews on Amazon and also did some research online. This information really helped me to be more informed so that I understood what I was getting into. The TV itself is a great addition to an area that I recently updated in my home. That being said, the free art is not worth the purchase of the tv. I ended up paying for the subscription which provides a plethora of artwork. Each has to be loaded individually to create “favorites” and you must scroll all the way to the bottom of the art view if you want to load your own photos. The rotation cycle can be set to sequence or shuffle but you’re limited to a three minute span per Art. The artwork is beautiful and the matte screen prevents a glare. The only thing I dislike is that once you’ve identified your favorites – I identified 324 pieces of art, the “delete” tab is right next to the “display all” tab so, I’m constantly worried that I may press “delete” instead of “display all”. Overall, I’m very happy with this purchase. Doing my research in advance helped me to know what to expect. The directions are all illustrations so are really useless- I understood-the free art that is offered, to have my Samsung account already set up, have my passwords available for streaming apps, and how the connector needed to be set up. It took a lot of time, but I feel in the end it was worth it!

I have three other Frame TVs from the prior generation and got this to have a slightly larger one in the living room. It is thinner and the picture and settings are much better than the older versions. Filmmaker Mode is very handy to avoid always have to mess with settings to get UHD movies just right. It sets the TV how it was intended to look for UHD streaming movies that have the setting enabled. That is great.

The new matte coating on the screen is really effective in rooms with lots of glare. It really helps with not only the realism of art mode, but also with watching TV at angles. All in all, this is a great TV.

Adding your own photos to Art Mode is now much faster and more reliable than the old system. But keep your app updated!

Drawbacks: 1) Not sure if the new remote is backwards compatible. If not, that would stink because with several other Frames, it is nice to have remotes you can use on any TV once paired. 2) The new UI is not as intuitive and requires extra steps to do basic things. You can see that the underlying software is the same, it just is a little more confusing now.

All in all, if you are looking for a Frame, this is great. If you are looking to upgrade an old Frame, this is worth it.

Always wanted one of these but having one realize why it isn’t as popular as a tv. It just looks like a normal TV, not much matte effect aside from just lowering the brightness. Features are terrible. The media box built outside of the TV is poor design. One basic feature of changing the picture size is greyed out for no reason at all. The slideshow mode for images looks terrible even though this is literally ‘The Frame’ Remote has 3 buttons dedicated to streaming yet not to the main reasons this tv exists like controlling artwork on the screen.

Worst of all the normal TV border looks like any other TV border, and the ones that make it look like an actual frame cost 300+ dollars, this product is basically a scam

We had an excellent Samsung LED flat screen from 2004 that always worked and because it was not a “smart TV”, we never had to worry about it constantly sponging up our personal viewing habits to sell off to marketers and data collection a-holes. So we took a chance on the 32″ Frame TV and after about 4hrs of setup and trying to stop the incredibly intrusive shoving of ads, channels, services, and privacy violations, we gave up.
Samsung Customer Service is a Disservice! How is it that this company can foist such junk on consumers at these prices and still survive?
-The picture quality is sub par (QLED is kind of a running joke these days).
-The ambient and motion detection are completely wacky and arbitrary.
-Important privacy and channel/home screen options are buried deep in endless menus that are unintuitive
-The frames are extra $, the art is extra $ and they are making big $ on gleaning off our personal data!
-Menus are slow as heck and when the OS does finally get to what you are trying to do, it’s often lagging behind your next selection!
-The 32″ version has NO Ethernet connection option and the Wifi antenna is so weak.
-This is NOT a good product despite the draw of a picture framed, flush mount TV.
Never again Samsung!

There’s nothing inherently wrong with the product, but one very important thing to stress is it DOES NOT come with the “Frame” in the box. That’s sold separately for 200 dollars. Out of the box you have a TV with a very slim bevel that’s made of metal awaiting the magnet of the frame.

The art feature is neat but the screen is so bright that it kind of kills the illusion. I’ve looked extensively through the menus and haven’t found any way to turn that down when in art mode. Beyond that it really is just a TV with a screensaver. I know the allure is too tempting for most once they’re decided on it, but if you have the restraint, the money would get you a much better “non-art” TV.