4 minute read
I’ve owned a Frame TV for about five years. My feelings on it have never fully settled. The concept is right — a TV that disappears into your wall as art when you’re not watching — but the execution, at least on my older model, never quite matched what Samsung was charging for it. The glare was distracting in daylight. The size options on the Pro tier felt arbitrarily limited. And the panel, while solid, always felt one generation behind what Samsung was putting in its flagship sets.
The 2026 Frame Pro fixes several of those things. A few of the changes are more meaningful than the announcement makes them sound.
The Glare Fix Is Real This Time
The biggest complaint about any matte-finish TV is that you trade reflections for a washed-out picture. Samsung‘s updated Glare Free technology in the 2026 Frame Pro is supposed to solve both problems at once. The coating works alongside the Neo QLED 4K panel and Mini LED backlight to push peak brightness while keeping reflections controlled.
I’ll hold full judgment until I see it in person, but my current Frame struggles in any room with direct light. If Samsung actually tightened that, this could be the first art TV that works in a sunlit living room without looking like a laminated poster.
The 55-Inch Finally Exists
The Frame Pro previously topped out — well, bottomed out — at 65 inches. If you wanted the Neo QLED panel and Mini LED backlighting but didn’t have the wall space, you were stuck with the standard Frame and its regular QLED panel. The 2026 model adds a 55-inch option for the first time, and that matters more than it sounds. A lot of people want an art TV for a bedroom or a smaller living room. Being forced into the big-room tier felt like a design decision made by someone who doesn’t live in a real apartment.
The One Connect Box Got Smarter
The Wireless One Connect Box now ships with Wi-Fi 7 and a high-compression codec that Samsung claims can transmit the signal through a wall. That’s worth paying attention to. Nothing kills the art-on-a-wall illusion faster than a cable running down to the baseboard. If the wireless transmission holds up reliably in practice — and that’s a real question I’d want answered before recommending this to anyone — it changes the installation story considerably.
The box also packs five HDMI 2.1 ports, two USB-A, one USB-C, Ethernet, and optical audio out. The Micro HDMI port on the TV itself now supports eARC, so you can connect a soundbar directly without routing through the box. Small detail, genuinely useful.
Gaming on an Art TV
This still feels like an odd pitch to me, but Samsung is leaning into it. Both the Frame Pro and the standard Frame now support Motion Xcelerator 144Hz, with DLG 240Hz available when connected to a compatible PC. The full gaming features list reads like a spec sheet for a monitor.
I get why they’re doing it. At $2,500, you want the display to do more than one thing. But I wouldn’t buy this as a gaming TV. If gaming is your priority, there are better options at that price. This is still first and foremost an art TV that happens to handle games reasonably well.
Seven Years of Software Updates
Tizen OS 10.0 ships with a seven-year software update commitment. For a TV at this price, that’s genuinely meaningful. Most people keep a TV for close to a decade. Knowing the OS won’t be abandoned in three or four years makes the long-term math easier to justify.
The 2026 Frame Pro is available now through Samsung.com and major retailers. Samsung is offering a Picture Perfect Bundle at launch that includes a white bezel, an Ultra-Slim soundbar, professional installation, a one-year Art Store subscription, and two years of Samsung Care+, with over $800 in combined savings. If you were already on the fence, the bundle timing makes sense.
As for me and my five-year-old Frame, I’m not rushing to upgrade just yet. But the 55-inch size, the improved glare handling, and the wireless One Connect story are enough to keep this one on my radar.
