Samsung The Frame QN85LS03HEFXZA 85"

A beautiful picture frame that's mediocre at being a TV. Pay the premium for the aesthetic, not the panel.

The 144Hz panel and Motion Xcelerator tech make this thing surprisingly capable for gaming, landing in the 86th percentile for that category. You get VRR, ALLM, and FreeSync Premium, so a PS5 or Xbox Series X will feel right at home. But the real surprise is the connectivity, which sits in the 97th percentile. Four HDMI ports, Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3, and Ethernet mean you'll never fight for a port. The 20W 2.0 channel audio is fine for casual viewing, but at this size and price, you'd expect a bit more oomph. Dolby Atmos support helps, but it's still just two speakers doing the heavy lifting.

Put this next to the LG OLED C5 and the picture quality gap is embarrassing. The C5 delivers true blacks and infinite contrast while The Frame struggles to keep up in a dark room. The Hisense U8 and TCL QM8K both offer better picture performance for less money, but they look like regular TVs. The Sony A95L is the closest competitor in terms of premium positioning, and it absolutely destroys The Frame on picture quality. So it comes down to this: do you want the best-looking TV on your wall, or the best-looking picture on your TV?

This is where it gets tricky. The price swings from $2,225 to $2,998 across 8 US listings, which is a $773 spread. That's wild. If you're set on The Frame, shop around hard because the cheapest listing is basically a different product than the most expensive one. But even at the low end, you're paying OLED money for a QLED panel with average picture quality. The value proposition is the design, not the display.

The Samsung Frame QN85LS03HEFXZA is the TV you buy when you want your living room to look like a gallery, not a Best Buy showroom. At 85 inches, it's a massive statement piece that hangs flush against the wall and displays Pantone-validated art when you're not watching anything. But here's the thing: you're paying a serious premium for that trick. The picture quality lands in the 36th percentile for TVs in our database, which means a lot of that money goes into the frame, not the panel.

If you're a cinephile who watches movies in a dark room and cares about black levels, this isn't your TV. Go get an LG OLED C5 or Sony A95L instead. You'll get dramatically better picture quality for the same or less money. The Frame is for people who want their TV to disappear when it's off, not for people who want the best possible image when it's on.

Buy The Frame if you care more about how your room looks than how your movies look. It's a legitimate design object that happens to play content. For everyone else, grab an OLED from LG or Sony and spend the savings on actual art for your walls.