It’s Time to Buy an Art TV. These Are the 4 Best Options.
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Whether you call it an art TV, a frame TV, or a gallery TV, we're all talking about the same thing. An anti-reflective matte screen, paired with a thin (often wood or wood-looking) bezel so that when it's turned off you can approximate a gallery painting or photographs instead of staring at a blank black screen. These trendy TVs are the new best way for home design lovers to not compromise their aesthetic visions while still entertaining. Art TVs are for the people who care about their home design as much as their actual TV watching experience .
The breakout, genre-defining example was The Frame . Samsung's 2017 release was the first TV model that truly masqueraded as an art piece on your wall. Instead of a big blank space on your wall, you now have art when you're not watching TV , and a TV when you are. Got a date coming over? Switch that black screen to one of any classic artworks from The Met or one of many museums worldwide. It took a few iterations to get right, but less than a decade later Samsung was doing enough right that other TV manufacturers, Hisense , LG, and TCL are following suit.
These four art TVs are a marvelous blend of form and function. I tried to pick a range of sizes between 50 and 75 inches, but most of these TVs come in every size between 55 inches and 85 inches. Whatever your budget or space allows, you'll find the right one here.
Samsung 65-Inch The Frame Pro
Samsung still makes the best art TV out there. With the introduction of the Frame Pro line, Samsung made the first premium art TV. Premium picture quality, premium sound (for once), and—if you're willing to pay a handsome $4.99 a month—the largest selection of fine art you can get on one of these. Even for the low price, it's annoying to essential pay the Met a subscription fee to use one of the main features of your TV. But, here's the upside. It's all real art and no AI; refreshing in this economy. The free library cycles through about 30 new pieces of art a month, so even if you aren't paying you're getting a new influx of (real) art periodically.
Free with your package is Samsung's One Connect Box. This is the real game changer when it comes to aesthetics. It opens you up to put your Frame anywhere the TV fits on your wall, while your cable box and gaming consoles are plugged into the OCB and stowed out of sight. The box and TV communicate wirelessly, so you don't have to worry about stowing cables out of sight (or in the wall) to get the true Frame experience of passing your TV off as art when your unsuspecting neighbor stops by.
Compared to the more ubiquitous Google TV experience you'll get on the Hisense and TCL, Samsung's user interface takes some getting used to if you haven't driven one of these TVs before. Even with familiarity, it's still not my favorite to navigate.
- Glare free matte screen
- One Connect Box makes for a cable-free appearance
- The best sounding art TV
- Magnetic snap-on bezels
- Not the best user interface
- Full catalog of art is locked behind subscription
Samsung 55-inch The Frame
The Frame Pro might be the flagship, but Samsung is still updating its regular Frame model each year with great success. This 2026 update to the original Frame is a slightly more affordable, slightly less impressive version of what you get with the Frame Pro. It's equipped with everything Samsung has figured out over the years: an anti-reflective matte display, options for customizable bezels, and a massive accumulated gallery of artwork to choose from.
It may not technically reach the heights of the Pro, but the picture quality is super clear and the colors are vivd enough for most viewers to be satisfied. On the whole, it has a lot of the same pros (and all the same cons) as the beefier Pro for a few hundred dollars cheaper.
- Lots of alternative bezels to choose from
- High enough quality picture for most viewers
- A large selection of art, if you're willing to pay
- The picture and sound don't hold up to the Frame Pro
- Same UI as the Pro
Hisense 50-inch Canvas TV
If you need something smaller than 55-inches, this is the only art TV that clears the bar. Luckily, it is a very good one. The 2026 Hisense Canvas looks and sounds fantastic, the setup is way more streamlined than The Frame, and it runs Google TV, which has become my OS of choice due to the consistent performance and easy setup. In my team's tests, we found this to be the best looking art TV for the money, even if it technically fell short of the Frame Pro.
The best part of the Hisense art TV experience is that you don't have to pay for the art. Not once, not ever. Plus, the CanvasTV even offers a 144 Hz refresh rate mode for gaming with low latency. Not that I'd recommend gaming on an art TV, but if it's your only option, Hisense makes it at least tolerable. We only wish we had the convenience of the Samsung OCB with the free art offerings of the CanvasTV. Now, that would be heaven.
- Picture quality measures up to Samsung's offerings
- No subscription fee for art
- Studio apartment friendly at 50 inches
- Setup is easy, but cord concealing will take time and effort
- Not the greatest sound
TCL 75-Inch NXTVISION
Dollars to donuts, this 75-inch TCL art TV is the best value in the category, costing roughly as much as a 55-inch Samsung Frame Pro. The budget-friendly display comes at the cost of performance and color. It's got muddier blacks that can make night scenes hard to watch and it's not as vibrant as The Frame or the CanvasTV.
For one, this TV does have one advantage that helps it outweigh the others; it's the only frame TV that comes close to being as thin as an actual piece of artwork. It only has one bezel option, but at least it's a relatively neutral off-white.
The art selection is decent, and we like how easy the TV and Google OS makes it to share your own photos instead. TCL also boasts about the hundreds of thousands of pieces of AI artwork you can access and create. It solves the lack of content problem, but a computer plagiarizing Van Gogh is never going to be a fraction as beautiful as a picture of an actual Van Gogh.
- Great price for a 75-inch 4K TV
- Thinnest art TV you can buy
- Over 300 pieces of free (non AI generated) art
- Color range and contrast fall short of the Frame
- Only one bezel
- Smaller sizes no longer available
FAQs
What makes an art/frame TV?
In short, art TVs are meant to be able to double as framed artwork when they are not in use. The features of these TVs include:
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Art Mode
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Anti-reflective matte screen
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Thin, frame-like bezel
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Flush mounting against the wall
What's the right size for an art TV?
For me, it's got to be 65-inches. Even in my (relatively) small Brooklyn apartment, this is the sweet spot for TV size. Anything larger is really just for shits and giggles at that point. 55 inches is generally the smallest (aside from Hisense with its 50 inch) size of art TV you can get and it's largely pretty acceptable, but know if you have a large wall that even that may feel small.
What is an operating system?
The OS is basically the whole look and feel of a smart TV interface. Roku City is comforting, but you won't get that here. The only options are Google TV or Samusng's Tizen OS. Between the Tizen interface and Google TV, we give the slight edge to the Google UI and OS. It's smoother and gives more options for integrating Google Photos—a great feature to have on an art TV. As far as TV operating systems go, though, they are pretty similar in terms of layout and amount of space dedicated to advertising.
Why Trust Esquire?
We've done the hard work for you by spending years watching these TVs up close. We've seen them in action on showroom floors, in private demo sessions, and (most important of all) in our homes. We've awarded the best of the best . Needless to say, we did all the heavy lifting for you. Sometimes literally.
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