I Tried Amazon's New Ember Art TV—It's an Impressive Samsung Frame Alternative, With a Few Drawbacks

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My mother-in-law was over the other day, hanging out with my 4-year-old in the loft playroom, when she noticed a framed painting where our TV used to be. She asked when we'd gotten it and what the picture was (it was Pines Along the Shore by Henri-Edmond Cross ). I told her that the picture was the TV. She looked at me like I was joking, so I grabbed the remote and flipped it over to Disney+ and put on Bluey . She couldn't believe it.

Art TVs (also called "Frame TVs" ) are not exactly a new phenomenon at this point, but there are plenty of people who haven't seen one in person, and it's clearly a nifty party trick. Introduced by Samsung with the brand's original "The Frame" TV in 2017, these mid-tier TVs are designed to hide in plain sight, with frames and matte display panels that can make a static image (like a painting or photograph) look like a real work of art instead of a digital reproduction on a screen.

The Frame's been fairly successful, so more and more companies are getting in on the trend. Amazon threw its hat in the ring with the Ember Artline, a matte 4K QLED TV that comes in two sizes (55- and 65-inch), features a library of 2,000-plus works of art, and support for 10 swappable magnetic frames. Samsung was first to the art TV space, and arguably still offers the best models, but they are not all that cheap. The Ember Artline hopes to entice you with a much more attractive price—it starts at $900 for a 55-inch TV (versus $1,299.99 for the same size Samsung Frame). You can also choose from a wider number of customizable frame colors, where the Frame always comes with a black Frame, and alternative options cost extra.

I've spent the last couple of weeks with Amazon's Artline in a teak frame. Mine sits on a TV stand in a loft instead of mounted flat on the wall, so I admittedly didn't give myself the full "hidden TV" experience. Even with that caveat, I thought the switch really elevated the look of the room, which is the primary reason to switch to an art TV. With that in mind, I was really impressed with the Ember Artline. I won't argue that it's a top-of-the-line TV , but it's a really affordable way to bring this new, elegant TV design home.

Matte Screen and Image Quality

The Ember Artline is a 4K QLED panel , with both Dolby Vision and HDR10+ HDR support , so most streaming content comes through bright and colorful, with solid contrast. The signature addition, which you'll find in most Frame-style TVs, is a matte layer in the display, which scatters incoming light instead of bouncing it straight back at you, so there's much less glare.

I set up the Ember Artline on the north side in our loft, across from a window that lets in a lot of daylight all afternoon. That's a tough spot for any TV, and the matte screen handles it well. There's almost no glare, so the picture is easy to see with the blinds open. If you've ever fought with a glossy screen in a bright room—it was a real pain point with our last TV—you'll quickly see the appeal.

It does come with a real limitation, in that it lacks full-array local dimming. Without it, the TV can't darken parts of the screen on their own, so black areas in dark scenes look more gray than they would on an OLED like the Samsung S95H , and bright objects on a dark background can look a little washed out. This is par for the course among art TVs. The standard Samsung Frame doesn't feature local dimming, either. You need to splurge on the much pricier Frame Pro to get it. If pristine image quality is your top priority, an art TV isn't the place to look. Even so, Amazon puts local dimming in its cheaper QLED Series sets, so it's disappointing to see it left out here.

Similarly, the panel tops out at 60 Hz. Until about five years ago, that was the standard refresh rate for most televisions, but a good modern set should be able to go 120Hz or higher, to enable better performance for gaming and live sports. It features three HDMI 2.0 ports and a single HDMI 2.1 eARC port: The lack of HDMI 2.1 would normally be a problem because it would prevent you from getting a higher refresh rate in 4K, but since the TV tops out at 60 Hz, you won't be missing anything.

Color is the Artline's strong suit, which is expected in a QLED. Bluey and many Disney classics feature colors that look clean and vivid without going overboard. It's also bright enough to maintain its color in a sun-drenched room. My loft gets a lot of light throughout the day, and the picture remained easy to see with the blinds open.

Without local dimming, though, dark scenes suffer. In Ridley Scott's Alien , the dark corners of the ship look more like dark gray than true black. Compared to an OLED TV , the difference is significant. The picture is also a little soft because of the matte screen, but only if you stand a few feet away. From the couch, movies and games look great. Resident Evil Requiem is still very spooky, even if the framerate isn't as smooth as it could be.

None of those weaknesses matter much for the art itself. A still painting doesn't need local dimming or a high refresh rate, and the matte screen gives the art a nice flat finish. To my eye, colors look close to what the artists intended, without being too saturated.

A Swappable Frame for Simple, but Changeable Style

Placing your art TV takes on a different kind of importance. It's important to find a place where it looks good and, if possible, fades into the background of your space when it isn't in use. One thing I liked about the Ember Artline was that it's relatively easy to set up. I placed mine on a media console with legs you can purchase separately , but it comes with a custom wall mount and four magnetic discs that connect to each corner to pull the screen flush with the wall. It also supports standard VESA mounts if you'd rather use your own, but a standard mount can't put the TV quite as close to your wall as the custom mount, disrupting the illusion that it's a painting.

The thing that sets it apart, though, is that the physical frame around the TV is magnetic. When you install the TV, the frame panels easily snap into place along the sides. And, if you want to swap the frame (because you move the TV or paint the walls in your living room), you can take them off just as easily. You can buy the TV with any of the ten frame color options—I picked teak–and you can buy extra frame kits à la carte, starting at $75 .

With the set up complete, the screen looks somewhat simple, but in an elegant way. The screen bezel is thin, and at about 40 pounds for the 55-inch model I tested, it's light enough to move on your own. While its design is mostly plain, one aspect sticks out: a sensor bar juts out from the bottom center of the screen. It's the detail most likely to give the TV away when art is on display, though it serves a purpose by sensing when you walk into the room and waking the screen to show art.

You Get a Decent Art Library, No Subscription Required

As part of the promise of a cheaper all-in art TV experience, the Ember Artline comes with a free image library to furnish your digital painting gallery. That gallery includes more than 2,000 works of art, from paintings to photography, which you can access without a subscription. I see that as a big advantage over The Frame and Frame Pro , which features a library subscription that you would theoretically pay over the lifespan of the TV. Of course, You can also add your own images , whether its alternative works of art or your family photos.

Swapping art takes a few seconds from the remote, and there's a great variety of classic art, photography, and videos. There are more settings to control the experience than I expected. You can set how long the art stays up before it times out, how sensitive the motion sensor is, and when the art mode turns on and off. I set up a schedule so it stays off while we're sleeping and activates when we wake up. Then when we walk into the room, the art experience activates.

Within the Amazon library, there are a few dozen short, looping videos of landscapes and wildlife, plus some animated abstract art. I think they look great as well: It reminds me of the screensavers on the Apple TV . I found myself just watching them throughout the day, giving me a nice 5-minute break from sitting at my desk.

The question is, how do they look? The Artline's matte QLED panel is surprisingly convincing. Even from just a few feet away, the art appears to have real texture. You can see brushstrokes on paintings, and small nuances in photos. It absolutely fooled my mother-in-law. Even looking at the image, knowing it's a screen, I think it looks close enough to the real thing that I would "settle" for this over a physical piece of art. That goes double when you factor in the advantage of being able to swap it for another painting or photo whenever you'd like.

The sensor bar, the sound, and Fire TV.

The Ember Artline does a pretty great job conjuring the illusion of framed art, but there is a single component that can easily break that spell if you look at the screen a bit too closely. There is a sensor, which sticks out like a sore thumb at bottom-center. The sensor is important: It tells the screen to wake up and show an image when someone walks into the room, so you never get a black screen. But the sensor itself disrupts the Artline's imitation of a painting, and once you see it, it's hard to unsee. It's a small issue in the end, but a correctible one, which is why I find it a bit annoying.

The Artline's speakers are fine enough. They got the job done when my daughter wanted to watch episodes of Gabby's Dollhouse . Audio- and cinephiles will definitely want a soundbar , but that's pretty common with most TVs. Plenty of soundbars these days are compact and low-profile, so I don't find them to be an eyesore. I added the Sonos Beam Ultra to my setup, which is small enough to sit under the Artline without clashing with the TV's framed look.

I can accept the sensor bar, but my least favorite part about the Ember Artline is its operating system. Amazon's Fire TV OS is bloated with ads and sponsored rows. Smart TV operating systems are increasingly painful to use across the board, but this feels especially painful compared to some of the more elegant device-based platforms like the Apple TV. It's also relatively slow to navigate menus and launch apps, with a second or two of lag before each action.

How it compares to Samsung's Frame and other art TVs.

The Samsung Frame is the most obvious competitor in the art TV space. Both TVs feature a QLED display and skip full-array local dimming, but Samsung's model features an even more refined design and access to more than 5,000 curated works from museums like the Met, MoMA, and the Louvre, but the catalog costs $5 a month, and without it you get only about 30 rotating pieces at a time. The Artline's 2,000-plus works are all free. If you step up to the pricier Frame Pro, though, you get a Mini-LED backlight and local dimming, giving you a better picture.

Samsung's Frame also comes with a One Connect Box, a separate hub you plug your devices into, with a single cable running to the screen, so you get a much cleaner look than you do with the Artline.

Closer to the Artline's price, Hisense and TCL both make art TVs. The Hisense CanvasTV and the TCL Designer Series each ship with a magnetic frame and a matte anti-glare screen, each has a free art library, and both run at a native 144Hz instead of the Artline's 60Hz. Both also run on Google TV, which offers a much less ad-heavy experience.

Who Should Buy the Amazon Ember Artline?

The Ember Artline is Amazon's first art TV and, frankly, it feels like they nailed most of the basics right away. You get a decent, if not ideal panel, but the matte display really does sell the "realism" of static paintings and photos. In that sense, it's very impressive. I also really appreciate that it's a one-stop shop, with your choice of frame and a wall mount in the box, and access to a free image library. If you have any concerns over the process of switching from a conventional TV to an art TV, the Ember Artline works hard to make that switch as easy as possible.

That said, it has some serious flaws. If you want a TV that produces the deepest blacks or a higher refresh rate, you'll need to look elsewhere. That said, while Ember Artline won't win any awards for image quality, neither will the Frame or any of the purpose-designed art TVs. And looking at the art side of things, the sensor bar is a bit of an eyesore.

Ultimately, the most attractive aspect of this TV is its price. The Ember Artline only costs $900, substantially less than the Frame ($1,300), or even the Hisense CanvasTV ($1,500). If you're interested in a Frame/Art TV, but the price of The Frame is intimidating, the Ember Artline is a very appealing alternative. You will get the full Frame TV experience with the Ember Artline, and you will spend less money to do it.

1) Samsung The Frame TV (2025)

2) TCL Nxtvision TV (2024)

3) Samsung S95H OLED TV With Art Mode

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