Samsung announces The Frame Pro: could this be the perfect TV?

The Frame from Samsung has been very popular since its release. There are there is no shortage of imitators at this point, with other manufacturers trying their hand at creating a TV that blends perfectly with the home decor and can also convince as wall art when inactive. But no one has captured lightning in a bottle like Samsung.

And in 2025, Samsung is looking to fend off copycats by introducing The Frame Pro. With the artwork side of things well taken care of, now the company aims to make the Frame Pro a good TV for everything else. The Frame nailed the aesthetics and style from the start. People buy for atmosphere more than anything else. But like TV, it’s always been just, well… well. There wasn’t much of a wow factor in terms of brightness or overall image quality that comes with the beautiful design. That might be changing now.

There are two main updates that put the “pro” in The Frame Pro. First, Samsung is switching to Mini LEDs, which the company says will give the Frame Pro a boost in contrast, brightness and black levels. The regular Frame, which goes nowhere, never offered local dimming to speak of.

But there is an important caveat: this is not Mini LED in the regular sense. Normally, Mini LED TVs contain a ton of small dimming zones behind the screen. This allows them to be much more precise in lighting only the sections of the display that need it while preserving black levels and shadow detail elsewhere. The Frame Pro does not do that.

Instead, Samsung places Mini LEDs at the bottom of the screen, while claiming that this approach still produces a certain level of local dimming. To me, it all still looks a lot like a lit TV. But I will give this “Mini LED” technology a fair chance whenever I get one for review.

Samsung is also increasing the maximum refresh rate of the Frame Pro from 120 Hz at 144Hz, so PC gamers can get even smoother visuals than before. But if you were hoping “pro” could finally mean Dolby Vision support, it’s still a no.

The Frame has always been something of a compromise; Maybe you have a significant other who refuses to allow a black rectangle eight in the living room. So you, being the good and considerate person that you are, finally agree to “settle” in The Frame. After hearing about the Frame Pro for the first time, I was hopeful that it would be much less of a compromise.

But this asterisk around Mini LED got me a little less excited. Like recent models, the display of the Frame Pro it has a matte finish to give your favorite art a more authentic look and mask the reality that you are looking for a screen. But matte screens can sometimes lessen the punch of a display, so a real Mini LED backlight might have helped a bit in that regard.

The second major improvement is that the Frame Pro no longer has a thin wire running between it and the Samsung box that houses all the HDMI inputs and the other brains of the TV: that connection has been completely wireless. This results in an even cleaner look with less cable clutter. And the Wireless One Connect Box, which supports up to Wi-Fi 7, removes another telltale sign that the Frame Pro is a television. Now, all you have to worry about is the display power cord. Samsung says the wireless connection between the box and the TV works at distances of up to 10 meters, “even with obstacles in its path.”

The Frame Pro also gets the same litany of AI-powered features as Samsung’s other 2025 TVs. AI is such a focus this year that there’s a dedicated button on the remote to activate Click to Search, which can show you “who the actors are in a given scene, where that scene takes place, or even the clothes the characters are wearing,” according to Samsung’s press release.

A new Samsung Food feature can recognize dishes on the screen and provide you with recipes to make them – or something in the same ballpark, at least. Beyond that, the company is comping its AI-enhanced image and sound optimization, and AI also reaches accessibility features like Live Translate, which can “instantly translate closed captions broadcast live in up to seven languages.” It is very neat.

The critical question is one I can’t answer yet: How much will this thing cost? How much more expensive will the Frame Pro be compared to the regular model? Samsung won’t share pricing details until closer to spring when it ships. If the company gets up and goes too high, this could ruin a lot of the appeal here. But if you already know that a version of The Frame is in your future, you’re probably very happy that The Frame Pro now exists.

Photo by Chris Welch/The Verge