Samsung The Frame QA55LS03FAWXXY (55")

Our experience with Samsung support has been frustrating and unnecessarily drawn out. Our 55" Frame TV stopped working after 3 years. We followed all troubleshooting steps on Samsung’s website and then booked a service through their recommended provider. A technician attended on 27 February, over time they identified faulty components, and repaired the TV at no cost. The TV is now working.

However, we paid a $193.40 service fee upfront and are still waiting to be reimbursed.

Since late February, we have contacted Samsung Customer Care multiple times. The process has been slow and inefficient — we’ve had to repeat information to different representatives, details have not been consistently retained, and promised follow-ups have not occurred.

I last spoke with Customer Care a week ago who were going to get back to me again, they haven't, last convesation I was told I shouldn't have to pay the service fee but, that the service provider should refund us, not Samsung. From a customer perspective, we followed Samsung’s process and used their authorised provider, so resolving payment between parties should not fall to us. We have had this issue for months and want you to respond and resolve it.

Under Australian Consumer Law, where a product fault is accepted and remedied at no cost to the consumer, any reasonable costs incurred in diagnosing that fault — including an initial service fee — should also be reimbursed.

We are simply requesting repayment of the $193.40. We would prefer to resolve this directly, but if this continues to drag on, we are prepared to escalate the matter further.

Samsung has missed the mark here on communication, accountability, and timeliness. We hope this can now be resolved promptly.

At a time when 55 inch 4K TVs can be bought for $600, is Samsung’s Frame worth $2000 installed? It all depends on what you want from a TV. Samsung is one of several manufacturers who make a TV for discretely displaying art on your wall, as well as the usual things you want a TV for. The 55 inch Frame is extremely thin, sitting only 37mm proud of the wall when hung from the supplied mount. You can buy decorative frames which attach magnetically, but we decided to stay with the thin matt black bezel which is built in.

Connections are by wifi and the included connection box which gives you 4 X HDMI inputs, Ethernet, antenna, and digital audio. Output and power to the TV is by one thin wire which can be fed up inside the wall so that the Frame mimics a hung picture. A strange omission is that there is no USB port, so if you are used to watching content from USB you will need to plug in a BD Player or similar.

If you do connect a BD Player, then every time you turn the TV on, it will start the BD Player and connect to HDMI1. This became annoying very quickly and we couldn’t find a way to disable it, so we just disconnected the Player. The connection box itself lives out of sight in a drawer cracked open an inch to provide ventilation. So far it has not shown any signs of getting hot.

We definitely recommend paying for an installer. Ours took about 90 minutes, which included setting up the TV from our spare Galaxy S10 phone with a Samsung account and Smart Things app. He also set up the tuner for live TV. There is a solar powered remote control (look, no batteries!) and the phone app also allows us to control the TV. There is voice control but we are giving that a wide berth.

Samsung’s Home screen is a bit annoying, with at least a dozen apps which we don’t want and will never use. You cannot delete them. On the Art tab you can choose which images you’d like displayed. Samsung will definitely try to sell you subscriptions but you don’t need to do that. We have uploaded images freely available on the internet, resized where possible to native 4K resolution. Images can be set to display with an imitation bevel cut mat or a drop shadow. There are about a dozen colours available for the mats. After uploading 56 images things have slowed right down, so we may be approaching some kind of limit. More use will test this.

Be aware that you need a Samsung account and an internet connection for the art display to work. It looks as though the images you upload are saved to the Samsung server, not the TV. We turned our internet off and the TV would only display the last image for a short while and then complain of no network connection. So you are at the mercy of Samsung and the internet gods. You can however still watch live TV without a network connection.

The screen looks excellent, with a matt finish that makes for practically no reflections. It is also great for watching live TV or movies.

In the end, this product does what it is designed to do, for a premium price. Samsung only give a one year warranty which is not great compared to other manufacturers but the seller, JB HiFi gives an additional 12 months free of charge. Thanks to JB for that and arranging for a very competent installer.