Amazon Ember Artline TV Review: Is This Frame TV Alternative Worth It?
Amazon’s Ember Artline TV is its answer to Samsung’s popular Frame TV. Its design is meant to resemble art hanging on your wall, and it gets really close in a lot of ways. However, the Artline TV misses the mark in one key area: It doesn’t get the frame quite right.
The Ember Artline covers all the basics of a gallery-style TV. It has an anti-reflective screen, a flush wall mount, and access to a ton of artwork. But the actual frame of the display is broken up by a noticeable black sensor front and center. That major design quirk ultimately keeps it looking more like a regular TV than framed art.
This is unfortunate because I’ve tested all of the best art TVs from Samsung, Hisense, and TCL. All of those products recognize that a key foundation of a convincing frame-style display is an uninterrupted border.
Amazon gets close to delivering a killer product, but I just can’t get over this design decision. If you don’t find the sensor as distracting as I do, the Artline TV is an otherwise decent alternative to similar sets from the competition, especially when it’s on sale for less than those rivals. But when it’s sold at full price, I recommend frame-style models from Samsung, Hisense, or TCL instead.
Amazon 55-inch Ember Artline TV
This is Amazon’s take on a Frame-style smart TV. It supports interchangeable bezels, features a matte screen, and includes a flush wall mount. However, it doesn’t include a stand, and we don’t like how much the front sensor sticks out like a sore thumb.
The Artline is available in 2 sizes and includes a slim wall mount.
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The Amazon Ember Artline TV is available in two sizes: 55 and 65 inches. I reviewed the 55-inch model, but the general specs and features are the same across both sizes. The 55-inch option retails for $900 but is sometimes on sale for $700, while the 65-inch model retails for $1,100 and is sometimes discounted to $900.
The TV comes with a slim wall mount in the box, like a lot of the other art-style displays, but it doesn’t include a stand. If you don’t want to hang the TV up, you’ll need to buy a stand separately for an extra $20.
The mount itself has its quirks, like being hard to hook in without a second set of eyes and hands for guidance. But it can also pivot a few degrees if you need to angle it in either direction, and it generally looks nice when installed.
The TV’s build quality is pretty standard, and its magnetic frame attachments work well. The Artline includes one frame in the box, and you can choose between 10 different styles when purchasing the TV. The looks range from different metals and woods to plain colors. I chose a silver frame because I was curious how this unique color option would look in my room. They snap on easily, so you can switch them out for various occasions. Just be aware that additional frames retail for $75 to $85 each.
The large sensor bar and integrated inputs hurt the TV’s art frame illusion
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As I mentioned in the intro, the Ember Artline TV has a very noticeable sensor right underneath the frame. This is Amazon’s Omnisense bar, which enables hands-free voice control and motion detection. Though it has its purpose, it severely limits the TV’s ability to look like a real piece of framed art.
Some people may not be distracted by the sensor bar at all, but it bothers me to no end. There are tons of cheap, standard TVs with black plastic borders and visible IR sensors. The whole point of getting an art TV is because you want something different.
This sensor is supposed to detect motion in a room to turn the TV’s ambient art mode on and off, depending on how you’ve configured the settings. But this feature was hit-or-miss. With the motion detection range set to “medium” distance, it never turned on. After changing it to “far,” it worked more consistently. However, with such a massive sensor bar, I’m pretty shocked that motion detection and all of its uses aren’t perfect.
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When it comes to inputs, the Artline has three HDMI 2.0 ports and one HDMI 2.1 eARC port. But unlike many Samsung Frame models, the Ember Artline doesn’t use a separate breakout box. All inputs are housed directly on the back of the TV. I prefer the functionality of a separate box because it keeps your wall free of multiple wires, but many people like built-in ports. Samsung even switched to integrated inputs for its latest 2026 Frame TV.
In this case, the Artline’s frame illusion is already marred by its sensor bar, so what’s the harm of having a few HDMI cables dangling from behind the TV? Of course, you can still hide the power cable if you have a recessed outlet behind the TV on your wall, and you can hide other cords if drilling is an option. But I find a separate box to be a more convenient solution for external devices.
Besides the black sensor bar front and center, the Artline’s second biggest shortcoming is its integrated speakers. They sound bad. I found them to be tinny and uneven. In some scenes, the background crowd noise would be too loud. Other times, people’s voices were thin and hollow.
To be fair, bad speakers are common on midrange and budget TVs. That’s par for the course, so the Artline isn’t an outlier here. But it’s still unfortunate. If you have space for a soundbar, of any kind, then you’ll want to use one.
Art looks good, and Amazon offers lots of free pieces
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The biggest reason to buy any frame-style TV is for its ability to convincingly display artwork. If that’s not a selling point for you, you should look at a similarly priced midrange Mini LED TVs from TCL or Hisense to get better image quality and call it a day.
Thankfully, the Ember Artline TV handles art well. Amazon provides over 2,000 pieces for free. These range from photography to impressionist paintings. If that’s too overwhelming, you can even take a picture of your room and have Amazon suggest art for it.
When I tried this “Match the Room” feature, it returned a few interesting suggestions. It’s a neat party trick, but I don’t think it offered any unique insight that someone couldn’t do with five minutes of browsing.
For art, you can customize the on-screen mattes and tweak sleep settings, and overall, it’s pretty straightforward. Amazon’s Photos hub also lets you display your own uploaded photos in slideshows and various collages if you prefer a more personal approach.
The TV’s contrast is lacking, but it’s good at reducing reflections
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On paper, the Ember Artline TV appears to be a capable display. Its 4K QLED panel with Dolby Vision and HDR10+ support is all on par with typical midrange TVs. However, a major indicator that the Artline isn’t for serious movie connoisseurs or gamers is its 60Hz refresh rate and lack of local dimming to control its backlight.
These limitations become obvious even during casual TV watching and video game use. The picture often looked overly saturated or washed out, depending on the scenario. Streaming baseball with MLB.TV often produced overly bright, unrealistic colors in the default viewing mode. Playing games on a Nintendo Switch 2 yielded the opposite results, with slightly dull and faded visuals.
Going through the menus to tweak the settings helped, but not completely. And manually navigating these menus could be troublesome for some people. Frame-style TVs aren’t known for great picture quality, so the Ember Artline isn’t all that worse than the competition in that regard. But you should still be aware of this if you’re planning to use it as a home theater display.
It’s also worth noting that, while the standard Samsung Frame, Hisense Canvas, and TCL NXTVISION TVs also lack local dimming, they offer much higher 144Hz refresh rates for better gaming performance than the Ember Artline.
On the plus side, the TV’s anti-reflective display does significantly reduce glare. One reason I’ve put up with the subpar image quality of Samsung’s Frame TV is that I have a sunny room. The Ember Artline TV’s matte screen performs similarly and is suitable for a bright space, where it would otherwise be tough to watch TV during the day.
Alexa+ is handy, but the Fire TV interface is a little sluggish
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The Artline TV comes with built-in hands-free Alexa+ support. So, you can just say, “Alexa, display art,” or “Alexa, turn on the art” — whatever wording makes sense. It’s genuinely useful to have a modern LLM-based chatbot on your TV that can open apps, find content, and sort through menus, all with your voice.
However, keep in mind that if you don’t have an Amazon Prime membership, you need to sign up for an Alexa+ subscription ($20/month). Otherwise, the TV will use standard Alexa voice control, which isn’t as smart.
Though Alexa+ worked great overall, one oddity I found is that I couldn’t get Alexa+ to actually start playing a show. When I asked for one of the free shows on Roku or Tubi, it would bring up the page, but I had to use the remote to start playing it. Once a video was playing, I could use Alexa+ to jump ahead or pause it.
If you know what you want to watch, using your voice is ideal. Although this TV runs the latest 2026 version of the Amazon Fire TV operating system, I found it sluggish to navigate the interface. And be prepared for huge ads as well. I saw ads for Toyota, Meta, and the Minions movie that filled half the screen. This isn’t unique to the Ember Artline TV, but it’s still annoying.
Should you buy the Amazon Ember Artline TV?
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The Amazon Ember Artline TV is aggressively fine. Casual viewers who see a TV as a general appliance will likely be satisfied with its features and entry-level image quality, and it does a solid job of mimicing framed art so long as you’re not distracted by its large sensor bar. But anyone who finds the sensor irritating or is concerned about refresh rate and contrast performance can feel free to move on from this product.
If you’re looking for an alternative to Samsung’s Frame TV, the Artline does have some potential. But this first-generation model just has too many flaws to be worth the full retail asking price. That’s especially true since you can still find older Frame TV models on sale for about the same cost as the Artline’s full price.
However, the Artline is already getting frequent $200 discounts, which makes it a more enticing buy. As long as it’s on sale for less than Samsung’s Frame TVs, the Artline has value as a budget art TV. That is, if you can get over that annoying sensor.
