I’m a reformed audiophile (couldn’t keep up with the pursuit of the ‘perfect sound’), but I still have a discerning taste in audio equipment. Unfortunately for my wife that leads me to get audio gear that can at best be described as ‘square’ or ‘industrial’. She just calls it ugly. Now the led to me having an incredible sound system in my office but left us nothing in our main living/entertaining area for music. Enter the Samsung Music Frame. Now both my wife and I are happy with a nice sounding music speaker and one that looks good to my wife!
This review is going to be pretty short and sweet only because I was not able to test out it’s paired ability since I only have one, nor was I going to test out its connectivity with my Samsung TV because the placement would be all wrong for that. What I can talk about is it being a great option for when you want a Bluetooth speaker device in your home that doesn’t LOOK like it’s a Bluetooth speaker. And that it does in spades.
Likes:
Easy Set-Up: Even if you don’t want to use the Samsung SmartThings Hub (more on that later), you can still set the Speaker Frame up in less than a minute and have music going. It’s really just two main pieces, the actual speaker frame, and the front artwork holder (which already has the turntable art in place).
Sound: Look, this thing is not intended to be a top of the line gear stack, but I will say that I was impressed by the sound that the Speaker Frame was able to produce. Tucked into the corner of our ‘Bar’ area, the positioning makes the most of the Speaker Frame’s design and pumps up the bass to pretty decent levels. That being said, you will have to play with it a bit because my first placement, tight into the corner led to the device rattling itself due to the bass. Playing with the distance and orientation a bit got rid of this completely and I can now play even bass-heavy music without any rattling or distortion. If you don’t play a lot of bass heavy music, you probably have more leeway in placement or you can always tweak the Equalizer if you really need it to be in a specific location.
Looks: This was the most important thing for my wife (thank goodness that doesn’t extent to husbands or else I’d be in trouble), and was completely secondary to me. The great thing is that it looks cool and will actually be a bit of a conversation piece at our next party I expect. Supposedly Samsung will be selling licensed artwork to use in the frame kind of like they do for the TV but in physical form and not digital. The best you can do out of the box is the turntable artwork or a geometric pattern that you can see in the photo I’ve attached. If you have a properly sized and cropped photo of your own, you can use that in the frame, or you can order a print to either be framed by the mat, or take up the entire picture area (about the size of an album cover). I plan on going this route and picking out a nice picture from one of our trips and having it formatted for the frame with the matting.
Kinda Indifferent:
App: I already have the SmartThings app from Samsung since they make my fridge and my TVs, so adding the Music Frame was easy. It makes it easy to adjust settings from anywhere in the house and to also coordinate connectivity between devices (if you so choose). The app doesn’t have anything mind-blowing about it and it feels a bit weird to be in the same app as the one that screams at me when the fridge door isn’t closed all the way! I kinda wish it had been a stand alone app, but really, I don’t plan on using it much other that for initial set-up.
Don’t Like:
On Frame Controls: WAAAAAAAY too sensitive! Also, because they are kinda tucked away on the bottom right corner in the back, I’m not really sure how you would use these, if you mounted this on the wall (which BTW, Samsung gives you the hardware to do). I guess that is when you would really need to use the app. As it is, I just drove myself crazy when moving it around because I always seemed to graze one or all of the buttons. Once it was in place though, it became a moot point.
All-in-all, I’m thrilled that my wife and I have some audio gear that we both like. It sounds really good and looks even better. If that matters to you too, do yourself a favor and pick up a Samsung Music Frame.

Summary – As a speaker, sound is subjective, but this is worth your listening. As a frame it’s a quality design. As a speaker and frame its unique. The value is in both, not just as one or the other. Connectivity is so-so, it is optimized for the Samsung ecosystem.
Pros
– Crisp sound, decent base, fills a room easily with sound.
– Quality, solid frame construction, looks great.
– Easy physical set up, hardware options are complete.
– Unobtrusive power cord.
– Can act as a stand-alone blue tooth speaker, so ultimately will connect with everything in some way or another.
– Capacitance side buttons
Your Mileage May Vary
– Heavy with acute metal edges, if this falls on your foot, your foot will break.
– Wireless connectivity is optimized for the Samsung Frame TV
– App setup is complicated in a world heading towards simplicity.
– Seems like missed opportunity that the picture is a print.
Cons
– Frustrating manual
More Words- Let’s address the elephant in the room, is it music or is it art? The Music Frame makes sense if you are looking for both. And it makes even more sense if you’re going to pair it with the Samsung Frame TV, the design philosophy is identical, and the feature set is richer. I am skeptical it is the best value if you are looking for a speaker only.
It’s a good solid picture frame that will look great in most decors, so if you are looking to hide your speaker (s) this is probably the best, easiest, most elegant way. I was surprised in this digital world the picture itself is not a programmable LCD but only a print, but there may have been design constraints (vibrations?). I suppose a square photo format works in an Instagram world, but I prefer landscape. Its quality construction, not cheap plastic, which is the good and the bad. Clearly good from a visual perspective, but I am concerned with the weight and how squared off the design is. This could do some serious damage if it falls from a shelf, so place it with caution. The stand was stable, and the mounting kits were good, but accidents happen.
As a speaker, I was impressed with how the sound filled a reasonable sized room, in fact it may be a bit much for a small room. Listening to the keyboard in Piano Man you can hear how crisp it is. The lyrics come out clear in every song I tossed at it, and the bass was good enough for Hans Zimmer’s work (think almost any recent action movie). It’s a good speaker, but there are a lot of good wireless speakers from competitors in this price range.
This is where it gets REALLY subjective, but I am going to say straight up that for me as a single standalone speaker it takes a small step backwards from more immersive designs. Let me qualify, I did not connect it to multiple device types, just the Apple ecosystem (iPhone, iPad), and the only way I could get it to connect was via Airplay. Perhaps other technologies fair better. The only way I could figure out how to connect to it via wifi was when synced with the most recent Samsung Frame TV’s which support Q-Symphony. So without the Frame TV you don’t get all the feature.
Back to immersion, decades ago speakers were in a box and one box meant a very mono (directional) experience, everyone wanted stereo (two speaker boxes) for a reason, it was a much fuller sound. I am not an audio engineer, I can only say that for me, the music frame sounds very directional. It is in a flat pizza box so it stands to reason the sound is directed forward. Only so much you can do with those physical constraints. Speaker housings today have become more curved to allow for the individual tweeters to be directed more out in 360. I am thinking of the Apple HomePod or Sonos Era 300 now. I find both of those to sound more immersive as singles, though they are not as crisp. Now if you want a stereo pair that is a different question, but I only evaluated the single. And I did evaluate it with all the various options on and off, and think their marketing is over stating when they say “Get multi-dimensional surround sound from one simple speaker with Dolby Atmos Music.” My last comment on sound, Dolby Atmos was not a gimmick, I COULD hear the difference between identical tracks, just didn’t get what I considered a ‘panoramic experience.’ So my advice is to listen to one before deciding if immersive sound is critical to you.
Now let’s get to my largest frustration and again, very subjective. It took me 2 hours to connect with it the first time via my iPhone. Compare to the first time I connected with the HomePod, maybe 5 minutes, Sonos, maybe 15. And they were straight forward. I am criticizing the setup processes only, they all connect fine once set up. So what took me so long with the Music Frame? First, the app you integrate with is not just a music app (like the Sonos) or built into the OS (like HomePod), but it’s a home management App. Skip the simple user guide, download the complete manual. The App DID see the Music Frame when it scanned for devices and I thought, great! This is going to be simple. Nope. The app ‘saw’ it but wouldn’t connect. And thus began an odyssey of peeling back the onion layers. Solve one problem, get a bit further, find another puzzle. The error messages were not that helpful, but ultimately led me to turn off wifi assist on the phone (why?), turn off cellular in the app, turn on location always on the phone (why does my music app need to know my location to work?). In between the trial and error I had to recycle the power on the frame and restart my phone. But finally, I got to where it asked me for my wifi password. Yeah! It seemed to be working, then it said, it would register me and all would be fine. Except I got the failed message again. I retried three times at the final password step, including restarting my router and making sure MAC address filtering was off, and finally it worked. I cannot honestly say why. But now that it IS registered, it connects fine with ALL my devices (via AirPlay). Again, your mileage may vary depending on your device, but that was my voyage with my iPhone. And I have been setting up networks since the days of dial up. There were a multitude of steps that I think are mainly for the benefit of the Samsung Home Control App, and keeping you in their ecosystems but not necessary if all you want to do is Airplay to it. But that is the way things are in the modern world.
One more interesting experience, in the middle of failing to connect as instructed, and in my frustration just wanting to hear the speaker, I tried setting it up directly as a blue tooth device outside of the Samsung App and had immediate success by the standard IOS protocols (put the speaker in add mode by first selecting blue tooth on the speaker, then restarting it, then go to your phone, to bluetooth, add device.) Except, there were some strange sonic aberrations I had never experienced (the volume control introduced static), the overall sound was flat. If that’s all I had to go on, I would have returned it. The App definitely helps.
A couple of random observations. The controls are on the side, but blend in so well with the frame I literally did not find them on first inspection, needed the manual with the diagram to show me exactly where to look, which given you want it to look like a frame, I get it. To their credit the buttons are capacitance, the barest of brushes would trigger them. There are status lights, but again a matter of knowing where to look. They are recessed into the frame and unless you are looking dead on, you won’t see them. That’s great once you know where to look.
Congrats (and thank you) if you got this far. So, who is this for? I think their target customer will buy two with the latest Frame TV. They are an improvement on the internal tv speakers and fit the aesthetic of only seen (or heard) when you want to. Next down the ladder is anyone that doesn’t want to clutter their living space with speakers, and like the modern picture frame look. Very chic. Or maybe you are invested in the Smartthings home management App already. Beyond that, if you just want a speaker, I strongly urge you to listen before you buy. 4 stars over all, 5 for the niche concept, 3 for the speaker side.

Music frame is absolutely like belt and great sound quality. Glad I chose this to pair it with Samsung TV

As with many Samsung products. The Music Frame is well built and the audio quality is really good. Unfortunately, to maximize all the Music Frame functions. You will need a 2024 series Samsung TV or even their latest soundbars to make this anything other than a sort of pricey Bluetooth speaker that hides on your wall or desk. Not a deal breaker, and it sounds great and looks pretty good in either location. But you probably should be more invested in their latest product lineup if buying this for surround or Atmos speaker.
As for the form factor as a picture frame. The Music Frame includes many methods (brackets included in box) to hang or mount the speaker to the wall or stand upright with slight tipped back angle on a desk or shelf. A single wire feeds power from a small power pack that plugs into a wall similar to a laptop. Plenty of cord length for all but the highest mounting locations. While I find 8×8 an odd picture size. It is easy to change the 2 included graphics or mount your own with a simple flex of the plastic mat to remove the picture frame from the speaker. Mounting the plastic frame back into the speaker is as easy as removing a speaker grill from normal speakers, simple pull or push.
The Frame design is nice, you will likely buy this more for the audio quality. I could only test it as a BT speaker as my 2022/23 Samsung 65″QN90B does not have Q Symphony. That aside, the speaker sounds great as a speaker fed audio and music from my TV, tablet and phone. The Music Frame can go far louder than my ears can handle, all without distortion. Its an amazing feat given the size. Bass is adequate and overall sound quality is better than most BT speakers of equal size and thickness. If you add in the Samsung Smart Things app, which is also easier to use than the 4 touch buttons on the side of the Frame. You can access a full featured equalizer and a few more settings. The big feature you will likely want to turn on under “Advanced Sound Settings”, is the Voice enhancement tab. This really makes dialog on tv and music pop without destroying the background sound. This alone could make the Music Frame a decent sound bar alternative for any TV, even if its not a Samsung. Just wish my 1 year old tv wasn’t so new to me. Likely wishful thinking, but I can only hope that Q Symphony might be a downloadable update for older Samsung tv models.
Overall, great speaker for soundbar alternative or just a nice speaker to add ambience to a room. A better purchase if you are already buying into the latest from the 2024 Samsung TV or soundbar lineup rather than retro fit to older products. I also saw there are or might be accessories options to the Frame like border materials and a remote. But none seem available just yet. Also one last thing to mention. There are three lights at the base of the Frame that animate volume up and down or a red light to indicate if the microphone is off. And if you choose to keep the microphone off, you will lose some of the better audio settings in the Smart Things app.