Samsung The Frame 2026 (LS03H) vs TCL P7L / P79L

The Frame 2026 is a genuinely bright TV. Its peak brightness reaches around 650 nits and, importantly, it maintains similar levels regardless of the type of scene being displayed. It doesn’t really matter whether we’re watching a very bright full-screen image or just a small highlight occupying part of the screen. The backlight remains powerful, allowing bright parts of the image to stand out clearly.

This gives The Frame a solid foundation for HDR. Bright highlights can look impactful, and the picture doesn’t appear flat or overly dim. Unfortunately, there is a compromise. Without local dimming, the TV cannot darken the black areas surrounding very bright objects.

This is clearly visible in scenes 2 and 4 of our test procedure. Bright elements look impressive, but at the same time, the blacks around them become noticeably raised. As a result, the image loses some of its depth, especially when watching in a dark room. This is why The Frame performs best with HDR in bright and moderately bright scenes, where its high brightness works to its advantage. In darker scenes, the situation is quite the opposite.

Colours

The Frame also performs well when it comes to colour reproduction. As a QLED TV, it can display a wide colour gamut and produce rich, saturated colours. DCI-P3 coverage reaches around 94%, while BT.2020 comes in at around 72%. These are good results, and you can see the difference in actual content.

Colours look vivid without appearing washed out, particularly in bright and colourful scenes. Animations and other content with plenty of saturated colours can look really good on The Frame. With this type of material, the TV shows one of its stronger sides.

The biggest limitation of the TCL P7L in HDR is simply brightness. The TV doesn't have much luminance headroom, so strong highlights, sunlight or small light sources can't clearly "pop" out of the image. As a result, even well-produced HDR material looks fairly restrained and, in terms of dynamics, is closer to good SDR than to what brighter models show. That doesn't mean the P7L completely fails at HDR; the issue is mainly a lack of sufficient backlight power. Looking at colours, the situation is a bit better. The TV covers roughly 91% of the DCI‑P3 gamut and about 68% of the wide BT.2020 space, so for its price class the colour range is quite decent. TCL markets this model as QLED, although the nature of the solution used is closer to a PFS phosphor‑based backlight than a classic quantum dot layer. What matters most to the viewer is the effect: more saturated colours are on offer.

For assessing the factory colour setup we chose the Filmmaker Mode. If you’re encountering it for the first time, it’s a mode designed to reproduce films and TV shows as faithfully as possible. The TV then turns off most additional image enhancers, and the colours and luminance response are intended to be as close as possible to what the creators intended. And it must be said that The Frame 2026 performs quite well in this respect straight out of the box. The biggest deviation is seen in the white balance. As brightness increases, blue starts to fall short and there’s a slight increase in green. As a result, the image shifts towards warmer tones. So white isn’t perfectly neutral, and in some scenes you can notice a subtly warmer cast.

The luminance response, both gamma and EOTF, looks pretty good. Through most of the range they stay fairly close to the target, although larger deviations are visible in the darkest parts of the image. In practice, some shadow details emerging from black may therefore be a bit more pronounced. However, it’s not an error that jumps out during normal viewing. Overall, Filmmaker Mode is a good starting point here. However, the factory picture is a bit too warm and not all hues land exactly where they should.

In Film mode the TCL P7L performs quite decently without major tweaks, especially with ordinary SDR material. The white balance is relatively even, although as brightness increases there’s a slight rise in red and blue and a bit too little green. That doesn’t create a strongly visible colour cast and most colours remain close to their reference points. The Colour Checker confirms this, with a large portion of errors falling below the level that should particularly bother during normal viewing. We have more remarks about the gamma response. In the darkest parts of the image the TV drives it noticeably above the reference, so some shadow detail may be a little too dim. The curve then settles and for much of the range it’s close to the intended targets. As a result SDR generally looks natural, but in dark scenes the P7L can lose some subtlety.

In HDR the factory setup is less precise. As brightness increases the excess blue becomes more pronounced, so the picture can look cooler than it should. The number of larger colour deviations also rises, especially in brighter colours. The EOTF curve itself is handled fairly conservatively, with the TV showing the image darker than the reference over much of the range. For such an inexpensive model, the factory Film mode settings are not bad.

After calibration we mainly managed to remove that warmer tint and better even out the white balance. We also smoothed the brightness response a bit, which made the picture more neutral and predictable. There are, however, things calibration won't fix. It's mainly the black performance, which comes from the backlight design and the lack of local dimming. In some scenes the blacks will therefore still be slightly lifted, and you just have to accept that. It's more a characteristic of this model than something you can fix with the settings. HDR is also somewhat limited. Samsung doesn't give full freedom to work across the widest colour gamut here, so not all colours can be reproduced perfectly. In normal viewing it will probably be hard to notice, but it's worth being aware of.

After calibration the TCL P7L can produce a genuinely pleasant picture, especially with conventional SDR material. We managed to even out the white balance very well, and the gamma curve now tracks close to the target value of 2.4. This is also evident in the colour measurements, as most errors have fallen significantly and in everyday viewing it’s hard to notice any major inaccuracies. Films, series, YouTube and regular TV therefore look more natural, without unnecessary warmth or a cool tint. For a model at this price point the SDR result is really very good.

In HDR the situation becomes more complicated. Calibration improved the white balance and corrected some deviations, but here the panel’s limitations become increasingly apparent. The P7L has relatively limited brightness and can’t sustain appropriate luminance for more saturated colours, so some errors remain even after careful tuning. In other words, settings can improve how the TV interprets the signal, but you can’t overcome its physical capabilities. That’s why calibration is most worthwhile for SDR on this model.

As with many of Samsung’s newer TVs, this one also uses the NQ4 AI processor, albeit the older, second-generation version. I must admit it handles digital image processing quite well. Lower-resolution material is sharpened effectively, and when upscaled to 4K it still looks natural. The TV can also tidy up weaker sources a bit, such as older recordings or lower-quality broadcasts. That doesn’t, of course, mean it will suddenly turn poor footage into true 4K, but at close viewing distances the difference compared with simpler models with weaker processors is easy to spot. Edges are clearer and fine details aren’t lost as much to signal compression.

Samsung also provides a few extra picture-enhancing features, but as usual it’s best to use them sparingly. At stronger settings, noise reduction can very effectively reduce posterisation, but it also noticeably interferes with the image. The picture then starts to look quite artificial, for example by heavily smoothing faces. So these features make most sense with really poor sources when all the noise is very distracting.

In this respect the TCL P7L performs surprisingly well, especially for such an inexpensive TV. The banding reduction feature, which in many budget models does little or nothing, actually manages to improve the picture here. It doesn't remove all banding completely, but it can noticeably reduce posterisation and make trickier gradients look more natural. In this price segment that's a genuinely pleasant surprise.

The upscaling itself also looks good. Lower-resolution material is upscaled properly, without excessive sharpening or adding artificial edges around objects. Of course the P7L won't turn a very poor source into a 4K-quality picture, but for regular TV the result is simply solid. For a model at this price point there are few major complaints to make.

Samsung again used a panel here with a maximum refresh rate of 144 Hz. Refresh rates up to 120 Hz mainly offer greater flexibility with high-motion content. The TV can use additional motion smoothing systems that can improve smoothness in sports and other fast-paced content. However, a high refresh rate alone does not solve everything. The Frame still uses a VA panel, which has a fairly slow response time, resulting in quite pronounced motion blur. With fast-moving objects, especially against dark backgrounds, the trails are easy to notice. There's also a slight double-imaging of edges, which can be visible even after turning off additional motion enhancement systems. We already saw similar behaviour in last year's The Frame 2025, and it's a shame Samsung hasn't fixed this. The 144 Hz itself provides a good foundation, but the panel's response time still limits this TV.

TCL P7L uses a native 60 Hz panel at 4K resolution, and that's how it should be treated in everyday use. For movies the TV mainly offers frame interpolation, so it can smooth motion and reduce noticeable judder, but it doesn't deliver the smoothness typical of true 120 Hz panels.

When it comes to gaming features, The Frame is practically on par with Samsung’s flagship TVs. Once a console is connected, the TV automatically switches to Game Mode thanks to ALLM, so there’s no need to change the settings manually every time. There’s also VRR, which matches the screen’s refresh rate to the frame rate generated by the console or PC. When the frame rate drops, this helps prevent the characteristic screen tearing that can otherwise occur.

The Frame naturally supports 4K at 120Hz, allowing you to take advantage of higher frame rates on the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. HGiG also works correctly. Once HDR has been properly calibrated on the console, the TV doesn’t try to additionally brighten the image on its own, so bright highlights in games are displayed as they should be.

Samsung also includes its Game Bar. This quick-access menu can be opened without leaving the game and lets you check things like VRR operation or the current frame rate, while also giving you quick access to the most important gaming settings. PC users get even more flexibility, as the Full HD mode mentioned earlier allows the refresh rate to be increased all the way up to 240Hz.

There is really only one feature missing, and by now it’s something we’ve come to expect from Samsung TVs: Dolby Vision Gaming. Xbox owners will notice this the most, as Xbox consoles can actually use Dolby Vision in supported games.

There is one more limitation worth mentioning that applies specifically to this model. The One Connect box has only one HDMI 2.1 port, so this is the only input you can use for a console or PC if you want to play at 4K 120Hz. Fortunately, Samsung hasn’t combined this port with eARC. This means you can connect a soundbar separately to HDMI 3 and still keep the full-bandwidth HDMI 2.1 port available for your console.

For such an inexpensive TV, the P7L has quite a lot to offer gamers. It has ALLM, VRR and Dolby Vision in games, and TCL also includes its Game Bar, where you can quickly check key information or change some settings without leaving the game. Not everything is perfect, though, because HGiG doesn't work here as it should, but at this price point it's hard to complain much about the feature set. The most interesting part comes when you give up 4K. At that resolution the TV runs at up to 60 Hz, but at 1440p and 1080p it can already display at 120 Hz. And that's not just a spec-sheet curiosity. In fast-paced games that support that frame rate the difference in smoothness is genuinely noticeable, so if you care more about smoother motion than maximum image sharpness, that mode can make a lot of sense. Of course, that doesn't make the P7L a true 120 Hz TV. Still, it's precisely these extra modes that make the P7L perform really well for gaming.