Samsung The Frame Pro 2026 (LS03HW) vs Philips OLED811

One thing you cannot deny The Frame Pro is: brightness. At peak we measured around 850–900 nits, so the TV already has enough power to show many HDR scenes really impressively. Bright, full‑screen shots and more colourful frames perform best here. In such scenes The Frame Pro can make a good impression because the image is bright, punchy and has the effect we expect from HDR. In our measurements some scenes reached over 800 nits, and even in more challenging segments the TV maintained a quite respectable brightness level.

The problem starts when HDR depends on small bright elements shown on a dark background. Individual lamps, stars or highlights can be bright, but very often the black level across a larger part of the image also rises. As a result the bright point itself may look good, but the whole frame loses a lot of quality. Therefore The Frame Pro shows HDR best in scenes that are simply full‑screen. If a film or TV series has plenty of such shots, the effect can be really pleasant. In darker material the limitations of local dimming are much more noticeable.

Colours

The Frame Pro should be praised for its colour gamut coverage. The TV uses quantum dots, the solution known as QLED, which allows it to reproduce very well saturated colours. In our measurements coverage of the most important film gamut DCI‑P3 was around 94.5%, while the more demanding BT.2020 was about 72%.

These are very solid results that in most scenes allow for pleasant, saturated colours. Of course these figures are not as spectacular as in the latest screens using RGB backlighting, but The Frame Pro makes up for that with something else: colour stability. Regardless of the scene, colour saturation remains fairly consistent and there are no situations where the TV loses colour badly in more demanding shots.

Philips OLED811 uses a new generation of WOLED EX panels, also found in models such as the LG C6 and Samsung S90H. After calibration we measured around 1500 nits, which is a very good result for an OLED TV. You can see this clearly in films and series. All kinds of bright flashes have the right intensity, especially when they appear against a dark background. In such scenes the OLED811 can deliver truly impressive HDR. Of course, that does not mean you will see that level of brightness in every shot. When the screen is filled with a large amount of white or a wide explosion, brightness falls to around 600 nits. That is still a good result, but those scenes no longer have the same punch as small, bright elements on a dark background. This is a known limitation of OLEDs and the OLED811 is no exception.

Colours

Aside from HDR brightness, colours also matter and here Philips performs very well. It covers almost the entire DCI-P3 gamut, which contains most of the colours used in HDR films and series. You get saturated reds and lush greens, and when watching it’s hard to find major faults in that respect. It looks a little worse with the much wider BT.2020 gamut, whose most saturated shades are already out of reach for this panel. There is also the issue of the white subpixel that the WOLED panel uses to boost brightness. With very bright colours you can see a certain washout: the colour is bright but loses some of its intensity. It is precisely in such situations that QD-OLED panels from Samsung Display have the advantage. However, in most films and series this is not something that will immediately stand out.

In SDR material The Frame Pro in Filmmaker mode performs quite well, though it falls a little short of perfect. The white balance is relatively even, but as brightness increases the blue component drops, so the brighter parts of the image can have a slightly warmer tint. A bigger difference is visible in the gamma, that is the handling of the screen's brightness. For most of the range it runs below our reference point, which means the TV slightly brightens midtones. As a result the image can appear a little brighter and less contrasty than it should. The colour errors themselves are not huge, but they are noticeable enough that calibration could still bring considerable improvement.

In HDR content the white balance looks similar — for a large part of the range it is fairly even, with larger deviations appearing only at higher brightness. The EOTF curve is more interesting. The Frame Pro sticks reasonably close to the reference values in the brighter part of the image, but clearly brightens the darkest sections. This is mainly due to the design of the TV's backlight. That also affects colours. With less saturated hues the errors remain moderate, but as saturation increases they become much larger. In Colour Checker measurements a large portion of samples already show high error values. The factory HDR can therefore be regarded as decent, but it is certainly not an image we would call very faithful.

Film mode on the Philips OLED811 is sensibly set up straight out of the box. Most colour errors remain small, both in SDR and HDR, so you can sit down to watch without adjusting the settings first. There are no major inaccuracies that would immediately distract from the film. It falls a little short of perfection, though. The white balance shows a slight lack of red compared with green, so whites and greys can have a faint greenish tint. It is not a strong colour cast, but measurements clearly show it. There are also minor brightness deviations in SDR: some parts of the image are slightly brightened, and the darkest shades are not always reproduced evenly. In HDR the TV sticks much closer to the reference, although in places it gently lifts detail from the shadows. These are generally areas that could be improved. The factory film mode provides a good starting point, and calibration will reveal how much more can be gained from it.

After calibration the biggest improvement is visible above all in SDR content. We managed to even out the white balance, but the more important change was the gamma correction, which before calibration had the greatest influence on the image character. After the adjustments the gamma curve is now very close to the reference, so the picture is not as bright in the midtones and simply looks more natural. Colour errors have also been significantly reduced, so the effect of calibration in SDR is clearly visible.

With HDR the situation is somewhat more complex. White balance has been improved and over part of the range the TV stays much closer to the reference, but deviations still appear at higher brightness levels. The same applies to colour reproduction: some errors can be corrected, but not all stem from the settings alone. This highlights the limitations of the TV's design and the way its backlight and local dimming affect HDR images. Therefore, with The Frame Pro calibration makes the biggest difference to everyday viewing. Regular TV, YouTube and films and series in SDR (mainly those from the cheaper tiers of streaming services) can look noticeably better afterwards.

After calibration the Philips OLED811 produces an image very close to the reference. We managed to correct the white balance and eliminate the slight tint visible in the factory settings. Errors in the Color Checker measurements for SDR and HDR fell to around 1 to 2, and many samples are even below 1. That's a level at which differences from the reference image are hard to spot with the naked eye. We also improved the gamma, and only in the brightest whites is there a slight brightening remaining. In HDR the EOTF curve also tracks the reference closely, although the TV still tends to gently boost the brightness of small elements, such as stars or on-screen text. This gives the picture a little extra sparkle that shouldn't be there, but otherwise there's little to fault. It was already good out of the box, and after calibration we managed to refine most of the remaining shortcomings.

The Frame Pro uses the NQ4 AI Gen3 processor, so in terms of image processing it behaves very similarly to other newer Samsung TVs. Upscaling works really well – lower-resolution content is appropriately sharpened and the picture remains clear without excessive edge enhancement. With regular broadcast TV or lower-quality YouTube material this can provide a noticeable improvement, although viewers watching even older material, e.g. from VHS tapes, may notice a slight cropping of the image on the left side (overscan).

It's a bit different when improving more highly compressed footage by reducing noise and artefacts such as posterization. The "Noise reduction" function can improve poor material, but fairly quickly it begins to alter the picture and remove fine details and grain. Therefore it's best to use it sparingly and mainly when the source truly requires it.

OLED811 handles lower-quality material reasonably well, though it falls well short of perfection. The "Banding reduction" function helps to smooth tonal transitions and on the low setting gives a fairly good result. It does not remove bands between shades as effectively as similar solutions from some competitors, but at least it does not introduce new artefacts in the process. This is a sensible setting for everyday viewing. There is still some dissatisfaction, however, because the MediaTek Pentonic 800 chipset used here can, in other manufacturers' implementations, cope with the effects of heavy compression more effectively even at similarly low settings. Much therefore depends on how a given manufacturer makes use of its capabilities. We have a few more comments about the upscaling to 4K. There is a lot of detail, but the overall image looks rather soft. Edges are heavily smoothed, which robs the picture of a bit of sharpness and clarity. This can be partly corrected with the sharpness slider in the menu, though that will merely accentuate outlines rather than recover detail. On the plus side, there is no overscan; even with an SD signal the TV does not crop the edges of the picture.

The Frame Pro comes with a 144 Hz panel, and when connected to a PC it also supports 240 Hz at Full HD resolution. That feature is primarily aimed at PC gamers, but the TV also performs very well at the standard 120 Hz refresh rate used for watching sport or gaming on consoles. A key advantage is the low level of motion blur. For a VA panel, The Frame Pro does very well in this respect. You don't see the strong, dark trailing smears behind moving objects that we often encounter on TVs with this type of panel. As a result, fast-paced sport and dynamic games remain clear in motion. Of course there's also motion smoothing with adjustable smoothness, so for films and sports broadcasts we can tailor the motion character to our preferences. You'll find our recommended settings in the photo.

In terms of motion handling the OLED811 performs excellently. At 120 Hz, which is useful for console gaming and watching sport, the picture stays clear and moving objects do not leave noticeable smears. The fast response of OLED pixels helps here; this is clear in the UFO test, even on dark backgrounds. There are also motion smoothing controls. For films you can adjust the level of smoothing to suit your taste, ranging from preserving a cinematic character to much smoother motion. A separate blur reduction setting is useful for fast-paced material such as sports broadcasts.

Functionally for gamers The Frame Pro has a great deal to offer. The TV supports 4K at 120 Hz, VRR, ALLM and a properly implemented HGiG. When connected to a PC you can also use 144 Hz at 4K, and even 240 Hz when dropping to Full HD. Samsung also includes its standard suite of gaming extras. There is an expanded Game Bar that lets you quickly view and change the most important settings, and Game Motion Plus, which can improve the smoothness of games running at 30 or 60 frames per second. On top of that there is the Gaming Hub and the option to play in the cloud without needing to connect a console. The only real omission is Dolby Vision Gaming, which Samsung does not support. Apart from that, The Frame Pro offers virtually everything you can expect from a well-equipped gaming TV today.

OLED811 has almost everything you could expect from a TV for gaming. It supports 120 Hz at Full HD, 1440p and 4K, and when connected to a PC it can reach 165 Hz. It also has VRR, which helps prevent screen tearing when frame rates fluctuate, and ALLM, which automatically switches to game mode. So you don't have to dig into the settings every time you power up your console.

Another plus is that HGiG works correctly, so once HDR is set on the console the TV doesn't apply its own changes to image brightness. There's also a Game Bar to check signal parameters and quickly change settings useful while gaming. The list even includes Dolby Vision for gaming, but there is a significant catch, which you can read about below.