It’s not the first digital screen that’s been done up to look like a framed piece of art that you can change up at will. Heck, Samsung even made a TV that can look like framed art on the wall. As far as presentation goes, though, the Depict Frame probably does a better job of looking much more than an underutilized TV than similar offerings we’ve seen.
Combining a UHD TV sporting a matte finish with a wooden frame, the display manages to make itself look like a real framed artwork. You know, the kind that’s been silkscreened, painted, or drawn on an actual canvas, rather than something that’s merely reproduced on a digital panel.
The Depict Frame uses a 49-inch 4K UHD panel that, the outfit claims, has been color-calibrated and optimized for displaying fine art. The 4K resolution means it’s a whole lot sharper and more detailed than other framed panels in the market, which usually come in HD, allowing it to make any displayed fine art look real and life-like. Like all LCD panels, the Depict, of course, emits light, which can ruin the life-like effect of paintings and other artworks. To aid with that, the outfit placed a matte finish over the display to help reduce the light coming out. There’s also a brightness setting on the accompanying app, which you can use to adjust the level of illumination from the display’s integrated backlighting.
Since art pieces come in both landscape and portrait orientations, the display frame comes with a unique wall mount that allows you to easily swivel the frame from one orientation to another. That’s right, you can switch between landscape and portrait without having to reinstall the mounting hardware, making it a lot more versatile as far as the kind of art it can display.
Do note, like all LCD panels, the Depict Frame requires plugging into a wall outlet, so there’s going to be a power cable sticking out of there somewhere, which you’ll have to find a way to discreetly lead to an outlet, lest destroy the illusion of being a framed art piece. We’re not entirely sure how you’re going to accomplish it, but that endeavor will definitely require some creative thinking.
The companion app allows you to pick which pictures to display, so you can have new art hanging every other hour if that’s your thing. It comes with a free collection of fine art to get you started, with new additions coming in every month. The catch? It won’t let you upload and display your own images unless you’re subscribed to the outfit’s Premium Collections, which puts thousands of curated fine art at your beck and call. Personally, we think that’s a bad call, since displaying your own pictures is a basic feature in other competing products. Making people pay the subscription price of $20 per month just to display their own kid’s artwork just sounds iffy. And when your subscription price is higher than Netflix or Spotify, it’s going to be a tough thing to justify.
Slated to ship in September, the Depict Frame is priced at $899.