Just last week, the WIRED Reviews team published our comprehensive guide to the best art TVs, a piece I’ve long anticipated. Art TVs, you probably know, are screens that display art when they’re not in use. They have a matte finish and a bezel that mimics the frame you’d hang art with on your wall.
My own contribution to our guide was the Hisense S7 CanvasTV. I love this thing. And for Prime Day, the S7 is currently half off its list price, and $100 below the lowest price we’ve ever tracked it.
I have the 50-inch size, which is perfect for a wall in my bedroom. The picture quality is not competitive with high-performance screens, but that’s not really the point. Not everyone cares about a crazy-high refresh rate, inky blacks, and extreme sharpness. Some people—many people— just want a TV that will show a game or stream YouTube and doesn’t look dorky in their room. But you cannot beat the current price.
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Photograph: Martin Cizmar
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Photograph: Martin Cizmar
The Samsung Frame was the first major player in this category, and remains the best-known name, but there are now a number of competitors, including TCL and Amazon’s Ember Artlite. But I’m still quite partial to the Hisense CanvasTV line. If you’re looking for a discreet second or third screen for somewhere in your house, you can’t beat this price. Also factor in that you’re getting a free bezel (frame) with that, which you’d have to drop another $150 for with Samsung.
While it’s heavy enough that you should have two people to mount it, you can have this CanvasTV leveled on the wall with the single-piece mounting bracket within an hour. It connects seamlessly to your Google account, where you can pull photos, or you can choose from 1,000 pieces of art without paying for a subscription. I really love Hisense TVs, in general, as they have intuitive controls housed in a brushed nickel remote and a built-in Google TV operating system.
