HD PICTURE QUALITY HD picture quality was Very Good, overall. Reproduction of fine HD image detail was Excellent, however, image detail was very exaggerated and made images appear less natural, despite our attempts to minimize this with the sharpness control. Color accuracy was Very Good, with flesh tones in particular, looking natural. Very Good contrast—the difference between the darkest blacks and brightest whites—gave images convincing depth and dimension. Black levels were Very Good, and delivered fairly deep blacks that helped the contrast in darker scenes. Vizio's full-array local-dimming feature helped. But dark scenes tended to reveal "glowing halos" around content, especially when viewed at off angles, which was distracting. The quality appeared worse as we viewed from the sides—see our Viewing Angle results, below. Image brightness was Very Good (with the backlight control turned up), so the picture was well suited for a brighter room—a lower setting is recommended for a dimmer viewing environment. There was slight display non-uniformity in our test sample—it appeared as brighter cloudy areas which were most noticeable on very dark scenes (or in the black bars of a letterboxed movie)—the severity can vary from model to model. Its reproduction of smooth edges on image content for "up-converted" HD-to-UHD images was Very Good with minimal "jaggies" (jagged edges). Deinterlacing of 1080i video, and film mode detection from 1080i content were both Excellent.
4K UHD PICTURE QUALITY Overall 4K UHD picture quality was Very Good, overall. In our UHD testing, we played native-4K movies and test videos (non HDR) thru the TV's HDMI input, and found their image detail was all there. For color, contrast and black level, the TV performed similarly to its HD picture quality.
HIGH DYNAMIC RANGE (HDR) PERFORMANCE HDR performance was ineffective. In our tests, the display did not have the peak brightness capability necessary (by HDR standards) to reproduce the extended contrast on our HDR content.
VIEWING ANGLE This Vizio model has a moderate viewing angle overall, decent, but not quite as good as the better-performing TVs we've tested. The optimal seating position for best picture quality is directly in front of this model. We examined the picture at various viewing angles, and saw the image quality was not consistent. In our tests, the picture did show some slight dimming from the sides, but not to a distracting degree. When we viewed the TV from the sides, image quality got worse. The picture showed a moderate loss of color, so flesh tones looked a bit washed out. Black levels visibly brightened, and reduced the contrast especially on dark scenes. Halo effects around objects in darker scenes (a side effect of the local dimming feature) also become more prominent at off angles. Lastly, we viewed the image from above and below center screen, and noticed Good vertical viewing angle performance, with only slight changes in color, contrast, and black level.
