The Vizio D Series 2018 is a decent but basic 4k TV. The picture quality is okay, but the TV lacks more advanced features like local dimming or a wide color gamut to produce deeper dark scenes or vivid HDR. The response time is fast which is excellent for displaying sports without much blur and the TV has low input lag for gaming.
The performance of the Vizio D65-F1 for mixed usage is okay. Movie and regular cable TV watching is decent, whereas playing video games and using it as a PC monitor should keep you satisfied. This TV does not have a great HDR performance since it has a limited color gamut and will not display rich and saturated colors, far from what the content creator intended.
This TV is decent for watching movies. It has a very good contrast ratio that will display good blacks in dim environments but lacks any local dimming to further boost blacks. You should not observe much clouding in darker scenes since the TV's black uniformity is very good. Watching 4k and Blu-ray content looks great.
Watching TV shown on the Vizio D Series 2018 is ok. The TV can get good enough brightness levels for brighter rooms and can handle reflections well. Unfortunately, viewing angles are not very good and thus the picture quality will not be the same if you are watching a TV show while moving around doing some housework. On the other hand, upscaling 720p cable content is ok.
This TV is decent for watching sports. The good reflection handling and the great response time. make it a good choice for watching fast action sports in a room with a few lights. Some dirty screen effect is present and that will disappoint sports fans. Also if you plan to watch a game with a big group you take into account that the bad viewing angles do not favor wide seating arrangements.
The Vizio D Series 65 is very good for playing video games. It has a low input lag both in SDR and HDR content, which makes it very responsive to user input, and also has a remarkably fast response time which is great for fast action.
Ordinary performance for this TV on HDR movies. Apart from the great contrast and the great 4k content display, this TV is producing a satisfactory result for HDR movie watching. This is mainly because it cannot display rich and saturated colors due to its limited color gamut.
Playing HDR games on this TV is good as it supports the 4k @ 60Hz + HDR input. Also, the fast response time makes it suitable for fast action. The good contrast will offer a decent experience in dark scene HDR gaming. However, you should keep in mind the limited color gamut which will not allow it to display rich and vivid colors.
This Vizio D Series will perform very well as a PC monitor mainly due to its remarkable input capabilities. The various supported resolutions and the low input lag should keep most people happy. Also, the fact that there is practically no permanent burn-in risk and no temporary image retention, should not deter you from using it as a PC monitor.
The design of the Vizio D Series 65 is ok. It has a wide and quite stable stand, although it wobbles a little if slightly pushed. The back is plastic and the TV seems relatively thick when you are looking at it from the side. The build quality is ok and it should not cause any issues. Overall, the TV looks very similar to the Vizio E Series 2018, but the D Series lacks a metal trim.
The TV looks a little thick and blocky when viewed from the side, so it may stick out slightly if wall-mounted. Like all other Vizio models we tested this year, the structure of the TV (screen and electronics' compartment) is more apparent when the TV is viewed from the side.
This TV does not have a local dimming option.
The Vizio D65-F1 SDR peak brightness is good. The TV achieves brightness levels that are good for a dark room and satisfactory for a brighter ambiance. It is worth noting that the TV brightness level remains uniform no matter the size of the highlights.
The Vizio D series 4k 2018 has ok HDR peak brightness. It does not get very bright to display bright highlights as the creator intends, but it does not dim highlights and it displays a steady brightness no-matter the window size.
If you find HDR content too dim, raising the Backlight setting to 100 (rather than the default 50) and setting the Gamma to 1.8 will brighten most HDR shades, but unfortunately won't affect peak highlights.
Also during our testing the TV got stuck once at 70 cd/m², but resetting the picture mode fixed the issue.
The gray uniformity is decent. On the 50% gray uniformity test picture, we can see that the four corners are a slightly darker than the center. Some clouding is apparent which causes a little dirty screen effect which might annoy some people when viewing sports.
On the 5% gray uniformity picture, things are a little better as not much clouding can be noticed.
The viewing angle is bad for this Vizio D Series 2018. Blacks fade to grey at only small angles off the center and colors shift rapidly at an angle as well. It is not a great choice if you plan on placing it in a wide room.
The Vizio D Series 4k 2018 is good at handling reflections. The semi-gloss finish diffuses reflections across the screen, reducing their intensity. Unless you are planning on watching TV in a very bright room, reflections should not be an issue.
The TV has very good out of the box color accuracy. When set to Calibrated Dark, the color dE and white Balance dE are well below 3, so most people will not notice any inaccuracies.
The gamma is at 2.19 almost right on our 2.2 target. Finally, the color temperature is close to 6500K resulting in a fairly accurate picture.
The post calibration picture is close to perfect. The calibration process is fairly straightforward and relatively fast to do. The white balance dE was brought down to 0.08. The color dE was slightly harder to minimize, but the residue is so small that most people won't notice. Finally, the gamma is tracking perfectly our goal of 2.2.
You can see our recommended settings here.
Upscaling of low-quality content is slightly worse than average. Similar to other Vizio TVs, DVDs appear a bit soft but there is some choppiness to the image.
You can see a comparison of the Vizio M Series and TCL 6 Series here.
The color gamut is decent, but the TV fails to be classified as having a wide color gamut since the cover of the Rec 2020 uv space fails to surpass our target of 67%.
The HDR EOTF in the Calibrated Dark picture mode follows the target PQ curve well at first, but then begins its roll-off really early, so well-lit areas of HDR scenes will be shown less bright than intended. If you find HDR content too dark, raising the Backlight setting to 100 and setting Gamma to 1.8 will raise the EOTF and brighten most HDR scenes.
Enabling Game Low Latency doesn't change the EOTF, which is good, and the EOTF in the Computer picture mode is also very similar.
The color volume on this Vizio D Series 65 is mediocre. The inability of the TV to display a full range of colors across a range of brightnesses esteems from the limited color gamut. Colors on this TV will not be very rich and darker color shades will be crushed.
The gradient is very good. A little banding is present almost everywhere, but only in the dark green and gray you might spot a little more.
There is no gradient smoothing feature but, the TV has a Reduce Noise feature that may help reduce banding in low quality content.
We don't expect VA panels to experience permanent image retention, as the VA panel in our long-term test appears immune.
The TV uses PWM to dim its backlight, so the backlight flickers at all Backlight settings below 100. The flicker frequency is at 480 Hz, which is high so it isn't very noticeable except in small duplications behind moving objects.
Also we noticed that the backlight also dips down at every 1/60th of a second (60Hz) as shown in in the backlight@100% plot. This should not be noticeable to most and should not worry you.
The D series does not support BFI.
Update 03/29/2019: The 120 Hz for 120 fps test was scored incorrectly. The score has increased slightly.
The Vizio D Series 65 does not have any motion interpolation features unlike the higher end P Series 2018 or the TCL 6 Series.
In 24p, some stutter is noticeable because of the fast response time. Unfortunately, the TV has no motion interpolation to insert in-between frames and thus you can only rely on the minimum blur created by the response time to smooth it out.
The Vizio D Series 4k can play 24p content from the native apps, or a DVD or a Blu-ray without judder. To remove judder set Film mode to on.
When the 24fps is coming through 60i or 60p then just like the 2017 model the TV is not able to remove it.
The Vizio D65-F1 doesn't support any variable refresh rate features.
The input lag is very low. To achieve low input lag you must set the Game Low Latency to on, You can do that from any picture mode so we recommend using the Calibrated Dark picture mode.
4:4:4 is only shown properly in the Computer picture mode and the Game Low Latency must be enabled for low input lag. It is however enabled by default when a 4:4:4 signal is sent and thus it is grayed out.