Vizio D3 Series 2021  TV Review

The Vizio D40f has a very basic design, with a simple stand and thicker bezels than higher-end TVs. The overall design language is very similar to other Vizio TVs we've tested this year. There's a variant of this TV, known as the D4 Series, which has a more premium design and slimmer bezels.

The stand is very basic, but it supports the TV well, with very little wobble. It lifts the TV high enough off the table to place most soundbars in front of it without blocking the screen.

Footprint of the 40 inch stand: 27.6" x 8.9" x 2.24" (3.03" to the bottom of the screen)

The back of the TV is plain, and most of the back panel consists of a thin textured metallic panel. The inputs are clustered around the center of the TV and face out to the side. Because they're far from the edge of the TV, they can be difficult to access if the TV is wall-mounted. The area around the inputs and VESA mount is plastic. There's no cable management at all.

Relative to the size of the TV, the borders are quite thick and a bit distracting when watching TV. The D4 variant of this TV has much thinner bezels.

The build quality feels just okay. It's mostly plastic, but the back panel is metal, with no noticeable flex, which is nice. The plastic parts have a bit more flex to them and don't feel as premium. Overall, it's pretty basic, and although there's nothing premium about it, it doesn't feel too bad either.

As expected for a TV with a VA panel, the Vizio D Series has superb contrast, resulting in very deep blacks when viewed in a dark room. Unfortunately, there's no local dimming feature to improve contrast. Note that contrast can vary between individual units.

Unfortunately, the Vizio D Series has disappointing peak brightness in SDR. Visibility can be an issue if you have a bright room, as it's not bright enough to overcome direct sunlight or glare from bright lights. There's very little difference in peak brightness with different content, but small highlights are dimmed a bit.

We tested SDR brightness after calibration in the 'Calibrated Dark' Picture Mode with Color Temperature set to 'Warm', and the Backlight set to '100'. The peak brightness can vary with different picture settings, but these settings deliver the brightest picture we were able to get.

This TV doesn't have a local dimming feature. We still film these videos on the TV so you can see how it compares to other TVs with a local dimming feature.

This TV doesn't have a local dimming feature. We still film these videos on the TV so you can see how it compares to other TVs with a local dimming feature.

This TV doesn't support HDR.

This TV doesn't support HDR. We checked the SDR brightness in Game mode instead and found no noticeable difference between Game and non-Game modes.

This TV has good gray uniformity. The corners of the screen are noticeably darker than the center, and there's a bit of dirty screen effect that can be noticeable when watching sports or certain content. Near-dark scenes have much better uniformity, with no serious issues. Gray uniformity can vary between individual units due to manufacturing tolerances.

The Vizio D Series has decent black uniformity. The screen is a bit cloudy throughout, and it's a bit patchy, but it's not very noticeable with regular content. Unfortunately, there's no local dimming feature to reduce the cloudiness. Note that black uniformity can vary between individual units.

As expected for a VA panel, this TV has sub-par viewing angles. The image degrades considerably as you move off-center, so it's not the best choice for a wide seating arrangement or if you have a large group of people over.

The Vizio D Series has good reflection handling. The semi-gloss finish reduces the intensity of direct reflections a bit without smearing them across the screen, but visibility and glare can still be an issue, especially as it's not bright very bright.

Surprisingly, this TV has excellent accuracy out of the box. There are very few noticeable issues with the white balance and color accuracy, but blues and reds are a bit off. The color temperature is a bit cool, giving everything a slightly bluish tint. Gamma is closer to 2.1 than our target of 2.2, so everything is a bit too bright, but it's not bad.

After calibration, this TV has outstanding accuracy. There are no remaining issues with the white balance, color temperature, or gamma. It has a color management system, but we were only able to correct blues a bit. Nothing we did had any impact on reds, and there are still some noticeable issues.

You can see our recommended settings here.

There are no noticeable issues when upscaling 480p content, like DVDs.

Note: Due to the size of the TV, we had to take all of our photos from closer to the TV than usual. Because of that, the screen captures below are a bit blurrier than usual, and there's a noticeable screen door effect where you can see individual pixels. This isn't noticeable in real life and is just due to camera settings and position relative to the size.

There are no issues upscaling 720p content. The D24h-J09 and D32h-J09 models are native 1366x768 TVs, and likely display 720p content better than this one.

This is a native 1080p TV, and 1080p content is displayed perfectly. The D24h-J09 and D32h-J09 models are native 1366x768 TVs. TVs with this native resolution can usually accept a 1080p signal, but they have to downscale the image to display it, so it's not as sharp.

This is a 1080p TV; it can't accept or display a 4k signal.

This is a 1080p TV; it can't accept or display an 8k signal.

The Vizio D Series uses a BGR subpixel layout. It doesn't affect image quality, but it can cause blurry text in some applications when using the TV as a PC monitor. You can read more about it here.

The Vizio D40f-J09 has an okay color gamut, but it doesn't support HDR and can't display an HDR color gamut.

The Vizio D Series has mediocre color volume. It's limited by the lack of HDR support and the low peak brightness.

Unfortunately, the Vizio D40f-J09 has mediocre gradient handling. There's noticeable banding, especially in darker shades of green and gray. There are a few settings that are supposed to help reduce banding, but we didn't notice any improvement with real content.

There are no signs of temporary image retention on the unit we bought.

We don't expect VA panels to experience burn-in, as the VA panel in our long-term test appears to be immune.

The Vizio D Series has a decent response time, but it's worse than many TVs we've tested. There's a significant blur trail behind fast-moving objects and a lot of smearing behind dark objects, which is common for VA panels. Unfortunately, the TV's permanent flicker causes noticeable duplications in motion.

Unfortunately, the Vizio D Series uses pulse-width modulation (PWM) to dim the backlight. There's noticeable flicker at any backlight setting below '100'. The flicker frequency is consistent across all picture modes and all settings.

The Vizio D Series doesn't have an optional backlight strobing feature, commonly known as black frame insertion. Instead, the backlight always flickers at a fixed frequency at any backlight setting below '100', which causes some duplications in motion that can be distracting.

This TV doesn't have a motion interpolation feature.

Due to the relatively slow response time, there's very little stutter.

The Vizio D Series can remove judder from 24p sources like a Blu-ray player or an Apple TV or via the native apps. Unfortunately, it can't remove judder from 60Hz sources, including most cable boxes.

We encountered a strange anomaly when testing this TV for judder. With a 1s exposure, normally all of the boxes are pure white, but with this TV, one box remained gray. We repeated the test multiple times but got the same results each time. We can't see any signs of judder, so it appears to be just slightly off. We still consider this to be judder-free.

This TV has a basic 60Hz refresh rate, but surprisingly, it supports FreeSync variable refresh rate (VRR) technology. Due to the low native refresh rate, the VRR range is narrow, so it's not very effective unless your console or PC can maintain a frame rate close to 60Hz. Unfortunately, there's no way to tell if the TV supports HDMI Forum VRR or not. VRR works when connected to an Xbox, but the Xbox supports both FreeSync and HDMI Forum VRR, so we don't know which one is in use.

We noticed a strange bug when testing the VRR feature. We found that the HDMI Mode setting has to be set to 'Auto' for it to work. With it set to '1.4', VRR doesn't work.

The Vizio D Series has relatively low input lag, resulting in a responsive gaming experience. It's not as low as most recent TVs, but the difference isn't that noticeable. Unlike most TVs, the input lag with the variable refresh rate feature active is much lower.

This TV doesn't support any resolutions above 1080p. Unfortunately, it can't display chroma 4:4:4 properly, so text is blurry when connected to a PC.

This TV has an auto low latency feature (ALLM), so it automatically switches to Game Mode when you start playing a game. It also supports VRR from an Xbox, but we don't know if it'll work with Sony's promised VRR feature for the PS5, as we're unable to determine if HDMI Forum VRR is supported or not.

This TV doesn't support HDR or any advanced formats like HDR10+, Dolby Vision, or HLG. The HDMI inputs only support HDMI 1.4, but as this is a 1080p TV, it wouldn't benefit from the extra bandwidth of HDMI 2.0 or HDMI 2.1 anyway.

One of the two HDMI ports also supports ARC, so you can passthrough audio to a connected soundbar or receiver.

The Vizio D Series has a mediocre frequency response. It can't get very loud, and like most TVs, it has almost no bass response, with an extremely high low-frequency extension (LFE). Above the LFE, it has a fairly balanced frequency response, so most dialogue sounds clear, but there's a slight dip in the low treble range.

This TV has passable distortion performance. There's some noticeable distortion at moderate listening levels, and it increases quite a bit at max volume. This can depend on the content, and not everyone can hear it.

The Vizio D Series has an okay smart interface. Like other Vizio TVs, it runs the SmartCast platform, which has a great selection of built-in apps, and no way to install additional apps. The interface is significantly slower than other SmartCast TVs we've tested this year. The home screen takes longer to load when the TV is first powered on, and individual apps are much slower to launch, but they run smoothly once launched.

Unlike most recent TVs released, we didn't see any ads. There's some suggested content, though, which can't be disabled.

Like most SmartCast TVs, there's a great selection of built-in apps but no way to add additional ones. Like most TVs, though, you can cast any supported app from your phone or tablet. Unfortunately, it doesn't support HDR.

The Vizio D Series comes with the older-style remote that came with the 2020 models, not the new version that has fewer buttons. It doesn't support voice controls, but you can use voice controls to change inputs or launch some apps using the companion app on your phone.

• Remote
• Batteries
• User manuals