Vizio E Series 2018 TV Review

The design of the Vizio E series is good. The TV comes with the usual wide but sturdy stand, a thick brushed bezel finish and a metal trim on the bottom, which gives the TV a more premium look.  When looking at the TV from the side, its structure looks very much like the higher end 2018 P series and M series. The build quality is decent and should not cause any issues.

The stand is wide. It is made of plastic and supports the TV well. It will not wobble much if moved.

Footprint of the 65" TV stand:51.8" x 11.3"

The back of the TV is plastic. It has a more sleek look and the inputs are still split between the side and the bottom edge, easily accessible if you wall mount the TV. There is no planning for cable management.

The borders of this year's Vizio 2018 E Series are thick and made of plastic. There is also a thick brushed bezel finish that traverses around the screen. This year there is metal trim on the bottom, that makes the TV look more premium.

The maximum thickness is similar to 2017 E Series. 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 Vizio E Series operates at a very cool temperature, mostly because of its low brightness and large size. The panel remains uniformly cool to the touch.

All the parts are made of plastic for this E series 2018. This is expected for a mid-low range TV. There are no gaps and the build quality will cause no issues for normal use.

The Vizio E Series has an excellent contrast ratio. It is even better than the already great contrast ratio seen on last year's E series 2017. The TV can procure deep blacks that look great in dark viewing environments and are particularly important for dark scenes in movies.

When the local dimming feature is turned on, the contrast ratio does not change by much due to the poor local dimming implementation.

The local dimming for this TV is bad. Although it's a FALD panel, local dimming fails to enhance contrast and produce better blacks. Compared side-by-side to the Vizio E Series 2017 with the same number of zones, the algorithm is much less aggressive. This means that although the dark scenes often aren't as deep, blooming is much less noticeable (because there is less of a difference between zones which are on and off). It also means that small highlights transition smoothly between zones, rather than the brightness flickering.

The SDR peak brightness of the Vizio E Series 2018 is decent. The TV reaches and maintains a brightness level that is ok for darker rooms, but in bright rooms, this might just not be enough.

Update 08/15/2018: We have retested the SDR Peak Brightness on the latest firmware (1.0.18.4) and it remains the same.

Sub-par HDR peak brightness for the Vizio E Series. It is fairly consistent across all input windows without dimming small highlights, but not bright enough to display the creator's intention and take advantage of the HDR increased brightness range.

It is worth noting though that this year's model compared to last years E Series 2017, has a fundamental difference in dealing with highlights. In 2017 bright highlights in dark scenes were dimmed because of the local dimming functions of that model. This year the TV tries to boost those highlights and this is where the higher peak brightness comes from.

Update 08/15/2018: We have retested the HDR Peak Brightness on the latest firmware (1.0.18.4) and it remains the same.

The gray uniformity for the Vizio E Series is okay. There is fairly noticeable clouding at the 50% gray level, especially towards the edges of the screen. Some dirty screen effect is visible during panning and sports shots.

The results are much better at 5% gray level. There it becomes harder to notice clouding.

Poor viewing angles for the E Series 2018. The VA panel behaves as expected. As soon as you deviate from the center blacks lose their depth, colors wash out and brightness fades.

The Vizio E Series 2018 has excellent black uniformity and is an improvement to the already great E Series 2017. There is no clouding and blacks look very uniform resulting in great looking dark scenes in movies.

The Vizio E Series 2018 has very good reflection handling. However, it cannot handle direct reflections with the same efficiency as some higher end TVs with better anti-reflective coatings.

The Vizio E Series 2018 has very good out of the box color accuracy. When the picture mode is set to Calibrated Dark, the color dE is well below 3, so most people will not notice any imperfections, The white balance dE is just above 3 so some might pick up the slight gray inaccuracies.

The gamma is at 2.26 just slightly above the 2.2 target. This makes shadows look brighter, but again not many people will notice. The colors are a little warm but nothing too annoying.

The results for the Vizio E65-F0 / E65-F1 after calibration are amazing. The accuracy is almost perfect in all aspects of our measurements. Color dE and white balance dE are very small, the gamma curve follows perfectly at 2.2, and the color temperature is almost perfect at 6503K

Note: Calibration can be performed very easily with the help of the Smartcast app, as no on-screen menu is necessary.

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.

Upscaling of 720p content such as cable is a bit softer than most other TVs.

1080p content such as Blu-rays look good. The image remains clear and sharp.

No issues can be seen with native 4k content.

Note that we've had one reader report crosshatching visible on their 43" E Series (E43-F1).

The color gamut is decent, but the TV fails to be classified as having a wide color gamut.

In the Calibrated Dark picture mode the TV's HDR EOTF doesn't follow the target PQ curve well; this results in a perceived loss of contrast in HDR scenes, because dim shades are too bright and bright shades are too dim. The TV's EOTF remains nearly unchanged when Game Low Latency is enabled when gaming, and in the Computer picture mode during computer use. If users find HDR content too dim, raising the Backlight setting from the default 50 to 100 raises the EOTF and brightens most of an HDR scene.

The color volume on this Vizio E-Series 2018 is sub-par. This is mainly due to the limited color gamut, that does not allow the TV to display deep dark colors. It fails to cover either color space well, although it is an improvement over the 2017 model.

The gradient is great. There is some micro-banding almost everywhere, but just in the dark green you might be able to spot a little more.

The TV has a Reduce Noise feature that may help reduce banding in low quality content at the cost of some fine details.

No image retention for this Vizio E series 65. This is in line with TVs that use VA panels.

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

This is the exact same picture structure as the 2017 model.

The Vizio E Series has a very good response time. There is very little motion trail behind fast moving objects, and most of the blur in the photo is due to persistence. There is a very little overshoot in some transitions, but they will not cause any overshoot artifacts.

The backlight flickers at all Backlight settings below 100. The flicker frequency is very high at 480 Hz, and most people won't notice it.

To activate the BFI mode,set Clear Action to On. When BFI is enabled, the brightness spikes higher to compensate for the off cycles and thus the perceived brightness is not reduced. With BFI enabled the backlight flickers constantly at 60 Hz.

The Vizio E Series 2018 does not have a motion interpolation feature.

Some stutter in 24p is noticeable, especially with wide panning shots. Since there is no motion interpolation to reduce it, you can only rely on the blur created by the response time to smooth it out.

The Vizio E-Series can play 24p content without judder, but only when played from a native 24p source like a Blu-ray player or from the native apps. 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 E Series doesn't support any variable refresh rate features.