Vizio M Series Quantum 2019  TV Review

The Vizio M Series Quantum is a mid-range 4k Vizio TV, and it directly replaces the Vizio M Series 2018. It's available in three variants: the M7 variant, the M8 variant, and a Black Friday variant known as the M6. The M Series Quantum's main competitors are the Samsung RU8000, Sony X850F, and LG SM8600.

The Vizio M Series Quantum 2019's design is ordinary. It has a clean, minimalist design with wide-set feet, but overall, it's fairly plain.

The feet are wide and require a table nearly the full width of the TV, which isn't ideal, especially for the larger sizes.

Footprint of the 65" stand: 50.6" x 11.7"

The back of the TV is a mix of metal and hard plastic, and the inputs are located on the left along with the TV's controls. The inputs are easy to access, even when the TV is wall-mounted.

Unfortunately, there's no cable management.

The borders are fairly thin and shouldn't be distracting.

The M series Quantum is reasonably thin, but slightly thicker than last year's model.

The Vizio M Series Quantum has a decent build quality. It's mostly made out of hard plastic and the stand supports the TV well, though there's a bit of wobble to it. Our unit has a slight tilt backwards, but we're not sure if this is by design or a defect.

The M Series Quantum has an outstanding native contrast ratio, similar to the Vizio V Series 2019. This results in excellent deep blacks, great for dark-room viewing. With local dimming enabled, the contrast ratio is boosted significantly, similar to the Samsung Q70/Q70R QLED.

The local dimming feature on the M Series is good. It can struggle a bit with fast-moving objects, as the backlight tries to keep up from zone to zone, causing the object's leading edge to look dimmer. Smaller objects can also appear dimmer, but blooming is kept to a minimum and you shouldn't notice significant brightness change when using subtitles.

Higher settings on the TV cause the TV's overall brightness to increase. Although we normally recommend the 'Medium' setting, it might be too bright for some environments, in which case the 'Low' setting might be better.

The M7 Series Quantum 2019 variants have a slightly worse local dimming feature, with fewer dimming zones.

The Vizio M658-G1 has great peak brightness, but it isn't quite as bright as the M Series 2018. There's some variation in brightness with different content (ABL), but it shouldn't cause any issues for most people.

We measured the peak brightness after calibration, with the 'Calibrated Dark' Picture Mode, and the Color Temperature set to 'Normal'.

The local dimming feature affects the TV's peak brightness, and higher settings result in a higher peak brightness. We measured the peak brightness with the Active Full Array setting on 'Medium'. Lower settings result in a lower peak brightness, so you may need to adjust this setting depending on your viewing conditions. The 'High' setting resulted in a dimmer image with some real content.

If you prefer a brighter image, or a colder color temperature over an accurate one, with the 'Vivid' Picture Mode and the 'Cool' Color Temperature, we measured a peak brightness of 634 cd/m² for a short period of time, as measured on the 10% test window.

The M7 Series Quantum 2019 variants have a slightly lower peak brightness.

Decent peak HDR brightness, slightly worse than last year's models.

We tested the HDR peak brightness with no calibration settings, using the 'Calibrated Dark' Picture Mode, with the Backlight set to '50'.

The local dimming feature affects the TV's peak brightness, and higher settings result in a higher peak brightness. We measured the peak brightness with the Active Full Array setting on 'Medium'. Lower settings result in a lower peak brightness, so you may need to adjust this setting depending on your viewing conditions. The 'High' setting resulted in a dimmer image with some real content.

If accuracy isn't as important to you, or if you prefer a colder color temperature, the 'Vivid' Picture Mode hit a peak brightness of 581 cd/m² for a short period of time, with the Backlight set to '100', Color Temperature set to 'cool', and local dimming on 'High'.

The M7 Series Quantum 2019 variants have a slightly lower peak brightness.

The M Series' gray uniformity is decent, but there are vertical bands across the entire screen and some vignetting at the top corners. This dirty screen effect can be distracting, especially when watching sports.

The viewing angles on the Vizio M Series are disappointing. Like most VA panels, images look washed out when viewed from an angle and there's significant color shifting. Unfortunately, it doesn't have the Enhanced Viewing Angle that Vizio implemented in its Vizio P Series Quantum X 2019.

The M Series Quantum has outstanding black uniformity, one of the best we've seen so far. There's almost no noticeable blooming around our test cross, and no backlight bleed.

The M Series Quantum 2019 has great reflection handling. Bright light sources aren't completely diffused across the screen, so bright lights or windows opposite the TV can still be distracting. This TV has much better reflection handling than the TCL R625.

With our pre-calibration settings, the M Series Quantum 2019 has good accuracy. Gamma mostly follows the target curve, but some really bright scenes are noticeably over-brightened. There are some minor inaccuracies in colors, but most people won't notice anything. The color temperature is warm, giving the white point a slight red-yellow tint.

After calibration, this TV has excellent accuracy. Gamma follows the target perfectly, with almost no variation from 2.2. Color errors are almost completely corrected, and any remaining inaccuracies are completely unnoticeable. The color temperature is extremely close to our target of 6500 K, and the white balance is essentially perfect.

You can see our recommended settings here.

Like all recent Vizio TVs we've tested, 480p content, like DVDs, isn't upscaled as well as most TVs. Not everyone will be bothered by this, but it can be noticeable.

720p content, like most cable channels, is decently upscaled, but like with 480p content, it's a bit worse than most other TVs.

1080p content, like Blu-rays or older consoles, is upscaled nearly perfectly, and looks almost identical to 4k content.

4k content is displayed perfectly, with no pixel issues or sub-pixel dimming. Unlike the higher-end Vizio TVs, like the Vizio P Series Quantum X 2019, there's no Enhanced Viewing Angle feature, so there's no spatial dithering.

The Vizio M Series Quantum 2019 has an impressive color gamut, one of the widest we've ever measured.

The EOTF doesn't follow the PQ Curve very well. Darker scenes are displayed accurately, but it starts tone mapping very early, and all scenes above around 100 cd/m² appear darker than they should be. In 'Game' mode, the backlight defaults to '100', which causes the EOTF to display darker scenes brighter than they should be, as shown by this EOTF. With the backlight set to '50', the EOTF more closely tracks the PQ curve.

If you find HDR too dim, changing the Backlight to '100' results in a brighter image, as shown by this EOTF. If you want an even brighter image, decreasing the gamma will probably improve the brightness a bit more, but we don't expect it to impact the apparent brightness as much as the backlight setting.

This TV has great color volume; again, one of the best we've tested. It can't quite fill out its color gamut, but can display most colors at any brightness level, including dark, saturated colors.

The M Series Quantum has great gradient handling. There's some noticeable banding in most colors, but it isn't very noticeable. Unfortunately, there's no smooth gradation feature to improve gradients.

There are no signs of temporary image retention on the M Series Quantum 2019, even immediately after displaying our high-contrast static test image for 10 minutes.

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

This TV has an excellent response time. There's some slight overshoot in most transitions, but this isn't very noticeable. There are duplications in motion, as seen in the above photo, due to the flicker of the backlight.

The M Series Quantum 2019 uses PWM to dim its backlight, and there's flicker at all backlight levels below 100. The 480Hz flicker is identical to last year's M Series 2018, but behaves very differently from the 120Hz flicker on the Vizio P Series Quantum X 2019. This high flicker frequency does cause noticeable duplications in motion, which can be seen in our response time photo.

This TV has an optional black frame insertion feature which can improve the appearance of motion. When enabled, this feature reduces the backlight flicker frequency to 60Hz, which helps to reduce the amount of persistence blur. This results in more noticeable duplications in motion.

Unfortunately, this TV doesn't have a motion interpolation feature.

Due to the TV's fast response time, there's some noticeable stutter when watching 24p content, like movies. This is especially noticeable with slow-panning shots.

The M Series Quantum 2019 can remove judder from 24p sources and from the native apps, as long as Film Mode is enabled. Unfortunately, it can't remove judder from 24p content sent through a 60p/i source, like a cable box.

This TV has a 60Hz panel, but doesn't support any advanced variable refresh rate features, like FreeSync or HDMI Forum's VRR feature.

The M Series Quantum 2019 has excellent low input lag, as long as Game Low Latency is enabled. Unlike many top Vizio TVs, including the Vizio P Series Quantum X 2019, there's no dedicated low latency port. Instead, all four HDMI ports have the same low latency.

See our recommended settings for gaming here.

The M Series Quantum 2019 can only support 1080p and 4k resolutions at 60Hz. For chroma 4:4:4 to be displayed properly, the Picture Mode must be set to 'Computer'. Higher bandwidth formats, like 4k @ 60Hz 4:4;4 requires that the Full UHD Color setting be enabled for the port in use.

See our recommended settings for PC gaming here.

Update 12/09/2019: Vizio has added support for HDR10+ on most 2019 and 2018 models.

This TV supports Dolby Vision from all sources.

The M Series Quantum 2019 supports ARC over HDMI port 1, but it doesn't support eARC. It can pass DTS and Dolby Digital over ARC, but for DTS to work over optical, the Digital Audio Out setting must be set to 'Bitstream'.

Decent frequency response. The low-frequency extension (LFE) is bad, resulting in very limited bass, with no thump or rumble and very little punch. The response above the LFE is good, and dialog is clear, but it lacks airiness a bit. It can get quite loud, but unfortunately, there's significant pumping and compression at louder volumes.

Decent distortion performance. The total amount of harmonic distortion (THD) produced is below 80db SPL, which is good, but it increases noticeably at max volume.

Update 11/26/2019: We've retested the TV with the latest SmartCast interface, and found it to be much faster.

The interface is visually appealing and easy to use, but unfortunately, it's not very smooth.

Like other Vizio TVs we've tested, there are no ads. There's a row of suggested content, though, on the main page, and this can't be disabled.

There are a few apps pre-loaded on the M Series Quantum 2019, but like other Vizio TVs, there's no way to add additional apps.

The remote is very basic, and is identical to the remote included with other Vizio TVs. There are a few dedicated buttons for the most popular streaming features, but the remote has no other advanced features, like voice control.

The physical controls offer basic control of the TV, including power, volume control, and inputs.

• Remote
• Batteries
• User Manual
• Power Cable (not shown)