Vizio M7 Series Quantum 2021  TV Review

The Vizio M7 has a simple design that should look nice in any setup. It has thin borders on three sides, except the bottom border is thicker. The stand features new flat feet compared to the Vizio M7 Series Quantum 2020, and you can adjust their height.

The stand consists of two feet that are nearly as wide as the TV itself. It can be adjusted in two positions; the bottom position (as seen in the photo above) is about 2 inches off the table, and the higher position raises the screen 3.25 inches off the table, so there's enough room to place a soundbar without blocking the screen.

The stand is advertised to hold any Vizio M Series soundbar in place even when wall-mounted, but we don't test for this.

Footprint of the 55" TV: 38.54" x 4.25".

The back of the TV looks closer to the Vizio V5 Series 2021 than it does to the Vizio M7 Series Quantum 2020. The bottom portion holding the inputs and the top portion are both made of plastic. The VESA dimensions depend on the TV's size. Sadly, there's no cable management.

The Vizio M55Q7 is on the thick side, so it may stick out a bit if you wall-mount it.

The build quality is decent. It's made out of plastic, and there's noticeable flex on the back panel near the inputs and along the bottom bezel. The stand holds the screen well, but it wobbles more in the elevated feet position. We noticed there are two small cracks in the top right and top left corners of the screen. We don't know if it was damaged in transport or if it left the factory like that, so we're not considering it for our build quality score.

The Vizio MQ7 has an impressive native contrast ratio, so blacks are deep and uniform in dark scenes. Its local dimming feature isn't very effective at boosting contrast, so blacks are raised a bit around bright highlights.

Unfortunately, there's noticeable blooming around bright highlights in dark scenes. It's not too bad with subtitles, but bright lights bleed into surrounding dark areas.

This TV has decent zone transitions. The dimming zones are large, and when smaller highlights flicker on and off as they move across the screen, as the zones are slow to adjust. This delay also causes the leading edge to be noticeably darker.

The local dimming performs exactly in Game Mode as outside of it. You need to enable Game Low Latency to enter Game Mode and you can use any of the Picture Modes.

The HDR brightness is disappointing, and it doesn't get brighter in HDR compared to SDR. Once again the 2% window is darker than the rest because of the black crush caused by the local dimming feature. We measured the 2% window using the following Active Full Array settings:

• Off: 400 cd/m²
• Low: 80 cd/m²
• Medium: 183 cd/m²
• High: 204 cd/m²

Essentially, setting the local dimming to 'Low' really crushes highlights. We measured the brightness in the 'Calibrated (Dark)' Picture Mode with Gamma set to '2.2', Color Temperature on 'Warm', and Active Full Array on 'High'. You can't adjust the Backlight setting in HDR. The EOTF follows the target well using these settings, but some scenes are too bright. If you want, you can get an even brighter image by setting Gamma to '2.2', as seen in this EOTF.

Note: The 50 inch model is advertised to be less bright, with a peak of about 400 cd/m², likely measured in the 'Vivid' Picture Mode. The 65 inch and up models are advertised to be brighter, with a peak brightness of about 700 cd/m², again, likely measured in 'Vivid'.

If you bring a budget-friendly TV that gets brighter in HDR, then look into the TCL 5 Series/S546 2021 QLED.

Once again, the Vizio MQ7 has disappointing HDR brightness in Game Mode. It's the same as outside of Game Mode because you don't need to change the Picture Mode. We also measured the 2% window using different Active Full Array settings:

• Off: 398 cd/m²
• Low: 80 cd/m²
• Medium: 180 cd/m²
• High: 199 cd/m²

Overall, this TV has fantastic PQ EOTF tracking, so most HDR content is displayed at the brightness level intended by the creator, up to the TV's peak brightness. Near-blacks and midtones are raised a bit, so shadow details are a bit blown out, but it's not that bad. There's a sharp cutoff at the TV's peak brightness, though, so bright details are washed out.

The SDR brightness is decent. Brightness varies between different content, especially in the 2% window, which is more dim because of the local dimming. It gets bright enough with real content to fight some glare from a few light sources.

We also measured the 2% window using different Active Full Array settings to see how the local dimming affects the brightness. You either need to disable it or set it to 'High' to get the brightest highlights:

• Off: 397 cd/m²
• Low: 79 cd/m²
• Medium: 181 cd/m²
• High: 200 cd/m²

We tested SDR brightness after calibration in the 'Calibrated (Dark)' Picture Mode with Gamma set to '2.2', Color Temperature to 'Warm', and Active Full Array on 'High'. If you want the brightest image possible at the cost of image accuracy, we reached 597 nits in the 10% window with the 'Vivid' Picture Mode and everything else at their default settings.

Note:The 50 inch model is advertised to be less bright, with a peak of about 400 cd/m², likely measured in the 'Vivid' Picture Mode. The 65 inch and up models are advertised to be brighter, with a peak brightness of about 700 cd/m², again, likely measured in 'Vivid'.

The Vizio MQ7 displays an excellent color gamut for HDR content. It's not as good as the Vizio M7 Series Quantum 2020, but the difference isn't noticeable. It has fantastic coverage of the commonly-used DCI P3 color space and good coverage of the wider Rec. 2020.

Thanks to its wide color gamut, the color volume is good. It displays dark and bright colors well but struggles with really bright colors.

The out-of-the-box accuracy is excellent. It's a significant improvement over the Vizio M7 Series Quantum 2020, but this can vary between units. Most colors and the white balance are only slightly inaccurate, and the color temperature is close to the 6500K target. Gamma is good, but most scenes are brighter than they should be.

After calibration, it has incredible accuracy. White balance and colors are improved even more, and gamma is perfect. The color temperature remains virtually unchanged.

You can see our recommended settings here.

The Vizio MQ7 has decent gray uniformity, but this can vary between units. The edges of the screen are noticeably darker in scenes with uniform colors, and there's visible backlight bleed in dark scenes. There's also a bit of dirty screen effect in the middle, which could get distracting during sports.

Unfortunately, the black uniformity of this TV is just decent. With local dimming disabled, the entire screen looks blue when bright highlights are on the screen, despite the relatively high native contrast ratio. Enabling local dimming makes the black uniformity worse, as there's significant blooming around bright highlights due to the large size of each dimming zone.

The Vizio M55Q7 has bad viewing angles. Although we expect this from a VA panel, it's even worse than most TVs. The image looks inaccurate as soon as you move off-center, and the colors even start to appear inverted at really wide angles, almost like a TN panel.

We tested it with the Enhanced Viewing Angle disabled, but we also tested it with the setting enabled to see if it would make any difference. However, enabling it didn't improve the viewing angles much:

• Color Washout Graph
• Color Washout: 22°
• Color Shift Graph
• Color Shift: 20°
• Lightness Graph
• Brightness Loss: 28°
• Black Level Raise: 14°
• Gamma Shift: 14°

The Vizio M7 has decent reflection handling. It's similar to the Vizio M7 Series Quantum 2020, but light is reflected back a bit stronger. It's fine for a room with a couple of lights around, but we suggest it not be placed opposite a window with direct sunlight.

This TV has good gradient handling in HDR. There's noticeable banding in darker shades of gray, red, and green, but everything else looks great.

Surprisingly, this TV does do some image processing and smoothing when displaying low-quality content. It's not very effective, but it does smooth out macro-blocking a bit. Fine details are well-preserved as well.

Unfortunately, this TV has poor sharpness processing, so low-resolution and low-bitrate content doesn't look very good. Fine details are hard to see, and text is blurry.

The optimal settings for a sharp 480p image with no over-sharpening are as follows:

• Sharpness: 25

The Vizio M7 Quantum uses a BGR sub-pixel structure, which doesn't affect image quality, but it can affect text clarity when using the TV as a PC monitor. You can read more about it here.

The Vizio M55Q7 has a good response time. There isn't overshoot in any of the transitions, but the slow response time in dark transitions results in some black smearing.

The Vizio M55Q7-J01 uses Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) to dim its backlight at any Backlight setting of 99 and below. The 480Hz flicker may cause some image duplication, and if you don't like that, set Backlight to its max.

There's a black frame insertion feature to try to clear up motion blur. It creates some image duplication, and there are strange yellow patches in the white letters, which we didn't see with the Vizio M7 Series Quantum 2020, but we don't know what's causing this. Keep in mind that the BFI score is based on the flicker frequency and not the actual performance.

There's no motion interpolation feature.

Due to the fairly quick response time, there's some stutter as frames are held on longer. This can be noticeable with panning shots, and there's no motion interpolation feature to try to reduce it.

The Vizio MQ7 can remove judder from native 24p sources, like native apps or Blu-ray players.

This TV has a basic 60Hz panel with FreeSync variable refresh rate support to reduce screen tearing. Unfortunately, G-SYNC doesn't work at all as there's still screen tearing.

The input lag is incredibly low for a responsive gaming experience. You need to make sure you enable Game Low Latency for it to achieve the lowest input lag possible.

The Vizio M55Q7-J01 displays any 60Hz signal up to 4k, including 1440p if you create a custom resolution from your PC. It displays proper chroma 4:4:4 at any supported resolution as long as you set HDMI Mode to '2.1' and enable Full Color 4:4:4. This helps with text clarity when using it as a PC. It accepts some 120Hz signals, but it either skips frames or causes the screen to black out.

Since the TV is limited to a 60Hz panel, it only supports games up to 60fps from either the PS5 or Xbox Series X. It has Auto Low Latency Mode that automatically switches the TV into Game Mode when you play a game from a compatible device. Set Game Low Latency to 'Auto' or 'On' for it to work.

Even though it's advertised to have HDMI 2.1 inputs, they're in fact HDMI 2.0. None of the ports can support 4k content up to 120Hz, which means they don't have HDMI 2.1 bandwidth.

The Vizio M55Q7 supports eARC, so it can pass high-quality, uncompressed audio to a compatible receiver through the HDMI 1 port. It can pass Dolby Digital and DTS formats via eARC and ARC, but our unit has issues with the optical connection. It feels like the cable doesn't connect to the input properly, so our unit can't pass audio over an optical connection. We don't know if this is a common issue, so let us know if you experience the same thing.

The frequency response is decent, and it's a nice improvement from the Vizio M7 Series Quantum 2020. It gets loud and has a well-balanced sound profile, so dialogue sounds clear. It produces better bass than the 2020 model, but you still need a dedicated subwoofer if you want a real punchy bass.

The distortion handling is also decent. There isn't too much at moderate listening levels, but it can be more noticeable at its max volume. However, this depends on the content and not everyone may hear it.

The Vizio Smartcast system remains basically unchanged from the past version. It's a decent OS and is easy to use, but navigation isn't the smoothest. Vizio TVs can experience bugs and issues, like:

• The screen would black out when changing the HDMI input. The TV would even reset when moving an HDMI connection to another input.
• Optical input not working properly (see Audio Passthrough)
• Voice control to HDMI inputs didn't work at times. Only worked after five tries.

If you experience any of these issues or different problems, let us know and we'll update the review.

Update 08/26/2021: We corrected a mistake in our test results. There's no opt-out from ads because there are no ads.

There are banners with suggested content in the home page. There's a setting to disable ads, but we didn't notice any during testing.

The SmartCast system doesn't come with an app store, so you're limited to the pre-installed apps. However, you can cast anything you want from your phone. It's advertised as having Apple AirPlay 2 and Google Chromecast built-in, but only the Chromecast was on the home page; we don't test to see if Apple AirPlay works properly.

Vizio redesigned their remote for 2021, and it now includes a built-in mic for voice control. You can ask it to open apps, ask for the weather, and change inputs, but that only worked after a few tries. Sadly, it can't search for specific content in apps, and you can't ask it to change settings.

There's a single button on the bottom left side to turn the TV On/Off and change inputs.

• Remote control
• 2x AAA batteries
• Power cable
• User guides