The Vizio P Series 2018 is a great TV for a wide range of different usages. It has very good picture quality, especially when viewed in a dark room due to the high native contrast ratio and great local dimming. It also has low input lag for gaming and a great wide color gamut for HDR. Unfortunately, the best picture is reserved for those directly in front of the TV as the viewing angles are bad.
The Vizio P Series is a great TV for almost any kind of usage. Its low input lag, fast response time, great contrast ratio, good uniformity and great color accuracy make it a great choice for almost any audience.
Great movie performance for the Vizio P65-F1. Blacks are deep and local dimming works well to improve contrast ratio in dark scenes. The TV has a good overall picture quality with uniform blacks and accurate out-of-the-box colors. It will keep happy those who view 1080p content like blu-ray.
The Vizio P Series 2018 is good for watching TV in a bright room. The TV can get bright and can overcome most glare. It has great reflection handling, but the picture quality degrades rapidly when viewed at an angle, which is bad for wide rooms. The TV does an ok job at upscaling cable content, but you might notice some clouding.
A good TV for watching Sports. Fast response time, good reflection handling and great SDR peak brightness make this TV suitable for watching fast moving content in a bright, but not wide room due to poor viewing angles. Depending on the panel some people might notice some clouding due to decent gray uniformity, especially in panning shots.
The Vizio P65-F1 is an excellent TV for playing video games. The low input lag and the very fast response time guarantee a nice gaming experience. The TV is capable of supporting various resolutions and have great interpolation image clearing features, that will keep gamers happy.
This is a good TV for watching HDR movies. It has deep blacks and great black uniformity. In HDR content, details look bright with saturated colors that will keep most people happy.
The Visio P series 2018 is a great TV for HDR gaming. Its excellent response time, wide color gamut, good contrast ratio and 4K @ 60Hz with HDR display capabilities, make it a good choice for those who want to use it for HDR gaming.
This a good TV for use as a PC monitor. It has very low input lag and you will be pleased with the TVs reaction time. The response time is very low and you will not notice any blur. However, if you sit too close to the TV the edges might look a little dim and colors might be off due to poor viewing angles.
The design of the Vizio P Series 2018 is very good. The stand is metallic and resembles last years, but the legs have a more round finish. It is very wide and so you will need a wide table to fit this TV. If wall mounted, the inputs are easily accessible. The borders are metallic and the TV has a premium feel. The build quality is also very good and will keep most people happy.
The back of the TV is plastic. There is no cable management, however, the inputs are close to the edge and are easy to access if the TV is wall mounted.
The contrast of the Vizio P65-F1 is great. The local dimming does a great job at enhancing the TV's contrast, providing even deeper blacks. The results are certainly better than the Vizio M series 2018 and comparable to the TCL R617
The SDR peak brightness is very good. The brightness of the TV is higher on smaller window sizes so highlights on darker scenes will appear bright. It is slightly better than the P Series 2017 for small windows, as it boosts their brightness rather than dimming them.
All this brightness testing was done in the Calibrated Dark picture mode, because it has the best picture quality. In the Vivid picture mode, the TV can reach a peak brightness of 968 cd/m² for a short time.
Update 08/27/2018: The SDR peak brightness has been retested with the latest firmware (1.0.18.4) and it remains in the same ballpark.
The 2018 P-Series has good local dimming. The 65" model we tested is a FALD panel with 100 local dimming zones that perform quite a good job in dimming the blacks and enhancing the contrast. There is very little clouding as the algorithm is very aggressive. This results in somewhat dimmer whites but without sacrificing detail.
The 55" model (Vizio P55-F1) has only 56 local dimming zones whereas the 75" (Vizio P75-F1) has 120. These variations might have an impact on the local dimming effectiveness of these models.
Update 01/02/2019: The name for Vizio's local dimming feature has been renamed from Xtreme Black Engine Pro to Active Full Array.
Update 03/21/2019: We have been contacted by readers who have had issues with pulsing local dimming in some scenes on this TV (see this discussion thread. Please let us know in the discussions if you also experience this problem.
The HDR peak brightness is good and a definite improvement from last years' model. In dark HDR scenes, the TV displays small bright details well, but still falls short of the brightness level achieved by the Sony X900F and the TCL R617.
Update 08/27/2018: The HDR peak brightness has been retested with the latest firmware (1.0.18.4) and it remains in the same ballpark.
The gray uniformity of this Vizio P series 2018 is decent. It is a slight improvement from the P Series 2017, but some clouding will be visible especially in panning shots and this might annoy sports fans.
In darker scenes (5% gray) things are slightly better but you might still be able to spot minor clouding.
Update 07/27/2018: The gray uniformity of TVs varies between units, and we have received reports of bad uniformity on some Vizio P Series TVs. We don't know how widespread this issue us, but will update the review as we learn more.
The viewing angles of the P65-F1 is bad. This is typical for a VA panel where as soon as there is an increase in viewing angle, blacks turn gray, then the colors shift and finally, brightness diminishes. This TV is not your best option if viewing angle is of importance.
Reflection handling is very good. A great improvement from the 2017 P Series.
Just like the M Series 2018, the semi-gloss filter helps diffuse direct reflections and glare even in bright environments. However, some people will notice some direct reflections, but most people won't be bothered.
The out-of-the-box color accuracy of the P series 2018 is remarkable and this is a big improvement from last years model.
The best results were obtained with the Picture mode set to Calibrated Dark and both the white balance dE and the color dE are below 3. At these values most people will not notice any imperfections. The colors were a little warm and the overall TV shows a slightly higher gamma than our target of 2.2, so the image is slightly dark.
Colors and shadows of the Vizio P65-F1 after calibration are outstanding. The already great accuracy becomes almost perfect in all aspects of our measurements. Color dE and white balance dE are very small, whereas the gamma curve is followed perfectly at 2.2. Finally, the color temperature is almost perfect
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 such as DVDs is a bit more blocky, and there is more noise, similar to the P Series 2017. This is visible when viewing DVDs.
The upscaling performance is very similar to performance the M Series 2017
Native 4k content such as UHD Blu-rays or high-quality streaming content is displayed without any issues.
Update 12/04/2018: We have received a few reports that the 55" P Series uses a different sub-pixel structure, and this may be noticeable when using it as a PC. There is an open discussion on this here.
This Vizio P series 2018 has a good wide color gamut. It is a slight improvement from the 2017 model. And up to par with the Sony X900F.
The HDR EOTF in Calibrated Dark with Backlight at 50 follows the target PQ quite well. If you find HDR content too dark you can raise the Backlight to 100 to raise the EOTF. This will have a result of almost everything being brighter, as shown in this plot.
Enabling the Game Low Latency setting while gaming does not affect the game EOTF. The default EOTF in the Computer Picture mode a.k.a. PC mode overshoots the target PQ curve a bit, but when the Gamma setting is set to 2.2, like it is in Calibrated Dark, the EOTF becomes identical to that of Calibrated Dark.
The Vizio P Series 65 has decent color volume. In the P3 volume, it covers the gamut well; a slight improvement from last year's model. In both color volumes, the darker colors are not displayed very well, and blues can't get very bright.
The Vizio P65-F1 has decent gradient. There is small banding almost everywhere, medium banding in dark green and grey, but no major banding at all. 8-bit banding is not visible since this is a 10-bit panel. The performance is slightly worse than the Vizio P Series 2017.
There is no gradient smoothing feature, but the Reduce Noise feature may reduce banding in low-quality content, at the cost of some loss of fine details.
We don't expect VA panels to experience permanent image retention, as the VA panel in our long-term test appears immune.
Update 07/30/2019: The P Series has received an update that changes the backlight flicker to 120Hz. The picture and score have been updated to reflect the change.
The P series uses PWM and amplitude to dim its backlight. It flickers at 960Hz. This frequency is so fast that almost no-one can notice it. It is only flicker-free when the backlight level is set at maximum (100).
This does produce motion with less noticeable duplications than last year's P Series 2017 or the TCL 6 Series R617.
The BFI mode on the P Series 2018 is activated by setting Clear Motion to On. Just like the M-Series 2018, when BFI is enabled the perceived screen brightness is not reduced. This is because the brightness spikes higher than before to compensate for the off cycles.
The 2018 P series motion interpolation is excellent. The TV can interpolate both 30fps content and 60fps content up to 120 Hz. To do that, you must set the Reduce judder to interpolate 30Hz content, and set the Reduce Motion Blur to interpolate 60Hz content.
Motion interpolation stops when there's too much motion, and there are some visible artifacts when interpolating. Interpolation is nearly perfect during slow moving shots
This Vizio P65-F1 is decent at being stutter free. There will be some stutter on slow fps content, because of the very fast response time of this TV. Most people will not notice it, but if you find that it bothers you, you can enable motion interpolation to reduce it.
The TV has an option to remove judder. This only works if the signal is 24p or if it comes through a Native App. When a 24p signal is coming through a 60p or a 60i source (like a cable box), the TV's option to remove judder does not work. In this case, to remove judder you must enable motion interpolation with a very low setting, so as to avoid potential artifacts.
The Vizio P65-F1 does not support VRR.