Vizio Quantum QLED  TV Review

The Vizio M65Q6-L4 has a surprisingly nice design for an entry-level model. The bezels are extremely thin on three sides, but there's some dead space between the bezels and the first pixels, which is a bit distracting.

The flat feet are set near the ends of the TV, so you'll need a large cabinet if you're not planning on wall-mounting the TV. It supports the TV well, though, with just a bit of wobble. Unlike the step-up model, the Vizio Quantum Pro QLED, there's no raised Soundbar position, but the feet are a bit taller, so you can still place a soundbar in front of the TV without blocking the screen.

Footprint of the 65" stand: 44.9" x 12.7" x 3.3"

The back of the TV is simple and looks cheaper than the rest of it. The inputs face the side and are easily accessible, even when the TV is wall-mounted. There's nothing to help with cable management, though.

The build quality is decent overall, with no significant issues. There's some flex on the back panel, but this is common and won't cause any issues. There's some pinching along the top right side of the panel, and a small gap between the bottom bezel of the TV and the screen.

Unfortunately, the Vizio Quantum has a terrible contrast ratio, and there's no local dimming feature. Blacks are raised when any bright highlights are visible on the screen, causing shadow details to appear washed out.

This TV doesn't have a local dimming feature, so there's no blooming around bright objects or subtitles in dark scenes, but the entire screen looks washed out when bright highlights are on the screen.

This TV doesn't have a local dimming feature, so it can't adjust the backlight of individual zones to brighten up highlights without impacting the rest of the image. But this means that there's no distracting flicker or brightness changes as bright highlights move between zones.

Switching to Game Mode makes no noticeable difference in dark scene performance, as shadows still look washed out.

Unfortunately, this TV isn't bright enough in HDR to deliver an impactful HDR experience. Simple scenes in HDR are bright enough to stand out, but since it lacks a local dimming feature, bright specular highlights don't stand out at all. Although it supports it, HDR content looks dull and flat on this TV, with none of the punchiness you'd expect.

These measurements are after calibrating the HDR white point with the following settings:

• HDR Picture Mode: Calibrated Dark
• Tone Mapping: 50
• Color Temperature: Warm
• Gamma: 2.2
• Color: 50

The brightness in the 'Game' Picture Mode is nearly identical to the calibrated HDR settings.

These measurements are after calibrating the HDR white point with the following settings:

• HDR Picture Mode: Game
• Tone Mapping: 50
• Color Temperature: Warm
• Gamma: 2.2
• Color: 50

The PQ EOTF tracking on this TV is great overall. Near-blacks are considerably brighter than they should be due to the low contrast and lack of a local dimming feature, so shadow details are always raised. Midtones look much better, though, tracking the creator's intent almost perfectly. Of course, this TV can't get very bright, so it can't display bright details, and there's a sharp cutoff at the TV's peak brightness, causing a loss of fine bright details.

The peak brightness in SDR is excellent. It's bright enough to easily overcome glare, which is great if you have a lot of windows or bright lights in your room.

These measurements are after calibration with the following settings:

• Picture Mode: Calibrated
• Brightness: 50
• Contrast: 50
• Color: 50
• Color Temperature: Warm
• Gamma: 2.2

The Vizio Quantum has an amazing color gamut. It displays nearly the entire DCI-P3 color space used by most current HDR content, but the accuracy is off, and most colors appear undersaturated. It has decent coverage of the wider Rec. 2020 color space, but the accuracy is poor, and saturated colors, especially greens and blues, are noticeably inaccurate.

Despite its amazing color gamut, this TV has just decent color volume. It can't display bright colors well due to its low peak brightness. It can't display dark saturated colors properly due to its terrible contrast ratio and lack of a local dimming feature.

Unfortunately, even after switching the TV to the most accurate mode out-of-the-box, the Vizio Quantum has just okay accuracy in SDR. The white balance is bad, as almost all shades of gray are displayed incorrectly, and there's too much red in bright highlights. Gamma isn't close to the 2.2 target at all, and bright scenes especially are significantly darker than they should be. Colors fare a bit better overall, as the TV's overall color accuracy is good, but most saturated colors are a bit off.

The TV's calibration system is very easy to use, and the TV is easy to calibrate overall. After calibration, the SDR accuracy is significantly better, with no noticeable issues remaining.

You can see the full settings used for our calibration here.

The gray uniformity on this TV is decent overall. There's a bit of dirty screen effect in the center, which is a bit distracting when watching sports, but it's not too bad. The sides of the screen are noticeably darker than the center, though, which is a far more distracting issue when using the TV as a PC monitor.

Unfortunately, the black uniformity is poor on this TV. The entire screen is cloudy, and there's some pinching along the top edge of the screen that causes noticeable backlight bleed. There's no local dimming feature to improve dark-scene performance on this TV.

The viewing angle on this TV is impressive. It's a great choice for a wide seating arrangement, as people sitting to the side will still see a consistent, clear image. This also means you can move around the room with the TV on, and it won't fade or wash out, even at a wide angle.

The reflection handling on the Vizio Quantum is just decent. The semi-gloss coating doesn't do much to reduce the intensity of direct reflections, but as a result, there's very little indirect reflections or smearing.

Gradients look decent on the Vizio Quantum. There's significant banding in shades of gray and white, and dark shades of green are mediocre. Other colors look great, though, especially in brighter shades.

The low-quality content smoothing on this TV is disappointing. The Contour Smoothing setting, which is supposed to help smooth out macro-blocking and pixelization in dark scenes, doesn't appear to do anything, as there's very little difference between setting it to 'High' and disabling it entirely.

The sharpness processing on this TV is sub-par. Text and fine details aren't upscaled well and look soft. Some fine details are lost, and upscaled text is hard to read.

Sharpness processing was calibrated for low-resolution or low-bitrate content, with no over-sharpening, with the following setting:

• Sharpness: 20

The TV has an RGB sub-pixel layout, which helps with text clarity when using it as a PC monitor. You can read more about text clarity here.

The Vizio M65Q6-L4 has a decent response time. Motion is clear for the most part, with a short blur trail behind fast-moving objects. Shadow details look worse, though, as there's noticeable overshoot when coming out of black, resulting in some inverse ghosting in shadows.

The Vizio M65Q6-L4 is flicker-free at max backlight, but any setting below that introduces a fixed backlight flicker. It flickers at a high enough frequency that it won't bother most people who aren't usually sensitive to flicker, and it doesn't cause any noticeable image duplication.

Surprisingly for a budget model, this TV has an optional backlight strobing feature, commonly known as black frame insertion or BFI. This feature is extremely effective at reducing the amount of persistence blur, resulting in much clearer motion. The timing is a bit off, though, as there's a secondary flicker that creates a trailing double image on the screen. Unfortunately, the BFI feature isn't available when in 'Game' mode.

This TV doesn't have a motion interpolation feature.

Thanks to this TV's relatively slow response time, there's just a bit of stutter when watching movies or shows. It's still noticeable in some very slow panning shots, but otherwise, it looks good.

The Vizio Quantum can only remove judder from the native apps and true 24p sources. This includes any DVD or Blu-ray player or streaming sticks with a 'Match Frame Rate' feature like an Apple TV.

Surprisingly for a TV at this price point, the Vizio M65Q6-L4 supports VRR. Although its native refresh rate is only 60Hz, it supports a 120Hz maximum refresh rate with a 1080p resolution, delivering a nearly tear-free gaming experience.

The Vizio M65Q6-L4 has incredibly low input lag, ensuring a smooth and responsive gaming or desktop experience.

This TV supports most common resolutions and formats. Chroma 4:4:4 or RGB signals are displayed properly with all supported resolutions, which is essential for clear text from a PC. Although its native refresh rate is only 60Hz, it fully supports gaming at 1080p @ 120Hz, with no frame skipping or interlacing. The 120Hz refresh rate is only supported with 1080p signals; it doesn't work with a 1440p or 4k resolution.

This TV has good compatibility with the PS5. It supports 1080p @ 120Hz gaming, which is great if you prefer smooth motion handling over graphics fidelity. It also supports VRR and HDR, even in the 1080p @ 120Hz mode.

This TV has good compatibility with the Xbox Series S|X. It supports 1080p @ 120Hz gaming, which is great if you prefer smooth motion handling over graphics fidelity. It also supports VRR and HDR, even in the 1080p @ 120Hz mode.

Vizio advertises this TV to support HDMI 2.1. The TV's EDID information in Custom Resolution Utility (CRU) shows that it supports some features of HDMI 2.1 but that it's still limited to 18Gbps. This TV also supports Wi-Fi 6E, delivering higher speeds if your router supports it.

This TV supports eARC, or Enhanced Audio Return Channel, allowing you to pass high-quality, uncompressed audio to a compatible receiver or soundbar. It supports most of the common audio formats, so you won't have any issues using it to watch movies on Blu-ray, but it's limited to 2 channels on devices that only output LPCM, like the Nintendo Switch.

Unfortunately, the built-in speakers on the Vizio Quantum are sub-par at best. It has very little bass, no thump or rumble at all, and it can't get very loud, so it's not suitable for a noisy environment. Dialogue is clear and understandable, but it's disappointing overall.

The distortion performance on this TV is alright. There's some noticeable distortion at moderate volume levels, and it hardly increases at max since it just can't get very loud.

The Vizio SmartCast platform differs from other operating systems as the apps are web-based, and the interface feels slower. It's easy to learn, but there are a few bugs, as the SmartCast was unavailable when we first started the TV, and we had to reset it for it to work.

Unfortunately, like most TVs, there are ads throughout the SmartCast user interface, and they can't be disabled.

The Vizio SmartCast platform doesn't have an app store. There's an okay selection of apps built-in to the TV, and you can cast content from your phone if your favorite streaming service isn't available.

The included remote is simple. It has all the basic functions, including quick-access buttons to popular streaming services, and there's a mic for voice control. You can ask it to open apps and switch inputs, but you can't use it to search for content in apps or change the TV's settings.

A single button on the bottom left side turns it on/off and changes inputs.

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