Vizio V Series 2020 TV Review

The Vizio V Series is Vizio's lowest-end model in the 2020 lineup and replaces the Vizio V Series 2019. In 2021, it's been replaced by the Vizio V5 Series 2021. Its main competitors are the Hisense H6570G, the LG UN6950, and the Samsung TU7000.

The Vizio V Series' design is simple and looks almost identical to the Vizio V Series 2019. The borders are thin but not as thin as other higher-end Vizio TVs, like the Vizio P Series Quantum 2020.

The feet are set almost as wide as the TV, and there's no alternate narrow position, so you need a large surface to put the TV on if you don't plan on wall-mounting it. They support the TV well and don't wobble much.

Footprint of the 65 inch stand: 49.8" x 12.0"

The back of the TV is plain. The top half is metal, while the bottom half is plastic. There's no cable management, and some of the inputs are back-facing, which isn't ideal if you want to wall-mount the TV as they're hard to reach.

The TV is relatively thin and shouldn't stick out much when wall-mounted.

The build quality is okay. It's a mix of metal and plastic, and while it doesn't feel particularly premium, we didn't notice any issues with the construction except for a little bit of flex bottom half of the back panel. The stand supports the TV well and doesn't wobble much.

This TV has an excellent contrast ratio, as expected for a VA panel. This results in deep blacks when viewed in a dark room. Unfortunately, there's no local dimming feature to improve black levels. Note that contrast can vary between units.

This TV has disappointing SDR peak brightness, and it's not bright enough to overcome glare in a bright room. Fortunately, there's very little variation in peak brightness with different content.

We measured the SDR peak brightness after calibration in the 'Calibrated Dark' Picture Mode, with Gamma set to '2.2', and Color Temperature set to 'Warm'.

If image accuracy isn't as important to you as peak brightness, the 'Bright' Picture mode is a bit brighter; however, the difference isn't really noticeable, as it only goes up to 226 cd/m² in the 50% window.

Update 07/26/2021: We've added two new videos demonstrating the backlight behavior with real content.

Although Vizio markets this TV as having a full-array backlight, it's just a direct-lit backlight, and it doesn't have a local dimming feature. The video is for reference only, so you can see how the local dimming feature on other displays compares to one without local dimming.

Update 07/26/2021: We've added two new videos demonstrating the backlight behavior with real content.

This TV doesn't have a local dimming feature. The video is for reference only, so you can see how the local dimming feature on other displays compares to one without local dimming.

The HDR peak brightness is bad. It's not bright enough for small specular highlights to stand out, resulting in a rather flat, dull image. The EOTF follows the PQ curve relatively well, with a sharp roll-off towards its peak brightness, but most scenes aren't quite as bright as they should be.

We measured the HDR peak brightness before calibration in the 'Calibrated Dark' Picture Mode, with Gamma set to 2.2, and Color Temperature set to 'Warm'.

If you find HDR content too dim, you can make it brighter by setting the Picture Mode to 'Calibrated Dark', Gamma to '1.8', Color Temperature to 'Standard', Local Contrast to 'High', Backlight Control to 'On', and Black Detail to 'High'. These settings result in a brighter image, as you can see in this EOTF.

HDR peak brightness is about the same in Game Mode as out of it.

Gray uniformity on our unit is mediocre. There's vignetting at the corners and a fair amount of dirty screen effect (DSE) in the center. The DSE is slightly better in dark scenes, but the backlight bleed is much more noticeable. Note that gray uniformity can vary between individual units.

Black uniformity on our unit is great. There's a bit of clouding at the bottom of the screen, and some backlight bleed along the edges. Note that black uniformity can vary between individual units.

This TV has poor viewing angles, typical of most VA panels. Images look washed out when viewed from the sides, so it isn't ideal for large rooms with wide seating areas. If you need something with wide viewing angles, check out the LG UP7000.

This TV has good reflection handling. The semi-gloss finish doesn't diffuse direct reflections very well, though, so bright lights can still be distracting. Since this TV can't get very bright, visibility can still be an issue in a bright environment.

This TV has good accuracy out of the box, but this can vary between individual units due to manufacturing tolerances. The white balance is decent, but brighter shades of gray are a bit off. Colors are great for the most part, except for yellows, which might be noticeable with some content. Gamma is pretty close to our 2.2 calibration target for a dark room, but bright scenes are over-brightened a bit.

After calibration, the overall accuracy of this TV is outstanding. White balance is almost perfect, and the color temperature is almost spot-on our 6500K target. Yellows are much better, but there are still hard-to-spot inaccuracies with a few colors. Gamma is better, except that bright scenes are now too dark.

You can see our recommended settings here.

Upscaling of 480p content, like DVDs, is decent, but it's a bit worse than most 4k TVs on the market.

This TV upscales 720p content well, but it isn't as good as most other recent 4k TVs. If you want a similar, entry-level TV that does a better job at upscaling 720p content, check out the TCL 4 Series 2020.

This TV upscales 1080p content well with no visible artifacts.

This TV displays 4k content perfectly.

This TV can't display an 8k signal.

Like most VA panels, this TV uses a less-optimal BGR sub-pixel structure. While this doesn't affect picture quality, it can affect how text is rendered when using the TV as a PC monitor. You can read more about it here.

This TV has a decent color gamut, but it can't display a wide color gamut for HDR content. Coverage of the DCI P3 color space used by most current HDR content is good, but it can't display the full range of any of the primary colors. Coverage of the wider Rec. 2020 color space is disappointing, so it's not very future-proof.

This TV has a mediocre color volume, mostly due to its lack of a wide color gamut. Saturated blues aren't very bright, and despite the high contrast ratio, it can't display saturated colors at low luminance levels very well.

This TV has excellent gradient handling. There's only some minor banding in the greens and grays. Setting Contour Smoothing to 'High' removes most of it, but it can cause a loss of fine details in some scenes.

There are no signs of temporary image retention; however, it can vary between individual units.

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 a mediocre response time. Transitions in dark scenes are considerably slower than bright scenes, so there's a significant blur trail behind fast-moving objects in darker scenes. On the other hand, there's no noticeable overshoot, so there's no inverse ghosting behind fast-moving objects.

The backlight is flicker-free when the brightness is set to max. However, if it's set to anything below that, the backlight flickers at 480Hz in all picture modes.

This TV doesn't have an optional Black Frame Insertion feature, but it flickers permanently at 480Hz at any backlight level below the maximum, which can help to reduce the appearance of persistence blur a bit.

This TV doesn't have a motion interpolation feature.

Due to the TV's slower response time, there's very little stutter in lower frame content.

This TV can remove judder from 24p sources and native apps, but not from 60p/60i sources like most cable boxes. To enable judder removal from supported sources, simply enable Film Mode.

This TV doesn't support any variable refresh rate technology.

The Vizio V655-H19's input lag is outstanding. To get the lowest input lag, set Game Low Latency to 'On'.

This TV supports most common resolutions at 60Hz and can display proper chroma 4:4:4 at 1080p and 4k, which is important for clear text. It can display an image in 1440p with chroma subsampling; however, it looks stretched out and fuzzy. If you want to use chroma 4:4:4, first set the PC to 4:4:4 or RGB, then set the Full Color 4:4:4 setting to 'On' on the TV. For signals that require full bandwidth, set HDMI Mode to '2.1'.

This TV only supports basic 4k @ 60Hz formats from the new consoles. It doesn't support 120Hz signals or variable refresh rates. To get the lowest input lag, set Game Low Latency to 'On'. Setting it to 'Auto' enables the 'Auto Low Latency Mode', which turns on Game Low Latency when a game is launched from a compatible device, like an Xbox or PC.

Update 07/26/2021: To confirm that this TV doesn't support any extra bandwidth, we connected it to a PC with an NVIDIA RTX 3070 and tried sending a 4k @ 60Hz 10-bit signal with full RGB. This format surpasses the bandwidth limitations of HDMI 2.0, but should be supported by the TV's processor. Unfortunately, when sending this signal to any of the 3 HDMI ports the TV wasn't able to display anything, confirming that it doesn't support HDMI 2.1.

Although advertised to support HDMI 2.1, this TV can't take advantage of the extra bandwidth on any of its ports.

It's rare these days, but this TV has a dedicated composite input, great for retro gamers. No breakout adapter is required.

This TV supports eARC, allowing the TV to pass high-quality audio signals like Dolby Atmos vis TrueHD over an HDMI connection. To use it, set eARC to 'On', and Digital Audio Out to 'Digital'.

The frequency response is okay. It delivers dialogues clearly, but it noticeably lacks bass, so it can't produce a thumping or rumbling sound. It gets reasonably loud, and there isn't much compression when playing at max volume.

Decent distortion performance. There's minimal distortion at moderate volume levels, and even at max volume, it shouldn't be audible for most people.

Vizio's SmartCast interface is decent. It's easy to use, but there are occasional bugs here and there. During testing, none of the apps opened until we restarted the TV through the settings menu. That said, we only had to do it once, and it worked fine after the reboot.

There are ads and suggested content on the home screen. Unfortunately, there's no way to disable or opt-out of them.

The Vizio V Series comes with many apps pre-installed; however, you can't add more since Vizio doesn't have an app store.

The remote has changed slightly from the Vizio V Series 2019. It now has a circular navigation pad and a dedicated button to access Vizio's 'Watch Free' feature. It doesn't have a mic for voice control, but the replacement to this TV, the Vizio V5 Series 2021, has a new remote that does.

The controls are on the right backside of the TV. They allow you to turn the TV On/Off, adjust the volume, and change the input source.

• User guide
• 2x AAA batteries
• Remote control