The Vizio V Series 2020 is an okay budget TV with a VA panel. It has excellent contrast and great black uniformity, making it a great choice for dark-room viewing. It's not as well-suited for a bright room, though, as although it has good reflection handling, it has disappointing peak brightness, so glare might still be an issue. It has outstanding low input lag, but it's not a very good TV for gaming, as it has a slow response time and doesn't support any advanced gaming features, like variable refresh rates (VRR). It has a decent smart interface, but like all current Vizio TVs, it has a limited selection of smart apps, instead focusing on its ability to display apps cast from your smartphone or tablet.
The Vizio V Series is okay for most uses. Its exceptionally low input lag makes it an okay choice for gaming and a decent TV for use as a PC monitor. However, it has a mediocre response time that makes motion look blurry, which isn't ideal for fast-paced games or for watching sports. It's okay for watching movies due to its high contrast ratio, but don't expect too much in HDR content, as it can't display a wide color gamut and doesn't get very bright. It's adequate for watching TV shows, as long as you don't mind its poor viewing angles and low brightness.
The Vizio V Series is okay for watching movies. It's well-suited for dark room viewing due to its high contrast ratio and impressive black uniformity, but it doesn't have a local dimming feature to improve black levels further. It can remove judder from 24p sources and native apps, and it doesn't stutter much in lower frame rate content like movies. There's a fair amount of dirty screen effect, which is distracting in wide panning shots; however, uniformity can vary between units.
The Vizio V Series is adequate for watching TV shows. Even though it handles reflections well, it's better suited for dark rooms as it doesn't get bright enough to combat glare. Its narrow viewing angles make images look washed out from the sides, so it isn't the best option if you tend to walk around while watching TV. On the upside, it upscales 1080p content from cable boxes well, and its VA panel's immunity to permanent burn-in means you don't have to worry about watching the same program or channel all day.
The Vizio V Series is mediocre for watching sports. Like most VA panel TVs, it has narrow viewing angles, which isn't ideal for wide seating areas. Even though it has good reflection handling, it doesn't get bright enough to overcome glare. Its response time is a bit slow and causes more motion blur in fast-moving scenes. Also, there's a fair amount of dirty screen effect on our unit; however, uniformity can vary between units.
The Vizio V Series is an okay gaming TV. It has low input lag, ensuring a responsive gaming experience, but the response time is a bit slow, so fast-paced games tend to look very blurry. It also doesn't support any advanced gaming features, like variable refresh rate technology (VRR), and it's limited to a 60Hz refresh rate, so it can't display 120Hz inputs from the latest consoles. Picture quality is just as good in Game Mode, though, which is great.
The Vizio V Series is okay for watching movies in HDR. It can produce deep blacks for a great dark room viewing experience, as it has a high contrast ratio and impressive black uniformity. Unfortunately, it lacks a local dimming feature, can't display a wide color gamut, and doesn't get bright enough to make highlights stand out.
The Vizio V Series is adequate for gaming in HDR. It has low input lag, but its response time is mediocre, and it doesn't support any variable refresh rate technology. It can't display a wide color gamut and doesn't get bright enough to make highlights pop, so HDR content doesn't look much different from SDR.
The Vizio V Series is a decent TV for use as a PC monitor. It has low input lag, supports most common resolutions, and can display proper chroma 4:4:4. However, its mediocre response time causes more motion blur, and its narrow viewing angles make the edges of the screen look inaccurate if you sit too close.
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 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.
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.
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.
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/S435 2020.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
We tested the 65 inch 2020 Vizio V Series (V655-H19), and for the most part, we expect our results to be valid for the 40" (V405-H19), 43" (V435-H11), 50" (V505-H19), 55" (V555-H11), 58" (V585-H11), 60" (V605-H3), 70" (V705-H3), and 75" (V755-H4) versions.
Size | Model |
---|---|
40" | V405-H19 |
43" | V435-H11 |
50" | V505-H19 |
55" | V555-H11 |
58" | V585-H11 |
60" | V605-H3 |
65" | V655-H19 |
70" | V705H3 |
75" | V755-H4 |
If someone comes across a different type of panel or if their 2020 Vizio V Series doesn't correspond to our review, let us know and we will update the review. Note that some tests, like gray uniformity, can vary between individual units.
You can see our unit's label here.
The Vizio V Series 2020 is an okay budget TV. It's among the best cheap TVs on the market, but it isn't as good as the similarly-priced LG UN6950. The UN6950 has much higher peak brightness and significantly faster response time. For more options, check out our recommendations for the best budget TVs, the best TVs under $500, and the best smart TVs.
Overall, the Vizio V Series 2020 and the Samsung TU7000 are very similar TVs, but there are a few differences. The Vizio has much better reflection handling, and it can remove judder from 24p sources and native apps. On the other hand, the Samsung has a faster response time and gets a bit brighter.
The Vizio V Series 2020 and the LG UP7000 are both okay entry-level TVs with different panel types. While the LG has an IPS-like panel with wide viewing angles and low contrast, the Vizio has a VA panel with better contrast but worse viewing angles. The LG gets much brighter, making it a better choice for a well-lit room. Even though the LG has a quicker response time, motion looks better on the Vizio because there's less image duplication than on the LG.
The Vizio V Series 2020 is better than the TCL 4 Series/S435 2020. The Vizio has better reflection handling, a slightly quicker response time, and lower input lag. However, the TCL upscales 480p and 720p content better, and the built-in Roku TV is less laggy and has an app store compared to Vizio's SmartCast system.
The Vizio V5 Series 2021 is similar to its predecessor, the Vizio V Series 2020. The 2021 model comes with Vizio's new remote that features a built-in mic for voice control, which the 2020 model doesn't have. The 2021 model also gets slightly brighter in SDR, but it's not a significant difference, and other than that, both TVs deliver similar picture quality.
The Hisense R6090G is a bit better than the Vizio V Series 2020. The Hisense gets brighter, does a better job at upscaling lower-resolution content, and has a quicker response time. However, the Vizio has slightly better reflection handling, much better gradient handling, and slightly lower input lag.
Overall, the LG UN6950 is marginally better than the Vizio V Series 2020. The LG gets brighter in SDR and HDR, and it has a much quicker response time. However, the Vizio is a better choice for dark rooms due to its higher contrast ratio and better black uniformity.
The Vizio V Series 2019 is marginally better than the Vizio V Series 2020. The 2019 has a higher contrast ratio, faster response time, and it gets a lot brighter. The 2020 has better reflection handling and much lower input lag.
The Vizio V Series 2020 and the TCL 4 Series 2019 are very similar. The Vizio has better reflection handling and color accuracy, and it gets brighter to combat glare. However, the TCL has a much faster response time and a higher native contrast ratio.
The Vizio V Series 2020 is slightly better than the Hisense H6510G. The Vizio has better reflection handling, better color accuracy, and significantly lower input lag. However, the Hisense has a better contrast ratio, quicker response time, and it gets a bit brighter.
The Samsung TU6980 is slightly better than the Vizio V Series 2020. The Samsung gets brighter, does a better job at upscaling 480p and 720p content, and has a much quicker response time. However, the Vizio has a better contrast ratio, better black uniformity, and better reflection handling.
The Vizio V Series is better than the Hisense H6570G for most uses. The Vizio has better reflection handling, significantly lower input lag, and better color accuracy out-of-the-box. However, the Hisense gets brighter in HDR, and it has a much quicker response time.
The LG CX OLED is significantly better than the Vizio V Series 2020. The LG's OLED panel has an infinite contrast ratio to produce perfect blacks, and it has a near-instantaneous response time and a 120Hz refresh rate. It also has wider viewing angles, higher peak brightness, and much better reflection handling. However, the Vizio's slower response time causes less stutter in lower frame rate content, and its input lag is slightly lower.