Vizio V5 Series 2021  TV Review

The Vizio V655-J09 is a basic entry-level TV made entirely out of plastic. It looks like the Vizio V Series 2020 from the front, but the back looks different. It has thicker bezels than most modern TVs, but they're not too distracting.

The brightness of this TV has shifted a bit since the start of our Accelerated Longevity Test, but overall, it doesn't seem to be affected much.

The TV comes with the same V-shaped feet as other Vizio TVs. They're wide-set, so you'll need a large TV cabinet if you're not planning on wall-mounting it. It raises the screen enough so you can place a soundbar without blocking the image.

Footprint of the 65-inch TV: 47.6" x 12" x 3.25"

The back panel is smooth plastic, and the bottom part where the inputs are sticks out more. Sadly, there's no cable management, and because the inputs are set towards the center of the TV, they're tough to reach if you wall-mount it.

The build quality is okay. It's plastic throughout and feels solid, but it's nothing special. There's some flex on the back, especially near the logo in the center, but this is very common to all TVs and won't cause any issues. The TV wobbles a bit on the stand, but it isn't too bad considering its size.

This TV has a fantastic native contrast ratio. Blacks are deep and true in simple scenes. Since it lacks a local dimming feature, when there are bright highlights on the screen in an otherwise dark scene, the black levels rise in the dark areas and the TV looks washed out.

This TV has disappointing SDR brightness. It doesn't get bright enough to combat glare in a well-lit room.

These measurements are after calibration with the following settings:

• Picture Mode: Calibrated Dark
• Color Temperature: Warm
• Gamma: 2.2

This TV doesn't have a local dimming feature. The videos above are for reference only, so you can compare the Vizio V655-J09 to a TV that does have a local dimming feature. It's a direct-lit LED TV, which means that the backlights are placed directly behind the screen, which is different from edge-lit TVs and isn't the same as local dimming.

This TV doesn't have a local dimming feature. The videos above are for reference only, so you can compare the Vizio V655-J09 to a TV that does have a local dimming feature. It's a direct-lit LED TV, which means that the backlights are placed directly behind the screen, which is different from edge-lit TVs and isn't the same as local dimming.

The HDR brightness is poor. It doesn't get bright enough to make highlights stand out. The EOTF follows the target perfectly, but near blacks are raised a bit due to the lack of a local dimming feature. This means that most dim scenes and midtones are displayed at the brightness level the content creator intended. There's a very sharp cutoff at the TV's peak brightness, though, causing a loss of fine details in bright scenes.

These measurements are with no calibration with the following settings:

• HDR Picture Mode: Calibrated Dark
• Color Temperature: Standard
• Gamma: 1.8

The HDR brightness when gaming is exactly the same as outside of it. There's no noticeable change in brightness when you enable the low latency setting.

These measurements are with no calibration with the following settings:

• HDR Picture Mode: Calibrated Dark
• Game Low Latency: On
• Color Temperature: Standard
• Gamma: 1.8

This TV has some issues with the gray uniformity. The edges of the screen are darker due to bad vignetting, which you'll notice when using it as a PC monitor, and there's noticeable dirty screen effect in the center, which is distracting when watching sports.

The black uniformity is fantastic. There's no noticeable backlight bleed or cloudiness throughout the screen, even in very dark scenes. Although very uniform, blacks are raised when there are bright highlights on the screen due to the lack of a local dimming feature; this makes the background look blue instead of black.

This TV has a narrow viewing angle. It isn't ideal for wide seating areas as the image looks washed out as you move off-center, even at narrow viewing angles.

This TV has an optional Enhanced Viewing Angle setting that's marketed to improve the viewing angle. The results are with the setting off, but you can see the graphs with it on below. Unfortunately, it doesn't improve the viewing angle:

• Chroma Graph
• Hue Graph
• Lightness Graph

This TV has good reflection handling. It absorbs indirect reflections from small light sources well, and glare isn't an issue unless you place it opposite strong light sources like a window.

The Vizio V655-J09 has excellent accuracy out-of-the-box with just a few quick settings changes. Only saturated blues and reds are slightly inaccurate, and the white balance is just a bit off. Color temperature is also close to the 6500K target. Sadly, gamma doesn't follow the 2.2 target very well, so bright scenes are over-brightened.

The accuracy after calibration is remarkable. It's easy to calibrate, and any remaining inaccuracies are nearly impossible to spot, but dark red is still a bit off. Both the color temperature and gamma are nearly spot-on with the targets.

You can see our full calibration settings here.

The Vizio V655-J09 does a decent job at upscaling lower-resolution content like from DVDs. However, it doesn't look as good as other 4k TVs because content doesn't look as clear, and the image is blurrier.

This TV displays 720p content fairly well, but there are more artifacts than other 4k displays. Once again, the image isn't as well-defined as other displays, so the image is blurrier.

The Vizio V655-J09 displays 1080p content nearly as good as native 4k content.

There aren't any issues displaying native 4k content on this TV.

It's a 4k TV that can't display an 8k signal.

This TV has a BGR subpixel layout, which negatively impacts text clarity when using it as a PC monitor. However, it isn't a big issue and doesn't affect the overall picture quality. You can read more about it here.

The color gamut in HDR content is just okay. It has good coverage of the commonly-used DCI-P3 color space, but its coverage of the wider Rec. 2020 color space is limited. The tone mapping is very bad in either color space, so most colors in HDR are inaccurate.

Due to the lack of a wide color gamut, the color volume is disappointing. It displays dark colors well thanks to the high contrast but struggles with brighter colors.

This TV has excellent gradient handling. There's only a bit of banding in the darker shades, especially green and red, but it's minimal. Using Contour Smoothing helps smooth out banding, and setting it to 'High' helps best with real content, but this comes at the cost of losing fine details.

There are no signs of temporary image retention after displaying a high-contrast static image.

We don't expect VA panels to experience permanent image retention, as the VA panel in our long-term test appears immune.

The Vizio V655 has a decent response time, and bright scenes especially look good, with minimal motion blur behind fast-moving objects. Dark scenes and shadow details don't look as good, though, as there's noticeable overshoot when the TV goes from a very dark shade to a brighter one, and it's slow to stabilize. This causes the black smearing to be noticeable in the motion blur photo.

This TV has a flicker-free backlight if you set the Backlight setting to anything above '45' in the 'Calibrated Dark' and 'Calibrated' Picture Modes, and anything above '40' in the other modes. However, the TV uses Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) to dim the backlight below those settings and flickers at 480Hz. It always flickers at 480Hz in Game Mode.

This TV doesn't have an optional backlight strobing feature to reduce persistence blur, and the backlight always flickers at 480Hz in Game Mode, which you can't change. The score is based on that flicker frequency and the fact that you can't change it and not its actual performance.

The TV doesn't have a motion interpolation feature.

There's very little stutter when watching most movies or TV shows on this TV, but it's still somewhat noticeable with slow-panning shots.

This TV removes 24p judder from the native apps and connected sources that can send a 24p signal, like a Blu-ray player or a streaming device with a 'Match Frame Rate' feature. It can't remove judder from 60Hz sources like a cable box or older streaming devices, though.

The Vizio V5 Series doesn't support any VRR technology, but the higher-end V6 Series models and the newer Vizio V Series 2022 support it.

This TV has low input lag as long as Game Low Latency is enabled. It's low enough outside Game Mode that you won't notice too much delay while scrolling through the TV's menus or using the on-screen keyboard.

This TV supports any common resolution up to 60Hz. It displays chroma 4:4:4 at any supported resolution as long as you enable the Full Color 4:4:4 setting. This helps it display clear text when using it as a PC monitor.

Since the Vizio V655-J09 doesn't support any signal above 60Hz and is limited to HDMI 2.0 bandwidth, it doesn't support any 120Hz signal from the PS5 or Xbox Series X. It has an Auto Low Latency Mode that automatically switches the TV into Game Mode when a game from a compatible device is launched.

Vizio advertises that this TV supports HDMI 2.1, but unfortunately, this isn't true, and it's still limited to HDMI 2.0 bandwidth.

The composite inputs are great if you still use an old gaming console or any other device that uses this connection.

There's eARC support on HDMI 1, allowing you to pass high-quality, uncompressed audio to a compatible receiver through a single HDMI connection.

The Vizio V655-J09 has a mediocre frequency response. It gets fairly loud and has a well-balanced sound profile, so it's good for listening to dialogue. Sadly, it doesn't produce much bass, if at all.

The distortion performance isn't bad. There isn't too much at moderate listening levels, but there's more at its max volume.

The Vizio SmartCast system is decent and easy to use. However, it can feel laggy, so menu navigation isn't the smoothest. You can move your apps around on the home page, making them easier to access.

There's suggested content on the home screen, but we didn't see any ads.

Unfortunately, you can't download any extra apps besides the ones that come pre-installed. On the plus side, you can cast anything you want from your phone thanks to the Google Chromecast and Apple AirPlay support.

This TV comes with a new Vizio remote that lacks a Numpad and has a mic for voice control, which past models didn't have. You can ask the voice control to change inputs, open apps, and ask the weather, but you can't search for specific content in apps or change settings.

There are three buttons on the back right side to change the volume, inputs, and power the TV on/off.

• Remote (with 2x AAA batteries)
• User guides