Vizio V Series 2020 TV Review

The Vizio V Series' design is simple and looks almost identical to the Vizio V Series 2019. The borders are thin so they aren't distracting while watching content.

The feet are set almost as wide as the TV, 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 the inputs are hard to reach with it wall-mounted because some are back-facing and the others are side-facing but set into the TV.

The Vizio V Series has okay build quality. It's a mix of metal and plastic, and while it doesn't feel particularly premium, there aren't any issues with the construction except for a little bit of flex on the bottom half of the back panel. The stand supports the TV well and doesn't wobble much.

The Vizio V Series has an excellent contrast ratio. This results in deep blacks next to bright highlights when viewed in a dark room. Unfortunately, there's no local dimming feature to improve black levels.

The Vizio V Series has disappointing SDR peak brightness, and it isn't bright enough to overcome glare in a bright room. Fortunately, there's very little variation in peak brightness with different content.

These results are from 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.

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 backlighting compares to the backlighting on other TVs.

This TV doesn't have a local dimming feature. The video is for reference only, so you can see how the backlighting performs versus other TVs.

The HDR peak brightness is bad. It isn't bright enough for small specular highlights to stand out, resulting in a rather flat, dull image. The EOTF doesn't follow the target PQ curve well either, as dark scenes are darker than they should be, and there's a loss of fine details in most scenes due to the sharp roll-off at the peak brightness, which happens early.

These results are 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, try 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'. This makes shadow details brighter, but it doesn't impact most scenes, as you can see in this EOTF, and it doesn't change the peak luminosity.

The HDR peak brightness is about the same in Game Mode as out of it. There's no noticeable difference and the settings used during testing are the same as outside of Game Mode, but with the Game Low Latency setting enabled.

The Vizio V Series has mediocre gray uniformity. There's vignetting at the corners and a fair amount of dirty screen effect in the center. This can get distracting while watching sports, and especially if you want to use it as a PC monitor.

The Vizio V Series has great black uniformity. Due to some clouding and backlight bleed, the screen looks closer to blue than black. Sadly, it doesn't have a local dimming feature to improve it.

The Vizio V Series has a poor viewing angle. The screen looks washed out when viewed from the sides, so it isn't ideal for large rooms with wide seating areas. If you need something with a wide viewing angle, then check out the LG UP7000.

The Vizio V Series 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 is an issue in a bright environment, but it's fine in rooms with a few lamps around.

The Vizio V Series has good accuracy out of the box. The white balance is decent, but brighter shades of gray are a bit off. Colors are great for the most part, except for yellows. Gamma is pretty close to the 2.2 target for moderately-lit rooms, but bright scenes are over-brightened a bit.

After calibration to the D65 white point, the overall accuracy is incredible. It's easy to calibrate as the white balance is almost perfect, and the color temperature is almost spot-on with the 6500K target. Yellows are much better, and there are only a few inaccuracies with colors. Gamma is better, except that bright scenes are now too dark.

See the calibration settings here.

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

This TV upscales 720p content well, but it isn't as good as most other recent 4k TVs as the signal doesn't look as sharp and it's blurrier on the Vizio V Series.

This TV upscales 1080p content well with no visible artifacts. Unlike with the lower resolutions, 1080p content looks as good as most other 4k TVs.

The Vizio V Series displays 4k content perfectly.

This TV can't display an 8k signal.

The Vizio V Series uses a BGR subpixel layout. While this doesn't affect picture quality, it negatively impacts how text is rendered when using the TV as a PC monitor, but there are workarounds. You can read more about it here.

The Vizio V Series has an okay color gamut. Coverage of the DCI-P3 color space used by most current HDR content is good, but it doesn'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 doesn't display saturated colors at low luminance levels very well.

The Vizio V Series 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 high-quality content.

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 V Series 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. The backlight flicker also causes image duplications with fast-moving content.

The Vizio V Series uses pulse-width modulation to dim the backlight. It's 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, causing image duplication.

This TV doesn't have an optional backlight strobing feature, but it flickers permanently at 480Hz at any backlight level below the maximum. This causes image duplication and there's no way to change it. The score is based on the flicker frequency and the fact that you can't change it, and not the actual performance.

The Vizio Series V 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.

This TV doesn't support any variable refresh rate technology to reduce screen tearing. If you want a TV that does support VRR, then check out the Vizio V Series 2022.

The Vizio V Series has very low input lag when gaming in Game Mode. You won't notice any delay, which is great for reaction-based games.

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.

This TV only supports basic 4k @ 60Hz formats from the PS5 and Xbox Series as it doesn't have HDMI 2.1 bandwidth or VRR support. However, it does support Auto Low Latency Mode that automatically switches the TV into Game Mode for low input lag when you launch a game from a compatible device.

Although advertised to support HDMI 2.1, this TV is limited to HDMI 2.0 bandwidth.

The dedicated composite input is great if you have an old gaming console or any other device that requires this connection as not many modern TVs have it.

This TV supports eARC, allowing you to pass high-quality audio signals over an HDMI connection to a compatible receiver.

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

This TV has decent distortion performance. There's minimal distortion at moderate volume levels, but it increases at the 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.

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 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