Vizio P Series

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Eyes on with the P Series (By Jeff)

In person, the TVs appear to deliver — mostly. We saw the whole lineup in action in New York, where Vizio put its 65-inch P Series head to head against the 65-inch model from the Samsung 8500 series, both with the same settings turned on. Vizio noticeably outpaced Samsung in these demonstrations, but more importantly, its picture quality looked very good, especially considering the price. Motion on the P Series has much less blur than we’re used to, and the local dimming zones (there are 64 in the 65-inch and more/less depending on the size of the model) give a brighter, more detailed image across the whole screen. Scenes from The Hobbit were shown off and had beautiful depth on Vizio’s screen.

Blacks were surprisingly deep for a non-plasma TV as well, and were most noticeable when watching letterboxed movies — a common thing these days. Vizio’s 1080p upscaling is also impressive, showing a lot of sharp detail. For example, I have seen Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (both parts) a few times before, but some of the details picked up by the 4K upscaling was enlightening. Did you know that Daniel Radcliffe sweats a lot during filming? I never noticed before.

On the downside, because of the emphasis on image quality and price, these are not the thinnest LED TVs by a long shot. They popped out several inches from the wall. It’s a small sacrifice for a good image, in our opinion, but you’ll have to make up your own mind. On top of that, the interface of the TV was sluggish and low-res — not what you’d expect from a quad-core processor and 4K display. Poor interfaces are, sadly, the norm so it doesn’t ruin the TV, but don’t expect to throw out your set-top box or Chromecast any time soon.

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