Vizio Quantum Pro Review | Has Vizio Staged a Comeback?

Folks this is not going to  be your typical TV review so   I'm going to have to go ahead and  ask you to uh buckle up for this one welcome back everyone I'm Caleb Denison  and this is my somewhat unconventional review   of the Vizio Quantum Pro TV unconventional  in that there will be a little more Preamble   before I start talking about this TV's  performance and even when I do get to   the performance section things are going to  well you'll see so if you haven't already   grabbed yourself a beverage and a snack you  might want to go do that now it's cool I'll wait oh hey that was quick you all set all right  let's go oh and if you're at the store right now   and just want to know whether you should buy this  TV feel free to click the takeaway section that   we have time coded and Linked In the description  so folks here's the deal my first flat panel TV   was a 37 in Vizio I was upgrading from a 32in  JVC CRT TV that weighed like 150 lb and I was   just so stoked to have a TV that I could mount on  my wall this is back before I knew anything about   black levels or the fact that some folks were  paying as much for plasma TVs as you might pay   for a small car at the time eventually as I got  into doing TV reviews I managed to snag myself   a Panasonic ST60 Plasma TV which I still have  kicking around in a storage unit but that Vizio   TV and Vizio in general has held a special place  in my heart ever since I even bought my parents a   Vizio flat screen over the years since then I've  reviewed many Vizio TVs and until very recently   Vizio's TVs were reliably the best value on the  market Vizio stood alone in this regard again   until very recently now some of you already know  that I'm about to say that Hisense and TCL came   seemingly out of nowhere and started giving Vizio  some serious competition about 6 years ago TCL and   its six series TV stole Vizio's value Crown it  happens that's how things go some times since   then Vizio has toyed around with some interesting  product line diversification at one point the 2022   Vizio P series Quantum X was the brightest TV on  the market and though it was punching up into the   premium price class it was still less expensive  than the nearest competition and that was the last   time I was just blown away by a Vizio TV's picture  performance but for the past few years one thing   has held me back from giving just terrifically  enthusiastic ftic recommendations to Vizio TVs   that would be its Smart TV interface I didn't  like the layout and I always felt it was just   sluggish it just seemed dated and behind the  times now keep in mind Vizio was contending   with the Roku and Google TV Platforms in TCL and  Hisense TVs so you can imagine my excitement when   viio let me know it was completely overhauling its  Smart TV platform and I got a sneak peek of it in   action and I got even more excited I believe  I started positing the possibility that Vizio   was about to Stage a huge comeback which leads  us here to the Vizio Quantum Pro it is not the   over-the-top Ultra Premium knit bursting TV the  P series Quantum X was this is more of a value   oriented TV which has always been Vizio's bread  and butter and it's got Vizio's new home screen   that's what Vizio calls it smart TV platform now  plus it boasts some pretty encouraging specs for   its price which brings us to comparison time at  around $700 for the 65in model that you see here   the Vizio Quantum Pro competes directly with the  Hisense U7K and the TCL Q7 it actually undercuts   those TVs by about 50 and 100 bucks respectively  we'll get back to comparing in a moment right now   let me tell you about my first moments with the  Vizio Quantum Pro this TV is packed extremely   well now my review sample came in a shipping box  so I had to get the TV box out of that but as I   cracked open the TV box I was really impressed to  see that Vizio has reinforced the corners of its   foam with rigid plastic Shields that I think will  do wonders to protect this thing in shipping so   if you order this TV online I think you can trust  it's going to arrive in good shape no matter how   the Box itself looks by the time it gets to you  assembly was simp simple or well it should have   been see I made a mistake here and didn't seat the  legs just right and got the height off the Quantum   Pro allows a low slung option or one propped  up a bit more so that you can toss a soundbar   below it I opted for the lad as I intended to  keep a soundbar going on the test bench while   evaluating this TV now my first experience with  the new Vizio home screen was very encouraging   the TV boots up super quickly there is virtually  no lag as I click around the screen or enter text   I mean really strong start the remote is simple  enough with an ergonomic feel and volume keys on   the side kind of like a Roku remote odd choice of  streaming partners taking up residence on the hot   keys but okay another thumbs up then I started  watching content casually and well I felt a bit   deflated but that's happened before with other  TVs that I eventually warmed up to so though I   clearly look non-plug plus here I would later  regain some optimism even though at this point   I had already suspected that I was not going to  be a fan of the backlight system over the course   of the next several days I just used the Quantum  Pro in everyday life and gathered some notes along   the way at some point I wrote seems great when the  content is bright but less so with dimmer content   then eventually it was time to measure the TV and  folks that's when things flew off the rails for me now before I go on I want to call out that the  folks at Vizio have been wonderful to work with   throughout this process they have patiently  answered questions hopped on the phone with   me at my request they've been very kind now  while the folks that I talk to are internal   product marketing and engineering folks it's a  nice reminder that Vizio is a us-based company   and generally offers solid customer service which  is a bonus in my book anyway guys the measurements   this TV was not measuring well at all and that  just didn't make sense especially since Vizio   had provided some measurements that it had taken  as part of a reviewer's guide that they sent me   after a lot of back and forth I noticed that the  measurements they got were attained with some very   specific and to me somewhat odd settings caveats  anyway I made some changes that I'm about to share   with you and I was shocked to to see measurement  results that are among the best I've seen from any   LCD based TV now that may sound like a good thing  but I don't think it is here's the deal I'm just   going to show you but before I do it's important  for me to repeat something I've said countless   times on this channel but it's important to keep  this in mind measurements never ever tell the   whole story and sometimes they can be downright  misleading right so these are the measurements I   got from the Vizio Quantum Pros calibrated Dart  and calibrated picture modes these long lines   here are not good you want these to be as short as  possible the lower the number the better anything   above a three is technically a visible error and  as you can see the errors are well above that in   some cases they are literally off the charts  now those are the measurements I got with the   TV using the default settings for calibrated and  calibrated dark okay you turn the TV on pick these   supposedly more accurate picture presets and  that's what you get which by the numbers is not   great but watch what happens when I turn off the  local dimming feature guys these are some of the   best pre-calibration readings I've ever seen from  an LCD TV what in the world look here's grayscale   with the local dimming setting on medium bad very  bad here is the same test after turning off local   dimming amazingly good here's a color chart with  local dimming on medium bad some of the worst I've   seen from a TV in this class but turn off the  local dimming suddenly it's outstanding so what   in the world is going on here well apparently it  is not uncommon for some local dimming systems to   negatively impact the performance of a TV but  I've never seen it like this the gamma is very   poor with local dimming turned on and that poor  gamma performance has a negative impact on just   about everything else that I measure and guys I  gave this TV every opportunity I made the tests as   forgiving as I could I increased the test window  size to 18% I increased the delay between when   the pattern went up and the Colorimeter took its  reading so that the backlight had plenty of time   to do what it needed to do just in case it was  a little bit slow turns out unless I use a full   screen test pattern or turn local dimming  off which is basically the same thing the   measurements were consistently not good now I did  notice that the bigger the test pattern got the   better the measurements got and that's going to  be important in a moment so just log that in your   memory for now anyway it can be argued that for  SDR content local dimming systems can negatively   impact gray scale and color performance and so it  is a less stressful approach to test full screen   or with local dimming off but I have never done  that and I've seen much better results than this   even from the TCL Q7 which I kind of dumped on in  my review for not measuring as well as I'd hoped   just to put all this business into perspective so  I guess I can see an argument in favor of turning   off local dimming and turning the brightness  way down for great accuracy in a dark room for   SDR content and when in a bright room using  the local dimming to get a brighter picture   with decent contrast at the expense of accuracy  okay I guess I can live with that proposition   sounds like a bit much to me but you know I'm  trying to throw some bones here but for HDR I   cannot be as gracious because for HDR you need  local dimming or you will not get a good picture   that's because the TV has to cover a much wider  range of brightness and you want those punchy HDR   highlights if you don't have local dimming it's  just going to be a blooming and Halo Festival in   short it's going to look like this this is HDR  content on this TV with the local dimming turned   off um no thank you so for HDR as you can see  in these measurement results unless the whole   screen is lit up bright accuracy will not be  there but only nerds care about accuracy right   most people aren't going to care to a point sure  I think there's something to that but to discuss   this let's step out of the Nit Nerd section  and start talking about this TV's real world performance so if you're just rejoining us having  skipped the knit nerds measurement section let me   quickly catch you up it turns out that if you  turn off this TV's local dimming feature it is   remarkably accurate but as we know not everyone  cares about accuracy as long as the TV looks good   right so does this TV look good it can yes when  this TV is putting up a uniformly bright image   that is the content is of well lit scenes this  TV is a lot of fun to watch it gives you that   vibe that you've got a great TV on your hands  and bright content is exactly the kind of demo   footage you will see at the store so if you're  looking at a Vizio Quantum Pro at the store   right now and wondering if it's a good TV to buy  I would say yes it's a fine tv to buy so long as   you mostly watch cable TV and mostly watch bright  content like sports or daytime television things   like that just be aware that its color accuracy  isn't great uh especially for HDR content perfect   example I used this TV to watch the Super Bowl  it was in hdr on YouTube TV and Paramount plus   and the Kansas City Chief's uniforms were not  the right color and you could just tell now if   that kind of thing isn't going to bother you cool  no judgment for me so to reiterate when the TV is   putting out bright content it looks pretty good  but when the lights go down on the content when   you're watching images with a lot of contrast or  maybe the content is just dimmer if you watch a   lot of sci-fi or space-based content like anything  from the Star Wars universe or Star Trek that kind   of thing that's where this TV comes up short  that's how I would sum up the Vizio Quantum Pro   beautiful when it's bright so if you just need a  bright TV then this could be a decent option for   you unless that is you watch a lot of low quality  streaming content because aside from the not so   impressive backlight performance this TV's other  struggle seems to be in cleaning up the lowquality   streaming TV content case in point watching this  YouTube golf video which admittedly was a live   stream so the quality was a little compromised to  begin with but there is obvious macro blocking and   banding here that the TV isn't cleaning up to  make sure it wasn't just an unredeemable signal   I checked the Sony A95K and let's be fair  that TV is a magician with processing but   it was significantly better so I asked Chris my  producer to check the same video on his Samsung   Q90C and sure enough it was better on that TV too  so maybe not the best TV for lowquality streaming   content either all of this to say I just can't  recommend this TV when the Hisense U7K exists   I'm not saying don't buy it I'm just saying there  is a better option at the same price and I want   you to know what you'll be getting because I  can guarantee you that what you'll see on this   TV at the store is not what you can expect to get  when you get it home unless you just watch really   bright stuff all the time then you should be just  fine the TV's got a nice price on it and like I   said Vizio's new home screen is great that's the  best thing Vizio has done for its TV business in   like 7 years and thank you for that IO so not the  big comeback I was hoping for doesn't change the   fact that I still have high hopes for Vizio going  forward I know there are really smart people there   I just need the execs to let those smart people  do what they're good at doing because I just get   this vibe like the engineers are saying hey we  should really do this and some bean counter is   coming along and saying nah I think we'll not do  that so we can save on costs of course all that   may soon be moot rumor has it that Walmart is in  talks to purchase Vizio for something around $2 billion thanks as always for watching  everyone what do you think about all of   it let's get after it down in the comments  and while you're down there please hit the   like button it's more important than  ever for this video I'll see you on   the next one and until then here's  two other videos I think you might like let me make sure it's  not a surprise TV delivery

Channel: Digital Trends

Views: 75,133

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Id: Smu_q_dATcs

Length: 16min 33sec (993 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 01 2024