Vizio PS55 First Impressions Review

That'd be a fair price for a 55-inch smart TV of the 1080p variety—in fact, the UHD PS55 is more affordable than higher-end 46-inch Samsung smart TVs from two years ago. The 65-inch P Series—which we also saw on display—will cost about $2,200. Tell that to 2013's $5,000 price tags.

Now, the logical conclusion might be that Vizio's P Series TVs are cheap because they're some kind of UHD knock-off that you'd find in the back corner of the 7-11 near the Stratosphere Hotel. Our entire TV team has seen them, though, and one thing is obvious: Vizio isn't messing around this year.

{{boy_banner}}The Vizio P Series was selected as our 2014 Best Value 4K Television and Best Mid-Range LCD Television. To find out why, check out our 2014 Best of Year Television Awards.{{/boy_banner}}

Picture Quality

♫ Come full-array, come full-array, come full-array with me... ♫

The 55-inch P Series was hanging on a wall during Vizio's exhibit, so we didn't get to check out the port selection, on-set controls, or anything like that. Still, it wasn't hard to see how good it looked while playing native 4K content.

One of the biggest challenges facing 4K TVs on the picture quality side of things is, well, picture quality. We'd all fall in love with a 4K plasma, but inherent issues with LED TVs make them dodgy candidates regardless of resolution. Thankfully, the P Series UHDs are equipped with full-array LED backlighting, with 64 zones of local dimming.

Local dimming means the LEDs are grouped into control zones that can be turned off and on as content demands. This (should) eliminate issues with uniformity and blooming, and greatly improve overall contrast.

The nature of the liquid crystal's ability to firmly close in front of an LED backlight depends on the panel type—Vizio has employed VA (vertical alignment) panels in their UHD TVs.

VA LCD panels typically have worse viewing angles than more popular IPS (in-plane switching) panels, and Vizio isn't pursuing the trend of curving their UHD TVS which—depending on who you ask—could make for viewing angle issues in the future. However, VA panels have an easier time "locking" instances of liquid crystal within the panel, which makes for more exacting local dimming in LED-based televisions like the PS55.

A native 4K video picturing a whole mess o' birds showed off the efficacy of this process. In particular, I noticed great separation of shadow and highlight elements along the edge of a steppe eagle's left wing.

There was a very clear appearance of depth, and not just because of the background blur: The dark eagle against the bright background stood out, but did not appear "pasted" onto the foreground—a semi-common problem with UHDs (particularly very cheap ones).

These concerns and comments only apply to native 4K content, of course—we haven't yet seen how any of Vizio's UHD TVs handle sub-UHD content. However, the P Series is equipped with the same spatial scaling engine and HEVC codec support as the more premium Reference Series.

Design & Features

Not plastic, despite the plastic price

On paper, the PS55's $1,399 price point had me imagining a cheap-as-possible, black plastic affair on a clunky rectangle stand, but that isn't the case. Like the Reference Series, the P Series is designed in a somewhat elegant manner, featuring thin black bezels wrapped in silver edging.

Unfortunately, both the 55- and 65-inch models were wall-mounted, so we couldn't see them in their final forms. However, Vizio's press images show off brushed metal highlights and a matching stand. Doubtless the TVs will be heavy, but they also look pretty decent for such mild pricing.

We also couldn't get final information on the PS55's port selection, but it would be a terrible idea not to have backwards compatibility with component and composite input devices. Vizio did confirm that the P series (and Reference Series) will have 5 HDMI inputs. They're also abandoning the absolute slew of picture modes found on recent models in favor of simpler options: Vivid, Standard, and Movie.

The P Series is compatible with Vizio's Internet Apps Plus smart software, but won't be 3D—Vizio has abandoned 3D altogether across its entire lineup.

Conclusion

A decent 4K TV for under $1.5K

While we can't make any real conclusions about the PS55 until we get it into the lab for testing, the immediate on-paper specs, content demo, and close inspection have us pretty excited.

A $1,399 price tag on a sleek, 55-inch smart TV is pretty hard to beat already—it's almost like you get the 4K resolution for free. Expect to see the P Series in stores some time later this year.