Vizio SmartTV

Vizio SmartTV

    One of Vizio's first attempts at the SmartTV is a quality LED TV, but not much else. Being LED, Vizio took advantage of the benefits of the technology in the design of the TV. It is light for 60" weighing only about 40 lbs. LEDs are incredibly bright while also being energy efficient, as well as leaving a small physical footprint. Therefore, this TV resists glare well and is only an inch and some change thick. It displays 1080p quality images very crisply, and the 120Hz refresh rate allows for high quality retention in fast-paced scenes. However, outside of the hardware, the software is lackluster at best, and a straight up hassle to use at worst. The UI design for all the apps is a small linear menu at the bottom of the screen when the Vizio menu button is pushed, and while this style of menu works well when everything animates smoothly (PS4 has this same design, and it feels snappy), all of the menus are slow and buggy on the Vizio SmartTV. The apps themselves are often worse, glitching every few action inputs and freezing up consistently. Updates were a constant interruption, so much so I had to turn them off and forget I had a "smart" TV at all. Once I did, I actually really started to enjoy it as a TV and much less as a hub for my media.