Vizio V Series V4K65M 65"

The HDR on this Vizio is genuinely fantastic, landing in the 95th percentile. But the painfully slow smart platform and mediocre gaming performance drag the whole experience down. Only buy it if you can get it for cheap and plan to use your own streaming stick.

Let's start with the good news: HDR is where this Vizio shines, landing in the 95th percentile in our database. That's best-in-class territory, making supported content look genuinely impressive with rich colors and bright highlights. The audio is solid too, with DTS:X support giving the built-in speakers a bit more punch than you'd expect. But the rest of the picture is pretty average, sitting in the 36th percentile overall. It's fine for casual streaming, but don't expect deep blacks or stunning clarity. Gaming performance is underwhelming at the 37th percentile, and the smart platform is a real drag, clocking in at a sluggish 6th percentile. Navigating apps feels like a chore.

Stacked against the competition, the Vizio is a one-trick pony. The Sony BRAVIA 5 and Samsung QN85D will give you a far better overall picture and a buttery-smooth smart experience, though you'll pay for it. The TCL QM7K and Hisense U7 Series are the real threats here, offering strong all-around performance with much better gaming and smart platforms for a similar price. Even the LG OLED evo C6, while pricier, is in a completely different league for picture quality. The Vizio only wins if your sole priority is bright-room HDR pop on a tight budget.

Pricing on this model is all over the map, with a wild spread from $425 to $3195 across different vendors. At the low end, you're getting a killer HDR experience for the money, and it's easy to forgive the sluggish smart platform. But if you're looking at the higher end of that range, you're getting into serious TV territory where the competition absolutely demolishes this Vizio in every category except HDR. If you can snag it from Amazon for a price near that $425 floor, it's a decent deal for a bright-room TV.

Vizio's 65-inch 4K TV is a bit of a mixed bag. It absolutely nails HDR performance, delivering a picture that punches way above its weight class thanks to Dolby Vision Bright+. But the moment you look past the vibrant colors, you start seeing where the corners were cut to hit a budget price point. The smart TV platform is sluggish, the overall picture quality is just okay, and gaming feels like an afterthought despite having VRR on the spec sheet.

Gamers and smart TV power users should look elsewhere. If you want a responsive interface for quickly jumping between Netflix and YouTube, this TV will just frustrate you. And if you're buying a screen for a next-gen console, the mediocre gaming performance and lack of a 120Hz panel make this a poor fit. You'd be much better off with a TCL or Hisense at a similar price.

This Vizio is for the viewer who primarily watches HDR content in a bright room and doesn't want to mess with external streaming devices. If you can live with plugging in a Roku or Apple TV to bypass the terrible built-in smart system, and you find it at the low end of its price range, the HDR performance makes it a tempting budget buy. For everyone else, there are better, more well-rounded TVs out there.