VIZIO VF550XVT

The VF550XVT sits at the top of Vizio's lineup. It's their biggest LCD television at 55-inches and sports high-end features like 120Hz refresh rate. It's also amongst the most expensive of Vizio's HDTVs, with prices ranging from $1800 to $2200 depending on the retailer. Vizio's MSRP is $2000. Lacking some of the bells and whistles you see on other televisions in this price range, like networking capabilities or photo and music playback, the VF550XVT needs to stand on the quality of its display.

In this it has mixed results. The VF550XVT did not impress us with either it's deepest black or peak brightness, which resulted in a low contrast ratio of 698:1, one of the worst we've seen. Much of the fault for this lies in the fact that we had to push the VF550XVT's contrast way down in our calibration process to ensure color accuracy.

The VF550XVT did return some good color performance as a result, with very good reds, greens and blues and a rock solid color temperature across the greyscale. This did have to betempered by some significant problems in producing an accurate color gamut, however.

Motion performance was above average, with no significant artifacting, however even here we have to qualify ourselves by pointing out that we saw some significant problems with complex patterns like faces. The viewing angle on the display was average, and we also saw some problems with reflections, so be careful where you place lights in a room with the VF550XVT.

One place where the VF550XVT did a very good job was in connectivity, with five HDMI ports and very good placements to make all the ports easy to access. We were also very impressed with the quality of audio the VF550XVT was able to produce, amongst the best we've seen from built-in speakers, although it won't replace a real surround sound setup.

Almost all televisions make compromises, but the Vizio VF550XVT makes a few more than we're comfortable with. The 55-inch size of the VF550XVT is no minor issue, however. If size is your primary motivator, and we know there are people out there for which biggers is always better, the VF550XVT may be a good choice for you. If you're willing to go with something a bit smaller, however, you might want to look at alternatives like the Samsung PN50A760,  or Vizio's own SV470XVT, both of which offers better picture quality at a similar or lower price.