Vizio VF550XVT LCD HDTV Review - Performance: Motion

With a 120Hz refresh rate we expect to see solid motion performance from the Vizio VF550XVT, and it did well in most cases. We did detect a problem with moving faces, however. Most of the tests administered in this section were completed using DisplayMate software.

Motion Smoothness (7.0)
The Vizio VF550XVT did have some issues with the smoothness of moving objects. When using our test patterns we noticed a particular problem with faces losing a lot of detail as they moved across the display. In addition we noticed some blurring in moving complex patterns. That said we have some much worse performance from other televisions and we were happy with the performance of more mundane solidly colored objects moving across the screen. We did try playing with the VF550XVT's motion smoothness option but did not see any significant improvement with this feature turned on.

Motion Artifacting (8.0)
The only major artifacting issue we saw form the Vizio VF550XVT was a banding effect that occured in solid white and grey bars moving across the screen. This is a common issue for televisions and apart from that we did see any additional artifacts in our testing.

3:2 Pulldown & 24fps (9.75)
The Vizio VF550XVT did an excellent job handling 3:2 pulldown content. 3:2 pulldown is a process whereby a signal that should be displayed at 24 frames per second but is delivered at 60 frames per second is converted so that it looks like it should have originally. This is most often done with broadcast signals. Some televisions have trouble with this conversion and produce inconsistencies and "jagged" artifacts on the display. The Vizio VF550XVT displayed none of these issues.

In addition the Vizio VF550XVT is capable of handling content that is fed to it directly at 24 frames per second. Such content usually comes from a Blu-Ray disc. 24 fps content lends a more film-like feel.