Vizio VF550XVT LCD HDTV Review - Performance: Summary

Calibration
In order to ensure that we are testing a television at its best we spend a significant amount of time calibrating the television using DisplayMate software. Our calibration process is focused on ensuring that the television produces the most accurate colors, white and blacks. You can pay someone to come to your home and calibrate your television if you wish, but you may want to give our calibration options below a try before you shell out your hard earned cash.

With the Vizio VF550XVT we did run into an interesting issue, specifically related to the Contrast level. Contrast is used to adjust the way white are displayed, but since whites on a television are made up of a combination of red, green and blue lights it also effects the way those colors are displayed. In our calibration process we want to ensure that colors can be differentiated across the maximum range of intensities, which range from 0 to 255. We found that with the Vizio VF550XVT we were able to get a good range of whites at a much higher contrast level than we eventually calibrated at, but found problems with the range of colors available. We had to turn it down much lower (to 25) in order to get the maximum range of all the colors. What this also means, however, is that the screen's brightness is significantly lower than it could otherwise be. We discuss this more in our testing sections below.