Vizio VF550XVT Video

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Created: 04/17/2009

Video description: Although better-performing 52-inch models are available for less money, the 55-inch Vizio VF550XVT will appeal to less-critical viewers who want a bigger screen.

Vizio VF550XVT Video Transcript

[ Music ] ^M00:00:03

>> Hi. I'm Senior Editor David Katzmaier with CNET.com, and I'm sitting next to the Vizio Vaio 550-XVT. This is a 55-inch flat panel LCD TV, one of the least expensive TVs of its size on the market. Vizio did not include LED backlighting on this TV. That's another Vaio 551-XVT, available later in the year. This one has standard backlighting. We'll get to that in a little bit. First off, the style on this TV. You might think, below here, that this speaker is detachable. It is not. This big speaker bar is gonna stay where it is. There's a little kind of window behind here that you can see through to see your wallpaper on the back if you do hang it on the wall, or whatever's behind there. Speaker bar is silver, the frame around the TV, glossy black. It's kind of a bulky overall frame, and we're not huge fans of this look, but, you know, some people might like it. The menu system on this TV is, again, a little bit awkward to use. You can scroll through and see there's a lot of options here, but it's kind of difficult to get to them all. That said, if you're patient, you can adjust a lot of things on this TV, including the color temperature, which is nice. And there's a bunch of other settings, including a backlight control. The back of this TV has four HDMI inputs, and there's a fifth on the side. That's more HDMI inputs than we've ever seen before, so if you have a lot of HDMI gear, this is pretty good. The connectivity, otherwise, is also excellent with a PC input and a component video input on this set, so again, plenty of connectivity. Picture quality on this set is not as good as we'd like to see. The real issue here is black level performance. The blacks on this TV can't get very deep. So if you turn down the lights and watch in a dark room, you're gonna see that kind of characteristic lighter, kind of washed-out look. But, of course, at the end of the day, if you're watching in a brighter room, it's not that big of a deal. The color accuracy, on the other hand, is excellent, especially after you are able to use some of those color tweaks. You get very nice skin tones. And overall, the primary colors were very good on this set. It also has the 120-hertz dejutter mode. Again, we really weren't all that impressed with it. There was a lot more artifacts than we've seen on some other major brands' dejutter modes, but if you like that smooth look, you can turn it on, or you can turn off if you don't like it. So it's got a lot of options on the dejutter. That's a quick look at the Vizio Vaio 550-XVT. I'm David Katzmaier. ^M00:02:08 [ Music ]

Vizio VF550XVT Review

Editors' rating

6.3

out of 10

Price range

$2,299.96

Amazon.com Marketplace

See all 1 stores

The good: Relatively inexpensive; accurate color; plenty of picture setup adjustments; highly tweakable dejudder processing; superb connectivity with five HDMI and one PC input.

The bad: Lighter black levels; dejudder processing prone to artifacts; below-average off-angle performance.

The bottom line: Although better-performing 52-inch models are available for less money, the 55-inch Vizio VF550XVT will appeal to less-critical viewers who want a bigger screen.

Read full review