Everyone is thirsty in the desert. From phones with disappearing cameras to robots that bring you spare toilet paper rolls to breathable concept cars, CES 2020 has no shortage of products for even a quick glance at attention. Step inside the VIZIO showroom at the Vdara Hotel and Casino on ARIA's Las Vegas campus, and you'll feel like, well, everything looks the same on the surface. That's not to say the new VIZIO TVs aren't worth the money. They certainly are. And that's not to say there's nothing notable about their 2020 lineup. There certainly is. But you also get the feeling that this is very normal for VIZIO. That in this futuristic universe of 8K TVs and modular displays, VIZIO is content to do its own thing. To make good TVs for normal people at affordable prices, normal people can afford them. Probably. We don't have any pricing information for this year's V, M, and P series games yet. We still have no price on the gorgeous VIZIO OLED TV. We don't know how well your new selection of sound bars will work for us. But just spend a few minutes with one of VIZIO's new kits and you'll walk away thinking "I want this." So, with the caveat of not knowing how expensive the top end will be, here's a breakdown of where it stands in 2020, and what continued improvement you can make in a world where everyone is trying to make a big splash.
The 2020 range of VIZIO TVs
VIZIO's first OLED TV is magnificent. (Image credit: CordCutters) Let's start with the low end. The V series TV was (and still is) the cheapest 4K UHD series. It lacks the advanced image quality features of the higher tiers. The series does not have local dimming, a contrast enhancement feature, but still uses the full backlight for a smooth, consistent picture. The V series benefits from plenty of other bells and whistles, including Chromecast, AirPlay 2, Siri, Google Assistant, and Alexa. It also incorporates a new IQ-Active processor and a V-Gaming engine. Considering the 2019 V-series tops out at around $850 for 75-inches (and goes to 40-inches for around $240), we expect this trend to continue this year. However, the M series is where I would start looking. Televisions are long-term purchases. They are big and kind of a pain to trade. So I would spend a little more and get a little more for my money. First, the industrial design of the Quantum M-series TVs is better. There are two flavors of the new M series to choose from, the M8 offers 90 local dimming zones. (More dimming areas means some parts of the screen can be darker while other parts are lighter. More dimming areas is better.) The M8 also has a high maximum brightness, coming in at 800 nits. And don't expect the price to break the bank here either. If you're really looking to speed things up, the P Series is still where it's at. And there's a considerable change to the P series itself. The P9 is still a great TV. It's available in either 65 or 75 inches, with up to 240 local dimming zones (depending on whether you get the larger of the two models) and up to 1200 nits peak brightness. The P series also upgrades the processor to the new IQ Ultra scheme. And VIZIO goes further. The P-Series Quantum X is available in 65-, 75-, and 85-inch models. It has 792 local dimming zones at the big end and has a peak brightness of up to 3000 nits. It's crazy. It's wonderful. Also remove the glasses and remove the "VIZIO" badge and go for the logo on the bottom right. This is in all likelihood (again, priceless) the TV upgrade to have if you want the VIZIO upgrade option.
VIZIO first OLED
The new VIZIO OLED TV offers true blacks. And the bracket can be used to mount the new Elevate sound bar. (Image credit: CordCutters) But it's still not OLED. And this is the biggest splash VIZIO has up its sleeves this CES: its first organic light-emitting diode display. Remember all those local dimming zones we talked about earlier? OLED disables individual pixels. Black spaces are really black. This kind of contrast makes colors even more vibrant. If you can afford an OLED TV, you want an OLED TV. And VIZIO will be available in 55 or 65 inches. It's really beautiful. The baseball inside is that this OLED TV, which doesn't have a fancy series name or anything, allows VIZIO to compete more directly with manufacturers that have been on the OLED bandwagon for some time, and this gives it a slight advantage over cheaper MicroLED panels you'll find elsewhere. It fills a hole at the top of the VIZIO range and should give it a pretty consistent contender on all of this year's best lists. But the question remains: how much will it cost?
Fun but not real products yet
An outdoor TV isn't in the VIZIO product line yet, but it's at least one thing the company has thought of. (Image credit: CordCutters) VIZIO had a few other sets on display that were a sign of what it was at least playing, if not something it planned to market in the future. The first is an 8K resolution panel. Companies are still working on everything, and there's no way VIZIO isn't working on 8K. But there's absolutely no reason for a regular consumer to buy an 8K TV either, so it's a nice change of pace to see someone say "Yeah, that's that's one thing. But it's not a thing either, you know?" Another thing. The one VIZIO is playing with is a television designed for outdoor spaces. Again, to reiterate, this is not a finished product at all. There is nothing to announce. But what sparked at least a brief moment of excitement was the prospect of a different-looking outdoor TV being built 15 years ago: bulky and unsightly and something that makes you want to buy a $250 TV and sacrifice it to the weather gods. every two years. Which, for what it's worth, is exactly what I do on my screened-in porch. So the prospect of something bright enough for the outside and tough enough for the outside without perhaps, again, this "not yet a thing" caveat, resembling a 1990s military surplus would be a very good thing.
The new VIZIO voice remote
VIZIO has finally redesigned its old remote and added voice commands. (Image credit: CordCutters) Nothing ruins a good TV experience like a bad remote. And it's not that the VIZIO remotes have been bad, they just look the same for a while and they seem to have tried too hard too. That changes in 2020 with the new VIZIO Voice Remote. As the name suggests, it also adds voice control via the remote, which was missing. (Support for devices compatible with Amazon Alexa and the Google Assistant is still there, too.) VIZIO uses SoundHound to analyze all this data in the cloud, and it worked quite well in our demo. And it was nice to see it use the kind of contextual calculation you expect to see in 2020, so you don't have to ask an explicit question or order one at a time. So you can say "Show me the James Bond movies" and that will show you the James Bond movies. And then you can say "Sean Connery only" and that will show you the Sean Connery only ones. "That's how things should work. The remote control itself has also been greatly simplified. No more digital buttons, which makes sense for the streaming age. There are half a dozen branded shortcuts, and the "WatchFree" channel itself. " by VIZIO has a prime location. And after that, everything is where it should be.
Smart Cast 4.0
2016 TVs will be upgraded to VIZIO's SmartCast 4.0 operating system and will benefit from its speed improvements. (Image credit: CordCutters) With new hardware for 2020, the other biggest announcement was the next generation of VIZIO's SmartCast operating system. This has long been a problem for VIZIO TVs - I had no problem recommending VIZIO to anyone, but always with the caveat that they might want to invest a few bucks in an Apple TV (my first choice) or streaming player. from Roku or Amazon Fire TV. Previous iterations of SmartCast have been too slow. I still don't know if the new SmartCast 4.0 has done enough to change my mind. Our demo was definitely pre-production, and there were occasional issues. But the improvements were also pretty obvious, and VIZIO needs praise for speeding up your high-end home screen experience. Questions remain, however. How will third-party apps behave? And will SmartCast have all the services you want to see? It's close to having all the specialties, and so maybe 2020 is the year VIZIO starts taking on Roku in the all-in-one TV arena. You just have to see. But also keep in mind that VIZIO says it's expecting the SmartCast update on 2016 TVs. Obviously, newer hardware should speed things up even more, but it's hard to find a company. outside of Apple, which keeps its software up to date for so long.
VIZIO sound bars in 2020
(Image credit: CordCutters) I've also been a fan of VIZIO sound bars for a long time. You can vastly improve the quality (and experience) of your TV viewing with just a few hundred dollars worth of kit, and having rear speakers and a subwoofer wirelessly connected to a sound bar means your room doesn't need to be rewired. . The biggest change for 2020 is a continuous improvement in industrial design. There is less fabric and more plastic. And everything looks more sophisticated. Soundbars have also taken on better branding, joining the M-Series and V-Series schemes, giving you a general idea of the level of audio gear you're looking at. (And that makes keeping track of these things much easier.) And then there's the new high-end VIZIO Elevate sound bar. It has Dolby Atmos and DTS:X. And it has speakers that rotate according to the sound profile. It's a really cool thing to hear, and kind of space age to actually see. And the sound? Spectacular. Expect VIZIO to push hard along with its new OLED TV as well. So, in effect, if you mount the OLED TV on a wall, the attached bracket becomes a mounting point for the Elevate soundbar. VIZIO has also redesigned its audio remotes, removing another legacy pain point. We're not priced here either, but imagine it again in the affordable wow range.
L & # 39; essential
(Image credit: CordCutters) There's quite a bit in common here that I've left out. All the new displays come with 4K resolution and Dolby Vision and HDR10+ and HLG. They all have HDMI 2.1 ports, so latency should be lower and the overall experience should be better. Apple AirPlay and Homekit are now standard. The same goes for devices that support Alexa, the Google Assistant, and Chromecast integration. And the featured M-series TVs have a ProGraming engine that allows for a pretty deadly experience with an Xbox One X or PlayStation 4. (Or, ultimately, PlayStation 5, we'd join.) Combine that with VIZIO Sound Bars and you have your version of surround sound that really brings you into the game. Everything is standard now. These are table bets for the VIZIO experiment. And between the new TVs in 2020, and the new sound bars, and the new software, and the new remote controls, this much is clear: VIZIO is doing well being VIZIO. This will continue to make televisions that are amazing and affordable at all kinds of prices. And they will continue to improve.