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I know Vizio is considered more of a low-end brand, but I have a ... probably 2010s era Vizio that's one of the best TVs I've had. 32" or something, never had a

I know Vizio is considered more of a low-end brand, but I have a ... probably 2010s era Vizio that's one of the best TVs I've had. 32" or something, never had a single issue with it. It's a dumb panel that displays whatever I put on it. How a TV should be. I had a more recent 65" Vizio (2020, I think?) in my living room, which was also a great TV. It was something like $600 (crazy cheap for the size!), great picture, never connected it to the net, always worked like a charm. Was a great panel for my Nvidia Shield. That TV was broken in an unfortunate incident involving a toddler and a thrown wrench, and was replaced with a similarly priced TCL TV (which was the best rated one in my price range on Rtings at the time). That TV is nothing less than a hunk of shit - constant sound issues, molasses slow UI, built in Roku stuff is all crap. Picture is decent, but I liked the Vizio better. I've often considered shelling out the big bucks for a better model TV, but given the industry trends I'm terrified of the thought of spending triple the price of my current TV and still hating it. Happy to pay for good quality, but just extremely skeptical of most offerings in the market these days.

maxrecursion 3y ago
I want to offer supporting evidence. Had a Vizio that is closing in on a decade old and runs great. Was given a TCL 4k Roku TV that is a piece of crap. Can't complain too much since it was free, but I'll never buy a TCL or Roku TV. And I used Roku's for almost a decade since I was an early cord cutter. Both of the early cord cutting companies that drove all this are on the decline: Roku and Sling. Google especially has stolen a lot of marker share with Chromecast and YouTube TV, respectfully. Kind of sad to see it happen, but monopolies are the norm now.
- Auracle 3y ago
  I had a higher end TCL Roku TV that was pretty nice, actually. I know I used one at a rental unit that was an absolute piece of junk - I’m a little surprised they didn’t have the thought to make two separate brands.
- Rapzid 3y ago
  You're Roku TCL may be a POC, but TCL puts out televisions that are at the forefront of LCD/LED TV technology. Very happy with my 55R655.
bayindirh 3y ago
I have a Sony X900H, which is a 2020 model*, and it's a great device. Snappy, works with everything, updated for better now and then. Its picture quality is great, and sound is more than enough. I can always get a soundbar, but actually we don't want more devices and wires at home. It's good in this configuration. The advantage of Sony is, they're an audiovisual company, so they design their own DSPs and algorithms. I never disappointed by any Sony device I had from Hi-Fi to speakers, cameras and TVs. If Sony's style is your cup of tea, it's hard to change to any other brand after getting used to them. *: I shocked when I learnt that every year TV manufacturers update their TVs and people flock to their brands not unlike phone fanboys and shout to each other about this years' new features, on-paper numbers and whatnot. It's a display panel, c'mon.
- Dylan16807 3y ago
  Model year matters a lot if you're getting anything with OLEDs in it. For normal LCD yeah it's pretty much unrelated to features and quality.
  - bayindirh 3y ago
    I personally don't prefer OLEDs in anything large like TVs. Call me old, but I don't want inconsistent wear on display panels, and I don't change my devices every n years.
    - sgerenser 3y ago
      Really depends on your usage. Burn in is only a problem if you watch something frequently with a constant element on screen like the CNN news ticker or a video game HUD. I have an OLED from 2019 with no signs of burn in and fully expect it to last at least another 5 years.
      - bayindirh 3y ago
        Of course, but I'm not the only user of that TV, and sometimes we watch snooker, etc. with my parents, which boils down to painting 50% of the screen green for long periods of time. I won't be comfortable with that kind of usage pattern. Moreover, I'm pretty happy with the image quality of the device I own. I'm not that sensitive to image quality after a certain point (my wheelhouse is Hi-Fi audio). So, what I have is more than enough for me.
mrbonner 3y ago
I have a 2008 Vizo TV from Costco. It is 47" dumb TV. I'm still using it in my game room for call of duty. Even though it still works I think it's time to get a 4k TV. My conundrum has always been finding a dumb TV at this point.
- kjkjadksj 3y ago
  Strongly consider whether you even need it for console gaming on a couch. At least for my eyes I can’t really notice pixels on a 1080p screen from couch distance. Maybe its different for 70 inch tvs though, mine is maybe 40 inches.
thesuitonym 3y ago
My recommendation is a Sceptre. They make 65", 4K dumb panels. I bought mine last year and the picture is great, the UI is fast, because it's just a regular TV menu, and best of all it cost less than $400.
- ensignavenger 3y ago
  I have a Sceptre and a Vizio, and I bought another Sceptre fro my mother. For the price, the Sceptres are really great panels. However, a soundbar or a decent sound system is a must with them, their builtin audio sucks terribly. Also, they are a bit slow, and the remotes that come with them suck. Overall, I prefer my 10 year old Vizio, but for a good dumb display, the Sceptres are hard to beat for the price.
  - ecshafer 3y ago
    Since the transition to flat screens I haven't seen a tv with good audio. It could be my bias, but I think that you basically need external speakers with any tv right now.
    - TaylorAlexander 3y ago
      Same, I would never rely on built in TV audio.
- pbronez 3y ago
  Great recommendation, thank you
- findjashua 3y ago
  +1 for Sceptre. Mine is coming up on 7 years, and I've never had any maintenance issues w it.
gainda 3y ago
anecdotally, i have a tcl 4k 49" model i got 2018 for $329 - and yes the stock interface is garbage, but after hooking up an apple tv to it, it works perfectly for me. i'm not particular about image quality - everything looks great for my taste and the soap opera effect is off. i would absolutely get another one if this craps out but getting 6 years out of it was more than i expected.
giantrobot 3y ago
> I know Vizio is considered more of a low-end brand, but I have a ... probably 2010s era Vizio that's one of the best TVs I've had. I bought a Vizio back in 2006 that is still running today. It's now at my parents' house but runs as well as when I bought it. Unfortunately I also have a modern Vizio I bought for the guest bedroom. That thing is a piece of shit. It's just ridiculously slow, sometimes won't display the picture from an input signal, and software updates break stuff all the time. Before I bought it I hadn't ever bought a cheap "smart" TV but it's been worse than I imagined they would be.
- mkipper 3y ago
  Going off reviews, it looks like Vizio has taken a nosedive in quality over the last 5 - 10 years. When I bought a TV ~10 years ago, rtings had various Vizios as their top-rated TVs at different price points. I remember my choice at the time being less "which of these TVs should I buy" and more "which of these two Vizios should I buy". But looking now, I can't find a single model that's rated highest at any size or price point. It's a pretty stark difference.
jccalhoun 3y ago
I'm starting to think that it is a crapshoot. I like my upper end TCL a lot and I'm a big roku fan. I HATE my low end Hisense. It has a coil whine. The built in speakers are shit. The android tv just locks up. And it will come on in the middle of the night (luckily it is in another room but if I wake up in the middle of the night and it has turned on I can see the light from it). But all the reviews say Hisense is good.
- awful 3y ago
  I like my HiSense 65 Android TV, and used to love it before the app providers started screwing with app updates (Netflix! Prime!). And the audio data stream/output conversion could do a little better to my home theater, but its fast enough, have bluetooth keyboard for quick searches/data entry. I think it is stupid that I cannot easily find a no-cost, dumb, Android photo screen saver for it (I think it ostensibly would rob from some Android app developer/Google Photos/Google Home). But it appears I can side load stuff, but I like to keep things clean. Anyhow, my original 60 Vizio was great, but died early b/c of known bad engineering of backlight power supply. But I like this even better.
- maxglute 3y ago
  Manufactures are very good at cost cutting / value engineering. A friend bought multiple low end hisense panels for business bought over multiple years, basically same 50inch model from costco, but each year the hardware gets noticably revised. Thinner legs, 4 buttons replaced by single 5 way switch, a mold change to remove a few extra square cm of plastic etc. No idea what was going on inside.
tzs 3y ago
> That TV was broken in an unfortunate incident involving a toddler and a thrown wrench How did that happen? Kid get into your tools while you were fixing something in the house? Accident teaching the kid to play dodgeball?
wil421 3y ago
My 2 Samsungs are still running strong from 2008 and 2010. Except instead of looking at a horrible monitor for 10 years I’ve been enjoying a decent picture for over a decade. However, I bought a cheap Roku TV for my family’s beach house. I don’t care about quality in this situation because it’s not used much and I should be outside at anyway.
lancewiggs 3y ago
If Wal*Mart (and everyone else) sold great TVs without the spy/spamware then this would be a great deal for everyone. However from the article: "But in buying the company, Walmart touted the potential to boost its ad business through Vizio’s SmartCast Operating System, which allows users to stream free ad-supported content on their TVs."
- mike_d 3y ago
  At the time I thought the dumbest thing they did was sell Vudu. Now buying a TV brand with its own streaming service after selling off the successful one is the dumbest move.
domano 3y ago
I just never could be happy with a TV without an OLED panel after i got my first one last year. Since then all other screen types look like garbage to my eyes, the better cinema projectors too. Shouldn't have bought an expensive big monitor for work without OLED the year before, but i hear that OLED is not that great for close up text rendering.
lnxg33k1 3y ago
You know I have a dumb Samsung Plasma TV 720p from like 20 years ago? Some more? Some less? Scared to lose it because it's hard to find dumb TVs, will have a look at these Vizio ;o Thanks!

maxrecursion 3y ago

I want to offer supporting evidence. Had a Vizio that is closing in on a decade old and runs great. Was given a TCL 4k Roku TV that is a piece of crap. Can't complain too much since it was free, but I'll never buy a TCL or Roku TV. And I used Roku's for almost a decade since I was an early cord cutter. Both of the early cord cutting companies that drove all this are on the decline: Roku and Sling. Google especially has stolen a lot of marker share with Chromecast and YouTube TV, respectfully. Kind of sad to see it happen, but monopolies are the norm now.

Auracle 3y ago
I had a higher end TCL Roku TV that was pretty nice, actually. I know I used one at a rental unit that was an absolute piece of junk - I’m a little surprised they didn’t have the thought to make two separate brands.
Rapzid 3y ago
You're Roku TCL may be a POC, but TCL puts out televisions that are at the forefront of LCD/LED TV technology. Very happy with my 55R655.

bayindirh 3y ago

I have a Sony X900H, which is a 2020 model*, and it's a great device. Snappy, works with everything, updated for better now and then. Its picture quality is great, and sound is more than enough. I can always get a soundbar, but actually we don't want more devices and wires at home. It's good in this configuration. The advantage of Sony is, they're an audiovisual company, so they design their own DSPs and algorithms. I never disappointed by any Sony device I had from Hi-Fi to speakers, cameras and TVs. If Sony's style is your cup of tea, it's hard to change to any other brand after getting used to them. *: I shocked when I learnt that every year TV manufacturers update their TVs and people flock to their brands not unlike phone fanboys and shout to each other about this years' new features, on-paper numbers and whatnot. It's a display panel, c'mon.

Dylan16807 3y ago
Model year matters a lot if you're getting anything with OLEDs in it. For normal LCD yeah it's pretty much unrelated to features and quality.
- bayindirh 3y ago
  I personally don't prefer OLEDs in anything large like TVs. Call me old, but I don't want inconsistent wear on display panels, and I don't change my devices every n years.
  - sgerenser 3y ago
    Really depends on your usage. Burn in is only a problem if you watch something frequently with a constant element on screen like the CNN news ticker or a video game HUD. I have an OLED from 2019 with no signs of burn in and fully expect it to last at least another 5 years.
    - bayindirh 3y ago
      Of course, but I'm not the only user of that TV, and sometimes we watch snooker, etc. with my parents, which boils down to painting 50% of the screen green for long periods of time. I won't be comfortable with that kind of usage pattern. Moreover, I'm pretty happy with the image quality of the device I own. I'm not that sensitive to image quality after a certain point (my wheelhouse is Hi-Fi audio). So, what I have is more than enough for me.

mrbonner 3y ago

I have a 2008 Vizo TV from Costco. It is 47" dumb TV. I'm still using it in my game room for call of duty. Even though it still works I think it's time to get a 4k TV. My conundrum has always been finding a dumb TV at this point.

kjkjadksj 3y ago
Strongly consider whether you even need it for console gaming on a couch. At least for my eyes I can’t really notice pixels on a 1080p screen from couch distance. Maybe its different for 70 inch tvs though, mine is maybe 40 inches.

thesuitonym 3y ago

My recommendation is a Sceptre. They make 65", 4K dumb panels. I bought mine last year and the picture is great, the UI is fast, because it's just a regular TV menu, and best of all it cost less than $400.

ensignavenger 3y ago
I have a Sceptre and a Vizio, and I bought another Sceptre fro my mother. For the price, the Sceptres are really great panels. However, a soundbar or a decent sound system is a must with them, their builtin audio sucks terribly. Also, they are a bit slow, and the remotes that come with them suck. Overall, I prefer my 10 year old Vizio, but for a good dumb display, the Sceptres are hard to beat for the price.
- ecshafer 3y ago
  Since the transition to flat screens I haven't seen a tv with good audio. It could be my bias, but I think that you basically need external speakers with any tv right now.
  - TaylorAlexander 3y ago
    Same, I would never rely on built in TV audio.
pbronez 3y ago
Great recommendation, thank you
findjashua 3y ago
+1 for Sceptre. Mine is coming up on 7 years, and I've never had any maintenance issues w it.

gainda 3y ago

anecdotally, i have a tcl 4k 49" model i got 2018 for $329 - and yes the stock interface is garbage, but after hooking up an apple tv to it, it works perfectly for me. i'm not particular about image quality - everything looks great for my taste and the soap opera effect is off. i would absolutely get another one if this craps out but getting 6 years out of it was more than i expected.

giantrobot 3y ago

> I know Vizio is considered more of a low-end brand, but I have a ... probably 2010s era Vizio that's one of the best TVs I've had. I bought a Vizio back in 2006 that is still running today. It's now at my parents' house but runs as well as when I bought it. Unfortunately I also have a modern Vizio I bought for the guest bedroom. That thing is a piece of shit. It's just ridiculously slow, sometimes won't display the picture from an input signal, and software updates break stuff all the time. Before I bought it I hadn't ever bought a cheap "smart" TV but it's been worse than I imagined they would be.

mkipper 3y ago
Going off reviews, it looks like Vizio has taken a nosedive in quality over the last 5 - 10 years. When I bought a TV ~10 years ago, rtings had various Vizios as their top-rated TVs at different price points. I remember my choice at the time being less "which of these TVs should I buy" and more "which of these two Vizios should I buy". But looking now, I can't find a single model that's rated highest at any size or price point. It's a pretty stark difference.

jccalhoun 3y ago

I'm starting to think that it is a crapshoot. I like my upper end TCL a lot and I'm a big roku fan. I HATE my low end Hisense. It has a coil whine. The built in speakers are shit. The android tv just locks up. And it will come on in the middle of the night (luckily it is in another room but if I wake up in the middle of the night and it has turned on I can see the light from it). But all the reviews say Hisense is good.

awful 3y ago
I like my HiSense 65 Android TV, and used to love it before the app providers started screwing with app updates (Netflix! Prime!). And the audio data stream/output conversion could do a little better to my home theater, but its fast enough, have bluetooth keyboard for quick searches/data entry. I think it is stupid that I cannot easily find a no-cost, dumb, Android photo screen saver for it (I think it ostensibly would rob from some Android app developer/Google Photos/Google Home). But it appears I can side load stuff, but I like to keep things clean. Anyhow, my original 60 Vizio was great, but died early b/c of known bad engineering of backlight power supply. But I like this even better.
maxglute 3y ago
Manufactures are very good at cost cutting / value engineering. A friend bought multiple low end hisense panels for business bought over multiple years, basically same 50inch model from costco, but each year the hardware gets noticably revised. Thinner legs, 4 buttons replaced by single 5 way switch, a mold change to remove a few extra square cm of plastic etc. No idea what was going on inside.

tzs 3y ago

> That TV was broken in an unfortunate incident involving a toddler and a thrown wrench How did that happen? Kid get into your tools while you were fixing something in the house? Accident teaching the kid to play dodgeball?

wil421 3y ago

My 2 Samsungs are still running strong from 2008 and 2010. Except instead of looking at a horrible monitor for 10 years I’ve been enjoying a decent picture for over a decade. However, I bought a cheap Roku TV for my family’s beach house. I don’t care about quality in this situation because it’s not used much and I should be outside at anyway.

lancewiggs 3y ago

If Wal*Mart (and everyone else) sold great TVs without the spy/spamware then this would be a great deal for everyone. However from the article: "But in buying the company, Walmart touted the potential to boost its ad business through Vizio’s SmartCast Operating System, which allows users to stream free ad-supported content on their TVs."

mike_d 3y ago
At the time I thought the dumbest thing they did was sell Vudu. Now buying a TV brand with its own streaming service after selling off the successful one is the dumbest move.

domano 3y ago

I just never could be happy with a TV without an OLED panel after i got my first one last year. Since then all other screen types look like garbage to my eyes, the better cinema projectors too. Shouldn't have bought an expensive big monitor for work without OLED the year before, but i hear that OLED is not that great for close up text rendering.

lnxg33k1 3y ago

You know I have a dumb Samsung Plasma TV 720p from like 20 years ago? Some more? Some less? Scared to lose it because it's hard to find dumb TVs, will have a look at these Vizio ;o Thanks!