Vizio strikes again with a low-priced, well-equipped edge-lit LED HDTV. Last year, we tested a 65-inch Vizio XVT3D650SV ($3,699.99, 4 stars) and were gratified by a Web features, pacifist 3D, and settlement quality. Now, a M3D550KD follows suit, with usually as many useful facilities and a much, many reduce $1,429.99 (direct) cost tag. Its 3D isn’t utterly as frail as with some active 3D HDTVs, yet deliberation all we get for a price, a M3D550KD earns a Editors’ Choice for bill HDTVs.

Design
Plain and unassuming, a M3D550KD has a somewhat silken and dull black bezel with a backlit Vizio trademark on a bottom and no other settlement flourishes. A quarrel of controls lay behind a right corner of a screen, charity Power, Menu, Input, Channel Up/Down, and Volume Up/Down buttons. The inputs face left and downward in a recessed partial of a behind row of a HDTV, with 4 HDMI ports and dual USB ports permitted from a left side. Oddly, a analog and visual audio inputs are above a HDMI and USB ports, creation wire government somewhat untimely if we use a soundbar underneath a HDTV.

View Slideshow
See all (6) slides

The remote is a thick section of a controller that hides a keyboard that slides out from a bottom half. It’s a Bluetooth remote, so we don’t need line of steer with a HDTV to use it once it’s paired. Pairing a remote is a elementary routine that a HDTV walks we by when we initial spin it on, and after that we can use Vizio’s Internet Apps (VIA) and other online facilities with content submit by a remote’s QWERTY keyboard. Though a remote is thick, it also feels groundless since of a shifting keyboard, and a stretch creates it reduction gentle to hoop than required remotes.

You can entrance VIA over a M3D550KD’s built-in Wi-Fi, that includes a far-reaching accumulation of apps, widgets, and services. The HDTV can entrance Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon Instant Video, Pandora, and other streaming media services, and amicable networks like Facebook and Twitter and an collection of news, sports, weather, and other information apps. You can even video discuss on Skype with a discretionary $150 XCV100 camera accessory. The usually thing a HDTV is unequivocally blank is a Web browser, like those found on LG, Panasonic, and Sony HDTVs. A browser would have unequivocally done a QWERTY keyboard on a remote useful.

Performance
We exam HDTV settlement peculiarity with a Konica-Minolta CS-200 chromameter after simple liughtness and contrariety calibrations, and a M3D550KD achieved really well, reaching a rise white turn of 364.75 cd/m² and a really dim black turn of 0.02 cd/m² for a contrariety ratio of 18,237:1. Colors were likewise excellent; regulating Spectracal’s CalMAN program and a DisplayMate exam patterns to magnitude color, a HDTV’s red, green, and blue channels were scarcely ideally aligned with a CIE ideal values. The draft next shows a ideal CIE values (the red, green, and blue boxes), and a values a shade displayed (the gred, green, and blue circles). It doesn’t strech a sable blacks of a high-end Editors’ Choice Sharp Elite Pro-60X5FD ($5,999, 4 stars), yet you’d have a tough time anticipating a shade that gets brighter or darker anywhere nearby a M3D550KD’s price.

I watched Piranha on Blu-ray, and a contrariety ratio of a HDTV showed good in a movie’s splendid beach scenes and ghastly underwater shots. The celebration atmosphere looked comfortable and colorful, with a beach and people resisting easily opposite a blue-green of a water. Underwater, a darker hardness of seaweed and fish showed detail, yet a really dim tools of a scenes still got a bit muddy. While a slight freshness seemed in a exam settlement tests, it wasn’t conspicuous when examination movies. Because a M3D550KD is edge-lit by LEDs and not backlit (the lights light a shade from a edges instead of from directly behind it), this freshness is a normal occurence.

As a pacifist 3D HDTV, a M3D550KD uses polarized lenses instead of electronic shutters. This means a shade comes with 4 pairs of glasses, and that additional pairs are inexpensive compared to many active shiver eyeglasses during as small as a few dollars each. The pacifist 3D settlement is roundly excellent, with small crosstalk and poignant depth. we watched several 3D PlayStation 3 diversion demos on a set, and they were purify and clear. Cars in Gran Turismo 5 popped out as they gathering down a track, and a vast weapons and open battlefields in Ratchet Clank: All 4 One showed inexhaustible distance. Some crosstalk seemed when we incited my head, yet from many positions a 3D settlement looked really sharp. 

The M3D550KD uses an normal of 135 watts, and no appetite potency settings are straightforwardly accessible in a menu. While this is decent for a 55-inch HDTV, a LG 55LM6700 ($2,299.99, 4 stars) consumes reduction than half as many energy during 67 watts, and even a incomparable 60-inch Sharp Aquos LC-60LE640U ($1,899.99, 4 stars) consumes usually 115 watts.

If we wish a big, full-featured HDTV for a low price, a Vizio M3D550KD should be during a tip of your list. At $1,430 it’s not accurately an incentive buy, yet for charity 3D with 4 pairs of glasses, Wi-Fi, lots of Web options, a QWERTY remote, and glorious contrariety and tone for a lot reduction than similar-sized and similar-equipped HDTVs, it’s a Editors’ Choice for bill HDTVs.

More HDTV Reviews:
•   Vizio M3D550KD
•   Sharp Elite Pro-60X5FD
•   Sharp Aquos LC-60LE640U
•   LG 55LM6700
•   Sony HMZ-T1 Personal 3D Viewer
•  more