Vizio M601d-A3R review review: Vizio as pretty as its picture

Like the Vizio M551 before it, the Vizio M01 is a competent budget television with a high level of performance. It forgoes some features -- like MHL and touch-panel remotes -- and sometimes others don't work, like learning remote codes, but what the Vizio doesn't do you don't need.

7.7

Vizio M601d-A3R review

The Good

The <b>Vizio M-Series M1d-A3R</b> is an excellent value with great design and a snappy picture; great shadow detail, fairly deep black levels, and excellent video processing.It also offers sleek styling and an improved Smart TV system.

The Bad

It doesn't have as deep a black level as a plasma; suffers from more blooming than many LCDs; skin tones appear a little red; similar motion resolution to a 120Hz TV; reflective screen; Yahoo apps seem clunky; remote sensor isn't very responsive.

The Bottom Line

The 60-inch Vizio M1d-A3R doesn't quite offer the very best value for money in the company's range, but nevertheless features fine picture quality in a large size.

Picture quality is very good for the cash, with darker black levels than some plasmas, but on the other hand the backlight's local dimming effect can be obvious. There is blooming evident on contrasting images, and it's something that more expensive local dimming TVs like the Samsung F8000 and Sony W900 aren't troubled by.

So why does the 55-inch get four stars while this gets three and a half? Quite simply, there are several competitive screens to the 60-inch -- the Sharp 60LE650 and the Sony 60R520 -- which are as much as $300 cheaper than the Vizio, while the 55-inch has no known peers at its size and price. Further, while both Vizios perform very similarly, the 60-inch is 30 percent more expensive than the 55-inch, yet it's less than 10 percent larger diagonally. In closing, a 55-inch Vizio TV with very similar image quality for less than $1,000? Hard to beat. Yet, make no mistake, the Vizio M601d-A3R is still an excellent television.

Series information: I performed a hands-on evaluation of the Vizio M601d-A3R, but due to manufacturer-stated differences, it stands apart from other models in the M-series. See our review of the 50- and 55-inch sizes here.

Design
In 2013, Vizio took a good, hard look at its TV design and came up with what is a very streamlined look for the M series. The company's new range is forward-looking and appears more expensive than it is.

The Vizio M601d-A3R features a bezel as thin as a smartphone, finished with a brushed-aluminum cap. The Vizio logo is subtle and appears like a browser tab on the right-hand side. The computer comparisons continue with the monitor-like, nonswiveling stand.

The TV comes with an updated remote control, which now features backlighting. Like the 55-inch M-series before I found the remote sensor to be slow and highly directional as well; you have to point it directly at the sensor for it to work. The menu in particular is sluggish to appear onscreen.

If you ever used the Yahoo apps on previous Vizio TVs, you'll know what the company is going for with its new menu system with its drop-down boxes and smartphone-like notifications. The TV now offers some helpful wizards; they are confined to a left-hand window in most cases but due to the larger size of the screen aren't as hard to read as on the 55-inch.

Features
With the addition of two new 4K ranges at CES 2014, the M-series is now the middle of Vizio's offering, and it remains the company's best 1080p displays. The Vizio M601d-A3R is still a "budget-conscious" TV and dispenses with features like cameras or MHL ports -- most of its function existing in the service of the picture.

Chief among these extras is the edge-lit local dimming system, which is a big contributor to its solid picture quality. Vizio also says the TV has a 240Hz refresh rate, although as is often the case, it behaved more like a 120Hz TV.

Aside from Smart TV, one of the not-quite-necessary-but-nice-to-haves is the passive 3D system -- something that won't be available on the company's 4K sets in 2014. Vizio includes four pairs of passive 3D glasses in the box.

The Vizio remote has recently acquired wireless connectivity and learning functions, but based on my experience it still has some teething problems. Following my attempts to control two different Oppo devices and a Verizon set-top, I would say that it's currently unreliable at best. The setup routine asks you to input the make and model of your device, then press the power key to test that the code it selected works. However, on all three devices it failed, and the only option at that point is to input codes manually (and who has the specific remote codes to hand?) or to go back, which annoyingly deletes all of the previously entered data.

Smart TV: Vizio has made some tweaks to its Smart TV platform, now named Vizio Internet Apps Plus. Most notably, you can now see more apps on the screen at once; the ribbon that appears at the bottom when you tap the 'V' button now holds seven apps instead of four. Tap it a second time and you now get the new All Apps view.

The company has also added a swath of new apps to its "store" -- mostly local news stations, but notably it now includes Crackle video, 3D video-streaming service 3DGo, and music-streaming app iHeartRadio. The company showed off Spotify capability at CES 2014 but has yet to elaborate if models like this particular 2013 version will receive it.

Go to our Big List for a selective list of the apps the Vizio carries.

Picture settings: In the past, Vizio targeted its TV products toward sports enthusiasts and even included sport-specific picture settings in the menu. Now, however, instead of a dozen different sports modes, there are now only six, including two Calibrated modes for AV enthusiasts as well as a dedicated Game mode.

On the other hand there is still very little advanced tweaking available, offering only a two-point grayscale under Color Temperature, and no advanced color calibration, for example.

I used Smart Dimming in my calibration of the M601, but as with the other Vizios that use this feature, there is a significant hit to the gamma response in the lighter shades. Still, I feel this is worth it for the improved black levels.

Connectivity: The Vizio has four HDMI ports plus two USB inputs for external disks and keyboards. You also get a component/composite port, an Ethernet port, and a digital optical output.

Picture quality

Picture settings:
Vizio M601d-A3R

According to Vizio, there are some differences between the M551 and the M601; the performance of both televisions are very similar -- and very good. Both exhibit the same ability to get darker blacks than most competing LED LCDs, while also exhibiting some problems with blooming. The main difference between the two is color accuracy, with the 60-inch showing slightly worse red response than the already-rosy 55-inch. Otherwise, color between the two is of the standard you would expect at their respective prices.

Click the image at the right to see the picture settings used in the review and to read more about how this TV’s picture controls worked during calibration.

Black level: The black levels of the 60-inch are as deep as you would expect from an edge-lit dimming system -- and come with the usual caveats as you'll soon see. Firstly, a bit of that loveable scamp, Harry Potter. At the 57:44 mark of "Deathly Hallows, Part II," you see the titular character walk through a hall filled with junk, and on the left hand side of the image is a stack of books partly hidden in shadow. The books were visible on all of the TVs bar the 55-inch Vizio, and only vaguely viewable on the Samsung 8000. Part of the problem with the 55-inch Vizio was that backlight uniformity issues helped obscure the books.

While we're on backlight issues: blooming, as with the 55 inch, is a problem with the 60-inch. This effect is particularly noticeable when a part of the screen is bright and the rest dark -- think moons, credits, and so forth. Both models exhibited a gray strip across the middle on loading screens and the like, but it was less strident on the 60 than the 551.

To get blooming-free picture quality you'll need to spend more money, given that plasma is no longer an option. Sony is the best, after the Panasonic S64, for blacks without blooming, followed by the Samsung, the two Vizios, and then the Sharp which isn't affected by blooming (and has the lightest black levels of the bunch). However, the Panasonic showed brownish blacks at times while the Sony's can be blue. The Samsung and the Vizios had more neutral shades of black.

Color accuracy: Colorwise, the Vizio behaved very similarly to most of the other TVs in the lineup -- with the exception of the Sharp 650, which was a little undersaturated, particularly in green. The M601's worst color offense was too-red skin tones, although it still didn't tip over into ruddiness.

While the colors were similar between the two Vizios, the 60-inch was a little more favorable toward blues and greens, with a better approximation of the mother's dress in "Tree of Life." On the smaller Vizio the dress looked blue while on the 60-inch it had more cyan in it. The Sony and the Samsung did best at the four-color combination of natural red hair, pale skin, an aqua dress, and blue-green grass.

Video processing: Though the M series claims to support 240Hz, the motion resolution test suggests it should actually be classified as a 120Hz TV. The 60-inch managed to resolve only a maxiumum 600 lines out of a possible 1,200. You may see more blurring on leading edges and moving text, even with motion compensation (the Soap Opera Effect) turned on, compared to other TVs.

When it came to supporting Blu-ray content, the Vizio was very good, with the 24p stream relatively smooth compared to the jerkiness of the Panasonic S64.

Film-based 1080i content in the form of our synthetic test suite exhibited some shimmering in the test pattern, and in this way it behaved similarly to the Sharp 650, which also passed.

If you're looking to use the Vizio for gaming, you'll want to know about the fairly pedestrian 46.67ms input lag score in the dedicated gaming mode.

Uniformity: While not as prone to light leakage from the sides as the 55-inch, subtle brighter areas were still visible -- and particularly so off-axis. When seen from the side the television shows off the dimming backlight more obviously, but while colors became muted, at least the blacks didn't devolve into bluishness.

Bright lighting: Under bright lights the screen appeared quite reflective and could be just as distracting as the 55-inch before it. Blacks did give in to dark blue at times with the right (or wrong) content, but it held its deepest blacks better in the light than did the Sony.

Sound quality: For a unit with no discernible room to fit speakers in, the M601's sound quality wasn't too bad. While music wasn't very good -- the vocals on Nick Cave's "Red Right Hand" sounded distant -- at least the bass didn't become flabby and distorted.

But turn to movies and the Vizio had an impactful sound with no distortion or obvious compression on explosions. Compared to other models on test, vocals and environmental effects had more "space" than the 55-inch Vizio, and the TV was also able to go much louder than the other space-constrained model, the Samsung F800.

3D: For the first time since reviewing a passive TV, I saw significant crosstalk during one of my tests. Using the default 3D mode, in "Hugo" (4:44) as the protagonist's hand reached out against the dark background there was a definable ghostly image -- something that wasn't apparent on the 55-inch. There was an additional soap opera effect that wasn't visible on the 55. After some experimenting with the Film Mode and Advanced Brightness Control I got the TV to work properly but can't explain how this happened: the settings were the same as when I'd started. Apart from this glitch, the image was then as easy to view as that of the 55-inch, with decent color and black levels as well as the significant line structure artifacts common to 1080p passive 3D screens.

Vizio M601d-A3R calibration report