Review: Vizio OLED 4K UHD (2020)

You can now get a microLED-backlit, 4K, high dynamic range display that will absolutely blow the socks off your 10-year-old TV for well under $1,000. But for a long time, one echelon of high-end TV tech has remained out of reach for most people: OLED.

In organic LED (OLED) displays, each pixel acts as its own backlight, whereas traditional LED TVs have one layer with the pixels and one layer that lights up the pixels. This is why you often see odd greys and poor shadow details in regular LED TVs; even dark scenes have to be lit at least somewhat. With OLED, contrast is perfect, because the blacks are totally black, thanks to the pixels being “off” when told to be black.

In previous years, even “affordable” OLED models hovered over the $1,500 mark. But this past Black Friday, Vizio's new OLED TV dipped to $900 (down from its $1,300 list price). I don’t want to belittle how great this TV looks, but the price alone makes it the most exciting TV of 2020. Finally, someone has made an OLED for the masses.

Manufacturing OLED is complicated. LG is the only company on earth that makes panels big enough for TVs, which means even this Vizio model comes with an LG screen. But the fact that this Vizio OLED bears a striking resemblance to many of the pricier TVs we’ve tested from LG and Sony, both in form and function, is a testament to how great affordable TVs have gotten.

Like the aforementioned LG and Sony, the Vizio OLED has a similar center-pedestal design, which makes it easier than some other TVs to place on existing TV stands. It’s also super thin toward the top—thinner than an iPhone even—so you’ll want to be careful while flipping it to install the mount. I happened to be testing Vizio's Elevate soundbar alongside the TV and was happy to see it tucks in perfectly below the rounded pedestal.

The processing is where you start to see the corners Vizio cut to bring down the price. LG’s more expensive CX, while offering a nearly identical panel, comes with Nvidia G-Sync tech, making it an excellent (and large) monitor for PC gaming if you have an Nvidia graphics card. The Vizio OLED offers variable refresh rates but lacks G-Sync.

Gray levels, and all the gradients coming out of the true black “off” position in this TV, aren't as defined as on the more-expensive LG and Sony models. Super dark shows like The Mandalorian are best viewed in dark rooms, but that's advice I'd give anyone for any TV.

As others have noted, I did find the peak brightness of this TV to be darker than that of more expensive OLEDs as well, at least in the factory “calibrated” mode. This problem is easily improved, though not totally mitigated; you can bump up the luminance in the advanced picture settings menu, which makes high dynamic range (HDR) content slightly more vibrant.

As with all OLED panels, you can expect some screen burn-in (where content leaves an imprint on the TV's panel) over the lifetime of the unit if you leave a single station (or desktop app bar, or game menu) showing for many hours a day. I suggest a standard LED TV like the TCL 6 Series if you think this might be an issue, but it really won’t be for most people.

Don't let lukewarm enthusiasts on forums get to you. Trust me: Even though it’s not quite as bright or as detailed in darker scenes (or in brighter rooms) as more expensive OLEDs, this TV still looks remarkable.

I watched everything from 4K Blu-ray discs to 720p Plex streams, and in every instance, I found myself dumbfounded by how fantastic a TV with this price tag looks. I only had to turn up the luminance and turn off motion smoothing—things I'd do on any new TV. From there, everything I played looked nothing short of fantastic. In previous years, the gulf between TVs that were two or three times the price and this would be staggering. This year, it feels like a small leap over a garden hose.

One area I give Vizio the upper hand is with its Smartcast interface. It's easily my favorite of the three major OLED TV companies, thanks to an intuitive interface and associated app. I like that it also has support for both Apple AirPlay and Google Chromecast, so casting from any phone is a breeze.

It's also better than Sony's OLED when it comes to console gaming. The Vizio is one of the few TVs on the market with HDMI 2.1 ports, as well as full support to use the PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X at 4K resolution with a 120-frames-per-second refresh rate. As of publication, the only other TV to support this functionality is the LG CX (and other pricier LG models).

I wasn’t able to test either new game system in my review period (and I have heard there may be some initial compatibility issues), but upgrading your TV (if you've got the cash) is absolutely worthwhile to access these features and make the most of your shiny new console.

Vizio's OLED has a few visual compromises, but overall, this new TV has the best price-to-performance ratio you’ll find outside of TCL's 6-Series. Make sure to wait for a holiday sale, as it usually gets close to $1,000, if it doesn't dip below. If I were in the market for a new TV right now, this would be near the very top of my list.