Vizio's Mini LED Quantum 4K QLED Smart TV punches far above its weight class. At $398 for the 65-inch VQM65C-10 I tested (and $498 for the 75-inch VQM75C-10), it's hundreds of dollars cheaper than the $649 Hisense U65QF, and looks nearly as good, thanks to its excellent color performance and satisfyingly bright mini-LED backlight array. It makes some concessions to hit its price, and the U65QF offers superior performance and features, but if you aren't a gamer and want a big screen for less than half a grand, the Vizio Mini LED Quantum 4K (or VQM, for short) is your best bet, and earns our Editors' Choice award for budget-friendly TVs. 

Specs and Design: 4K, Dolby Vision, and Limited HDMI Ports

As its name implies, the Mini LED Quantum is a mini-LED, QLED TV. It has a 4K resolution and a native refresh rate of 60Hz, with VRR and support for up to 120Hz refresh rates in 1080p. The display supports high dynamic range (HDR) in Dolby Vision, HDR10, HDR10+, and hybrid log gamma (HLG). It features Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2 with BLE, and has an ATSC 1.0 tuner for over-the-air broadcasts. It does not have an ATSC 3.0 tuner.

(Credit: Will Greenwald)

The VQM's black plastic design is typical and unassuming. It's nearly bezel-free, with thin borders around the screen's top and sides and a 0.7-inch-wide strip along the bottom. The TV doesn't look chunky or cheap, but it isn't particularly sleek, and its only stylistic flair is a white Vizio logo painted on the bottom strip. This plainness continues into the stand, which consists of two V-shaped matte-black plastic feet (like almost all TVs, you can also wall-mount it).

Around the back, all the connections are built into a central hump. You'll have to reach a bit to get to them, since the ports are an inconveniently long 14 inches in from the screen's sides. The left-facing connections include three HDMI ports (one eARC), a USB 2.0 port, an optical audio output, and an RF antenna/cable connector. The sole right-facing port is for the power cable. It isn't the most robust selection, especially with only three HDMI ports, a slow USB port, and no Ethernet. 

The remote is a simple, pill-shaped black wand that recalls Roku's remotes. It lacks Roku's signature purple plus-shaped navigation pad, though. Instead, a large, circular navigation pad sits in the center, with its edges swelling outward. Most controls sit above the pad, and include Power, Input, Microphone, and Settings buttons; dedicated service buttons for Disney+, iHeartRadio, Netflix, Paramount+, Prime Video, Xumoplay, and Vizio's Watch Free+; and a pinhole microphone. The Home, Back, and Bookmark buttons are located below the navigation pad.

(Credit: Will Greenwald)

Software: Smartcast's Simple Streaming Setup

The VQM uses the company's SmartCast smart TV platform, which is an interface similar to Google TV and LG's WebOS in terms of layout and feel. Its app list isn't massive, but it covers major streaming services, including Apple TV, Crunchyroll, Disney+, Netflix, Prime Video, and YouTube, but not Twitch. SmartCast also supports Apple AirPlay and Google Cast for streaming from local devices.

(Credit: Will Greenwald)

You access the minimal voice controls by pressing the microphone button on the remote and speaking into it. You can tell SmartCast to search for content, open apps, and control media playback, but that’s it. This is strictly a voice-command system for the TV, and only the TV. It isn't remotely close to a full voice assistant like Alexa on Fire TVs or Gemini on Google TVs. In fact, it's even more limited than Roku's voice features, which can control a handful of Roku-branded smart home devices.

When you're setting up the VQM, SmartCast gives the false impression that you must share your viewing data and enable Automatic Content Recognition to use any streaming service. Don't worry; after the TV’s connected to the internet, visit the All Settings menu, select Privacy & Legal, and turn off Viewing Data. You will be able to stream just fine.

Picture: Better Than You'd Expect for the Price

Brightness is one of the biggest compromises TV manufacturers make when producing a budget TV, but the VQM performs surprisingly well on this front. Using a Klein K-10A colorimeter, a Murideo SIX-G signal generator, and Portrait Displays' Calman software, and testing the TV out of the box in HDR Calibrated mode with an HDR10 signal, I measured a peak brightness of 431 nits for a full-screen white field and 766 nits for an 18% white field. After upping the local dimming to max, the peak brightness jumped to 475 nits for a full-screen white field and 969 for an 18% white field. However, that made the TV's noticeable light bloom worse. Still, 766 nits peak brightness is pretty good for a cheap TV. 

For comparison, the Hisense U65QF wowed me by reaching a blazing-for-budget 1,024 nits. Although I also consider the U65QF a budget TV, it's much more expensive than the Vizio. The Amazon Fire TV 4-Series is much closer to the VQM in price, but it can only put out a paltry 285 nits.

(Credit: PCMag)

Color performance is excellent on the VQM. The above charts show the TV’s color levels in Calibrated mode with an SDR signal, compared against Rec. 709 broadcast standards; with an HDR10 signal, compared against DCI-P3 color levels; and in Dolby Vision Bright mode with a Dolby Vision signal, also compared against DCI-P3. Although SDR whites, cyans, and magentas lean a bit cool, HDR whites are spot-on, as are most HDR colors. The panel doesn't cover the full DCI-P3 color space, but it comes close while remaining well-balanced. Magentas lean a bit warm with an HDR10 signal, but not significantly.

In testing, the BBC's Planet Earth II looked very good on TV. The colors were varied and balanced, and daytime scenes looked satisfyingly bright. I clearly discerned the fine textures of fur and bark in scenes shot in the sun or shade. It's an accurate, natural look. 

The Great Gatsby demonstrated that local-dimming mini-LED arrays aren't created equal, as the anamorphic picture's letterboxing suffered significant light bloom, making the black bars lighten and darken noticeably depending on the scene. I could sometimes clearly see the cuts and contours of black jackets, but just as often, they lost their darker details to muddiness. Whites looked bright in contrast to those muddy blacks, despite the TV's relatively low peak brightness.

Speaking of bright whites, I liked the snowy and cloudy shots in the demonstration footage on the Spears & Munsil Ultra HD benchmark. While the panel lit up big swaths of the screen quite well, it lost a lot of highlight detail to clipping, making clouds and falling snowflakes disappear into a sea of flat white. Light-bloom torture-test shots of colorful objects against completely black backgrounds also produced significant haze that tapered off gradually across the screen. This is unsurprising, since all local-dimming LED TVs show some bloom, and cheaper TVs with fewer zones than high-end models can't control light leakage along high-contrast edges as well. The U65QF showed similar light bloom behavior in testing, as well as clipping in highlights and muddiness in shadows.

The colors remained vibrant when viewed from off-angle, with minimal desaturation. The contrast remained intact as I moved left or right from the screen's center and past the edge, though the light bloom became much more noticeable.

Gaming: Just Average

The VQM is a bit underequipped for gaming. It supports variable refresh rate (VRR) from 48 to 120Hz, but only with a 1080p picture. With 4K gameplay, the refresh rate tops out at 60Hz. In other words, while the VRR is available, the panel's native refresh rate is effectively only 60Hz. That means it isn't compatible with AMD FreeSync or Nvidia G-Sync compatibility.

At least the panel's speedy. During tests with a Leo Bodnar 4K Video Signal Lag Tester, the VQM produced an input lag of just 9.5 milliseconds at 4K60 and 5.3 milliseconds at 1080p120 with Game mode enabled. That's below the one-frame threshold for those refresh rates (16.6ms at 60Hz, 8.3ms at 30Hz). Although the TV doesn't look as smooth in 4K as the 144Hz, AMD FreeSync Premium Pro-equipped Hisense U65QF, it's still very responsive. That said, the 60Hz limitation at 4K makes the VQM a TV difficult to recommend for gaming.