VIZIO M-Series M558-G1 Quantum 55” UHD LED TV

Another day into the world of 4K as we test out one of Vizio’s latest TV models. Specifically, the 55″ M-Series Quantum (model M558-G1). Recently launched as part of their 2019 M-Series lineup, the new TV falls into the game at a reasonable price and a killer image.

Resting between their flagship P-Series and their value-priced V-Series, the M-Series looks to find a happy middle in both quality and price, bringing with it a slew of features to tickle your interests with and provide an enjoyable display for your video watching needs.

It features a mostly thin-profile design allowing it to look great, both on the wall or sitting on a stand, and also comes in a 65-inch option (in case 55-inches feels a bit small for you).

In regards to the slew of features. You get 600 nits of brightness and an Active Full Array backlight with 90 dimming zones to help deliver incredible blacks with. It supports Dolby Vision HDR, HDR10 and HLG. It features their latest SmartCast 3.0 with Chromecast built-in and native support for Apple AirPlay 2, Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. Along with (of course) some (but not all) of your favorite apps, like Netflix, Hulu, Crackle, VUDU, and Amazon Prime Video.

Thanks to built-in support for both Chromecast and AirPlay 2, you can stream an endless amount of content to the TV if it doesn’t already have a specific app built-in. This is good since SmartCast 3.0 is nice but not as appealing as some other companies and the GUI’s they deploy for this. So if you choose, you can do everything from your phone or tablet.

Cruising around the menus and apps is a bit better from last year’s series, allowing you to get in and out of apps quickly without having to spend abnormal amounts of time loading them or browsing for content. This is more than likely thanks to enhancements in the hardwire inside the TV. As mentioned, we have seen better smart interfaces coming from other companies, and some of the modern options do either compare or offer slightly better performance when using them. However, the M558-G1 still performs quite nicely.

The remote is a bit basic, however, this is quite average with most TVs these days. Honestly, it hasn’t really changed much as it’s the same exact remote they have been using for a while. You do get shortcut keys at the top for some of the apps, and you have above-mentioned support for Alexa/Google speakers to help control things with (in case you’re too tired to look for the remote).

Image-wise, this TV compares well against some of the larger brands within a slightly higher price range than this one. The blacks are deep, and the colors are rich and accurate, helping to bring images to life. In fact, we were quite surprised by what we saw. It’s honestly very difficult to judge a TV based on the display model you see in the stores. The store might not know how to properly calibrate a TV before deploying it, or they may be sending a bad feed or sample content to it that doesn’t represent the maximum potential of that model. This happens a lot in places like Fry’s Electronics where they may commonly use large HDML splitters to send the same source footage to multiple models at the same time. It also doesn’t help when they haven’t updated their splitters in god knows how long.

Thankfully, when we set this up right out of the box, it looked great. We barely had to change anything. In the end, the only tweaks we had to do to the image settings were based on our own preferences, and it only took a minute or two. No calibrations were done to it using calibration media this round.

The inputs on the back of the TV feature just about everything you could ask for, including 4 HDMI 2.0 inputs, allowing each one to deliver 4K content to the TV. You have a single analog input (composite), an RF (coax) input for cable, dish or OTA content. There is an Ethernet port, and a USB port (for loading files off a thumb drive with).

For outputs, you have both an optical digital output, as well as an analog RCA.

Our Conclusion

There’s not much to say outside of the fact that we really liked this one. The colors, blacks, and brightness were all pretty good (although brightness could be just a tad better). The detail was quite rich, especially when fed true 4K HDR content. The SmartCast 3.0 experience was pretty good. It isn’t the best in performance or selection, but quite well enough for its price range. Plus, the support for Chromcast and AirPlay 2 seals the deal as you can stream just about anything using your mobile device. For the current price, this TV makes for an excellent option for a 55-inch “Quantum” 4K HDR TV.

*Average price is based on the time this article was published

Specifications

Are you a manufacturer or distributor that would like us to test something out for review? Contact us and we can let you know where to send the product and we will try it out.

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