Vizio’s Affordable 4K TVs Are Your Perfect Stepping Stone to Ultra HD

Vizio

When they were introduced at CES, Vizio’s P-Series LCD sets did something most other LCD TVs at the show didn’t: They made buying a 4K set seem enticing and affordable. Starting at $1,000 for a 50-inch panel, the Ultra HD resolution (3,840 x 2,160) wasn’t the only thing that made the new TVs stand out.

The other perks included full-array backlight panels with local dimming. That kind of setup is normally only found on the highest of the high-end LCD sets, but Vizio has been adding these once-expensive features to all its TVs in 2014.

The 70-inch P-Series set has 72 local-dimming zones, while the rest of the models have 64 zones. Each of the sets also has a technology called Active Pixel Tuning that helps eliminate light bleed even further. The benefits of both features will be plain to see in terms of sharp contrast: Granular control over brightness combined with the balanced, bright lighting of a full-array LED should help the P-series approach the near-perfect picture quality that OLED delivers.

The picture quality for the price will also make these sets an excellent choice for anyone who isn’t quite sold on an Ultra HD upgrade. The backlight technology alone will help produce an excellent 1080p picture, and Vizio says its sets will also upscale high-definition video to “near Ultra HD” resolution. The TVs support 4K video at up to 60fps via a suite of smart TV options, which include streaming Netflix, Amazon, and other sources over 802.11ac Wi-Fi.

Hardware-wise, the P-series continues Vizio’s design trend of thinning out the bezel to bestow a wall-to-wall picture effect upon your eyeballs. The new sets have a native refresh rate of 240Hz, as well as a simulated “Clear Action Rate” of 960Hz if you’re really into the soap-opera effect. To handle all that motion processing and 4K content, the P-series is driven by six processing cores: A quad-core GPU and a dual-core CPU.

Although prices and sizes for the P-series TVs were announced way back in January, we’ve been waiting for them to actually become available. It’ll be any day now, and you can preorder them on Vizio’s site today. The 50-inch P-series set will sell for $1,000, the 55-incher will go for $1,400, the 60-incher is priced at $1,700, the 65-inch model will cost $2,200, and the 70-incher will sell for $2,500. More good news: None of them are curved.