VIZIO M65Q8-H1 Quantum 65″ 4K HDR Smart TV (M-Series | 2021 Model)

During these “ultra-modern” times that we currently live in, when going for a new TV, most people opt to go for any of the most recently released Smart TV models. That’s mainly because of the huge availability of Smart TVs, which are in fact built towards the Smart Home market that has been exploding over the past few years. Nowadays, most modern Smart TV models can easily appeal to tech. enthusiasts, as they support several different Smart Home functionalities that makes them extremely versatile. That not only includes their internet connectivity (via an Ethernet port or built-in Wi-Fi) for accessing television streaming services (like Netflix, Prime Video, etc.) and for accessing several Apps that cover a large selection of subcategories (sports, automotive, philosophy, religion, and more), but also their supported Voice Commands like Voice Search via your favorite Smart Voice Assistant (Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, etc.), as well as many other Smart Home features. So, with all that said, if you’re looking for a brand-new Smart TV for your ever-growing Smart Home and you don’t really know where to start, join us on our detailed review to Vizio’s newest VIZIO M65Q8-H1 Quantum 65″ 4K HDR Smart TV, which is the company’s latest VIZIO M-Series Smart TV model for 2021.

The VIZIO M65Q8-H1 Quantum 65″ 4K HDR Smart TV features intense color tones from up to a billion colors, as well as great shadows and brightness levels, all coming with extreme details in a 4K Ultra HD quality.

This Smart TV is the latest model from Vizio’s M-Series of Smart TVs. Featuring a whooping 3840 x 2160 resolution, the ability to deliver a cinematic color volume with over a billion hues of vibrant color and the possibility to recreate detailed highlights at up to 800 nits of brightness in Dolby Vision HDR, this Smart TV has literally everything you need for watching your favorite content during 2021.

There’s also a Smart Active Full Array Blacklight with exactly 90 Local Dimming Zones that allows the Smart TV’s screen to intelligently adjust its blacklight for deeper black levels, which ultimately creates a stunning depth with perfect contrast levels.

Furthermore, this Smart TV also brings VIZIO’s Smart Cast 3.0, which is what will allow you to easily stream and share your favorite content, and since this new system is also fully compatible with most Voice Assistants, like Amazon Alexa, the Google Assistant, and even Siri, you can simply use your voice to control the system (via easy-to-use Voice Commands) in a completely hands-free fashion.

Lastly, there’s also Chromecast built-in for a multi-screen experience, as well as support to Apple Airplay 2, which, in case you are not aware of, are two similar technologies that allow you to respectively use your Android or iOS devices to stream movies, shows, music, and photos from any compatible Apps (in iOS’ case it would be iTunes, Apple TV and other Airplay) to the VIZIO M65Q8-H1 Quantum 65″ 4K HDR Smart TV.

So, without further ado, let’s have a fully-detailed look at this feature-packed Smart TV and check everything that the VIZIO M65Q8-H1 Quantum 65″ 4K HDR Smart TV has to offer you.

DESIGN & SPECS

Starting with the Smart TV’s size, when accounting for its integrated stand (meaning the feet/support), the VIZIO M65Q8-H1 Quantum 65″ 4K HDR Smart TV measures exactly 57.29 inches long by 35.65 Inches tall (33.09 without the stand) by 11.81 inches thick (1455mm x 906mm x300mm), which makes it somewhat large, meaning that you’ll only be able to fit it on reasonably wide countertops.

It’s also worth to mention that together with its integrated stand, this powerhouse of a Smart TV weighs exactly 54 lbs. (25 kg), so remember to be careful when carrying it around. While its weight is not monstrously heavy, it’s still something that you should be mindful of.

Despite of its somewhat large dimensions, this Smart TV still features a very simple and minimalist look, which not only gives it a very sleek design that’s extremely pleasing to look at, but also allows it to easily blend in with the rest of your home décor, no matter what your choice of furniture is.

From the side, the Smart TV’s body is actually quite thin.

Now, when observing the VIZIO M65Q8-H1’s minimalist design at a more detailed level, other than its simple aesthetics, this latest-generation of the company’s VIZIO M-Series Quantum 65″ 4K HDR Smart TV still maintained the exact same design, which, just like older models, still features a matte-black bezel throughout its entire body.

Additionally, there’s also a slightly thicker bottom border that gives some extra protection to the bottom side of the TV, as well as some extra weight on its bottom side for additional stability.

Lastly, you’ll also be pleased to know that, just like most of the previous Smart TV models from the VIZIO M-Series, the VIZIO M65Q8-H1 Smart TV can also be wall-mounted if you’d like to have it hanging on a wall.

That can be easily achieved thanks to all of its central removable bolts, which after removed, will allow you to have this Smart TV wall-mounted by attaching it to a 400 x 200 millimeter VESA mount.

SCREEN & PICTURE QUALITY

The VIZIO M65Q8-H1 Smart TV comes equipped with a built-in 65″ screen (64. 5” diagonal) that supports an image resolution of 3840 x 2160 pixels. With its image displaying over 8 million pixels (which is around 4 times the resolution of 1080p), you get a true 4K Ultra HD resolution at a maximum refresh rate of 60Hz (can be set between 40Hz to 60Hz), so that you can enjoy all of your content at a breathtaking level of detail.

Now, when it comes to the Smart TV’s picture color, just like the Vizio M658-G1 Smart TV – which is one of the latest Smart TV models from the VIZIO M-Series that we covered in the past – the VIZIO M65Q8-H1 Smart TV also features Quantum Dot Color Technology.

This basically allows this 2021 Smart TV model to deliver its image with a cinematic-like color intensity.

Now, keep in mind that this is the company’s next-generation of its Quantum Dot Color Technology, which is combined with a powerful Active Full Array backlight to enable the Smart TV to produce up to 85% more color than any standard 4K HDR TV. While the last model “only” boosted its colors to an 80% increase, with another 5% increase to its color boost, the VIZIO M65Q8-H1 is even better than its predecessors. Thanks to that, this next-gen Smart TV can bring you a cinematic color volume with over a billion hues of vibrant color.

In case you’re wondering, this is measured by using Dolby’s MDC (millions of distinguishable colors) specification that factors the range of colors and luminance levels for standard 4K HDR TVs, which often only feature rec709 color, with up to 300 nits of brightness and no local dimming.

While Dolby Vision HDR makes this Smart TV capable of displaying a wider spectrum of colors and detail, this next-gen Smart TV also features support to HDR1010+ and HLG high dynamic range formats, which will ultimately transform your content with exceptional 4K detail via 4K UHD and the already mentioned Dolby Vision HDR, bringing you a dramatic imaging with an awesome level of brightness, contrast, and color.

Now, unlike standard 4K HDR TVs that only support a low-level of brightness with no local dimming, the VIZIO M65Q8-H1 can deliver extremely-detailed highlights at up to 800 nits of brightness, which can ultimately make every single detail pop-out instead of getting those same wanted details lost in light or dark areas of an image.

As mentioned earlier, this Smart TV also integrates a Smart Active Full Array Blacklight with exactly 90 Local Dimming Zones, and that basically allows the Smart TV’s screen to intelligently adjust its blacklight for deeper black levels, which ultimately creates a stunning depth with perfect contrast levels.

Lastly, for its Image Processing, this Smart TV utilizes a completely new and more powerful Display Processor, which is the company’s brand-new VIZIO IQ Active Processor. This brand-new and lightning-fast VIZIO IQ Active Display Processor allows the Smart TV to deliver an even better picture processing that any older models, while also providing the Smart TV with a more intelligent 4K upscaling engine that will display all of your favorite content in an astonishing 4K Ultra-HD quality.

Picture Quality for Gaming

On the topic of this Smart TV having a 60Hz panel, let’s talk about how “Gaming-friendly” this recently released Smart TV model actually is.

To be clear, while it still doesn’t have every single “fancy” new feature that you can find on the “super-high-end” Smart TVs (you know… the really, really expensive ones), it still features an eARC port, so you’re ultimately able to send audio to a TV that originates from cable, satellite, streaming or source devices to be sent to an AVR or sound bar through a single HDMI cable. This ultimately ensures the simplicity of your connectivity setup while also ensuring that the original audio can be experienced without any issues.

This eARC port does support Auto-Latency Mode, which basically means that the Smart TV will go straight into Auto Gaming Mode, which is basically activated via VIZIO’s ProGaming Engine (if you will), while also supporting AMD FreeSync, which automatically elevates console gaming with a fluid and artifact-free performance at virtually any framerate.

Yes. You’ve heard it right… ANY framerate. What makes that possible is the Smart TV’s revolutionary built-in IQ Active processor (meaning its previously mentioned powerful Display Processor), which basically helps the Smart TV to fine-tune any individual pixels as well as to more intelligently reduce image-noise and enhancing fine details for a remarkable picture performance.

That said, this eARC port also supports Variable Refresh Rates, which is amazing for a TV at this price-point. Now, the TV’s Gaming Mode will top out at around 4K 60Hz resolution (obviously due to the Smart TV’s 60Hz panel), but I still believe that you’ll still get a fairly great gaming experience, especially when accounting for the supported Variable Refresh Rate feature.

By having both VRR (Variable Refresh Rate) and AMD FreeSync, this 2021 Smart TV model is guaranteed to bring you a next-level gaming experience that simply won’t leave you disappointed.

AUDIO QUALITY

Now we’ll have a quick discussion about the Smart TV’s Audio Quality. To keep it simple, the VIZIO M65Q8-H1 Smart TV just comes equipped with two (x2) built-in 10-watt speakers. As you probably expect, these two small built-in speakers will obviously not meet any audiophiles’ expectations, but while these are obviously not a top-in-class addition to this model, they still offer you a fairly decent sound quality to accompany its astonishing display specs.

Overall, things will all sound great, and can reach quite loud sound levels if you configure the Smart TV’s sound settings to do just that.

Nevertheless, keep in mind that at very-high volume-settings, higher pitch sounds might suffer with some occasional sound distortion. There’s one more thing that I’d like to mention, and that’s the fact that since this Smart TV just packs two (x2) built-in 10-watt speakers, this model won’t really offer you an astonishing bass performance.

With that said, unless you’re just really watching some the news, or some random TV shows during your lunch time or something similar to that, I’d really recommend that you get even Vizio’s most basic soundbar (or any of the company’s higher end soundbars) to ultimately accentuate the Smart TV’s sound quality.

On that note, feel-free to check out our past review to the VIZIO 2.1 Sound Bar System.

Still, aside from those two things, the VIZIO M65Q8-H1’s built-in 10-watt dual speakers can still produce a decent audio quality for your content. Just remember that if you’re trying to get really awesome sound-quality and sound-effects for any movie or TV show so that you get the best experience overall, you should definitely match this Smart TV with a better audio system than the TV’s built-in one.

One last Pro-Tip; if you’re simply decide to use the Smart TV’s built-in pair of 10-watt speakers, I suggest that you go into the TV’s Audio Settings and Turn Off the Virtual Surround Sound, as that should make a HUGE difference.

INTERFACE & CONNECTIVITY

Moving on to the Vizio M65Q8-H1’s interface, on the back of the TV we can find quite a big collection of ports, which are divided into a row of right-facing connections and downward facing ports.

I’m extremely glad to see that the company kept the exact same design for the Smart TV’s interface that they were already using on our last reviewed model (meaning the Vizio M658-G1, which was their model for 2020), thus passing it on to their newest VIZIO M65Q8-H1 Smart TV, which is their currently released Vizio M-Series Smart TV model for 2021.

As we mentioned for the company’s older model (the Vizio M658-G1), there was one single issue with this interface-design, and that’s simply the fact that some of its ports might be virtually hard to reach regardless of how you have the Smart TV set up. However, that’s really only a trivial issue, as most people will usually just set up their TV once (the original time), and only then will occasionally figure out that they need something changed so that any newer devices that they aquire later on can also be connected to their Smart TV set up.

Now, finally onto the Smart TV’s interface. Starting with its HDMI ports, the VIZIO M65Q8-H1 Smart TV comes equipped with a total of four (x4) different HDMI ports (two on its side panel and two more on its bottom panel), and from those, one even features a audio-return channel (eARC) support for simple connection of soundbars (which, as mentioned earlier, is also great for gaming).

There’s also a single USB port for connecting a flash drive or powering a dongle, as well as an optical connection for older digital surround-sound systems. Additionally, this Smart TV also integrates a RCA stereo jack, which allows users to plug in any speakers. Moreover, you also get a connection for HD antennas, which is a a very special feature that was only reintroduced on some of Vizio’s latest Smart TVs from 2019 and 2020.

Lastly, for network connectivity, the TV also comes equipped an Ethernet LAN port and also features Wi-Fi connectivity, supporting the most common wireless standards (802.11ac).

On a side note however, I’d like to point out that the VIZIO M65Q8-H1 Smart TV does not offer Bluetooth connectivity, which sadly means that you won’t be able to connect wireless headphones to it without recurring to some sort of plug-in adapter. That being said, while this Smart TV model is not designed to output audio over Bluetooth, you can still opt to purchase a Bluetooth transmitter and have it connected to this Smart TV to listen to your content over any Bluetooth-enabled audio devices.

THE TV REMOTE

Next, let’s talk about the VIZIO M65Q8-H1’s included remote, which certainly features a distinctive look and feel, and as such, you might either love it or hate it.

Starting with the remote’s design, this TV remote features the standard rectangular design that’s found in most TV remotes, but contrarily to most standard TV remotes, its oval profile is what makes it super comfortable for anyone to actually hold it.

The remote’s body is mostly made of hard plastic, making it somewhat durable; at least while you’re holding it, of course, as these TV remotes are not meant to be dropped on the floor anyways. But still, its durable body should help to protect the remote’s internal components from the occasional accidental drop.

Now, for the remote’s button layout (meaning the button’s setup/configuration), its button layout is very, very simple, which makes me very happy every time I look at it.

Right at the top of the remote we can find special control buttons that will instantly trigger some of the Vizio M65Q8-H1’s Smart TV’s functionalities, like Vudu, Netflix, Amazon’s Prime Video, Xumo, Hulue and Redbox buttons.

One of my favorite buttons, which I really enjoy having on the remote, is none other than the remote’s included Input Button (integrated right at the top left of the remote), and the same goes for the Menu Button, which for the latter, can take users directly to the Smart TV’s picture settings so that you never have to go through the Smart TV’s On-Screen Menu.

Additionally, there’s also a large circular directional pad (changed from a square-shaped pad from the previous models of 2019 and 2020), which is located in the perfect spot, meaning right at the center, just between all of the remote’s channel and volume controls.

This not only includes the Next Channel and Previous Channel Buttons, as well as the Volume Increase and Volume Decrease Buttons, but also the Sound Mute Button, the Channel Info Button (now moved from the bottom right to the top right), and more.

Lastly, at the very bottom of the remote we can find all of its numbered buttons, which can be used to accurately go to any TV channel.

In case that you don’t really “love” the remote’s button configuration – which can be actually considered to be quite a serviceable design – you can instead opt to use the VIZIO M65Q8-H1 Smart TV’s proprietary VIZIO SmartCast Mobile App.

THE SMARTPHONE COMPANION APP – VIZIO SmartCast Mobile App

Speaking of which, the VIZIO SmartCast Mobile App is available to download for free for both iOS and Android devices. Basically, this is one other great way of controlling your VIZIO M65Q8-H1’ Smart TV, as the App even comes with an integrated digital remote control that can be used virtually via your Smartphone.

As such, all of the VIZIO M65Q8-H1’s physical remote’s buttons are also replicated on your Smartphone’s touch screen, and so, you’re ultimately given full control of the TV set.

Furthermore, the VIZIO SmartCast Mobile App also includes many top-tier streaming services (like Netflix, Amazon’s Prime Video, Disney+, YouTube, and more), as well as many casting options that end up making it easy for you to either share your favorite content straight to the Smart TV or to ultimately enjoy that same content directly on your phone.

OTHER NOTABLE FEATURES

Smart Cast 3.0 – Compatible with tons of Streaming Apps & Streaming Services

The company’s renowned and Award-Winning Smart TV system, which is simply called Vizio SmartCast (now running on version 3.0) will most likely be your number one “go-to” right at the VIZIO M65Q8-H1’s home screen, as this system (or HUB) works like a smart TV solution that ultimately brings you more of the entertainment you love, and that’s easily achieved thanks to the Smart TV’s Apple Airplay 2 support, as well as thanks to the fact that the Smart TV also features Chromecast Built-In.

With Apple AirPlay and Chromecast built-in, you can conveniently share your pictures, slide shows, and presentations wirelessly, either by doing that directly from your phone, from tablet, or even from you computer directly to the Smart TV’s huge screen.

Since the VIZIO M65Q8-H1 is compatible with tons of streaming services (just like its predecessors), you can conveniently browse from any of your favorite ones, and this includes Netflix, Hulu, Amazon’s Prime Video, and more.

Furthermore, you can also enjoy free and unlimited TV from over 150 channels with VIZIO Watch Free, and these include the all-famous NFL Channel, a fubo Sports Network channel, a ion PLUS channel, as well as USA Today and Fox’s NEWS NOW, a LEGO channel (perfect for younger children), or even the TasteMade channel (which works as a global, digital food and travel network for millennials to explore different cuisines from around the world).

Ultimately, the VIZIO M65Q8-H1’s Smart Cast 3.0 Smart TV System will allow you to easily select any of those services straight from the included remote (or App) right to your VIZIO M65Q8-H1 Smart TV so that you can enjoy any of those services’ popular TV shows and/or movies.

Support to Apple Airplay 2 & Chromecast

As mentioned just before, this next-gen Smart TV also features both Apple AirPlay and Chromecast built-in.

That will ultimately allow you to conveniently share your pictures, slide shows, and presentations wirelessly, and that can be done right from your phone, from tablet, or even from your computer directly to the Smart TV’s huge screen.

Voice Assistant Support

Additionally, for any Smart Home fans, the VIZIO M65Q8-H1 Smart TV also features support to Voice Commands for the most popular voice assistants such as the Google Assistant, Siri, or even Alexa-enabled devices, which will allow you to easily turn the TV On and Off, as well as to activate and control your favorite Streaming Apps, and much, much more.

This will make actions like streaming, controlling, and sharing much easier than with manual controls, as no extra streaming devices or remotes are needed.

As such, the Vizio M65Q8-H1 also ends up working as a great Smart Home companion, with voice control support for 2020’s most commonly used Voice Assistants (Siri, Alexa, Google Assistant).

All you have to do is literally power On the Smart TV and you’ll instantly be able to stream any Apps as well as pretty much anything else simple and easy-to-remember hands-free Voice Controls.

FINAL THOUGHTS

The VIZIO M65Q8-H1 Quantum 65″ 4K HDR Smart TV features amazing 4K Ultra HD picture quality, a decent sound quality, compatibility with Vizio’s Smart Cast 3.0, built-in Chromcast and Apple Airplay 2, and Voice Assistant support.

With this high-end Smart TV you can easily improve your viewing experience for your favorite content, as you’re guaranteed to get a breathtaking picture-quality for any of your favorite streaming services, including Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, and more.

All that makes the VIZIO M65Q8-H1 Quantum 65″ 4K HDR Smart TV the perfect entertainment centerpiece for any family that’s enthusiastic about their Smart Home.

If you’re interested in buying the Vizio M65Q8-H1 Smart TV, each unit is currently discounted from its normal price of $749.99, now going for just $649.99 each (you can save a whopping $100.00 with this limited-time discount). You can order yours online, directly from Vizio’s official USA shopping page, which you can access via this link.