Vizio M-Series Quantum X 50-inch Class 4K TV review Tom's Guide Skip to main content Tom's Guide is supported by its audience. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here's why you can trust us. Vizio M-Series Quantum X 50-inch Class 4K TV review A smaller, less-bright version of Vizio's top-performing TV By Nick Pino published 16 August 2022 (Image credit: Tom's Guide) At 26 pounds, it's relatively light, but wall-mounting it higher than your shoulders is going to take a bit of effort given the bulkiness of the screen. Even then the TV will jut out over 3 inches from the wall, which is more than other QLED TVs. Its full measurements without a stand are 43.81 x 25.48 x 3.41 inches. Thankfully, the TV uses a standard 200mm x 200mm VESA mount so it should be compatible with most cheap mounts out there. (Image credit: Tom's Guide) Our HDR test results, while still good in their own right, didn't impress us as much. In Bright mode with HDR content we measured a peak luminance of 495 nits in a 10% window. That's around what you'd get with some older OLED TVs, but it's not great for a QLED TV like this one. If you switch it to Calibrated mode where the color gamut coverage is better and more accurate, you're looking at a peak brightness of only 426 nits. Considering a 55-inch Sony A80J OLED can hit over 700 nits, these numbers aren't exactly wonderful. Numbers are just numbers, however. In practice, shows and movies looked generally good on the M-Series Quantum X. It may not be in the top echelon with the likes of Samsung's new QLED or the Sony QD-OLED, but it has a workman-like performance. Re-watching Game of Thrones in 4K Dolby Vision was nice and crisp, with great motion in Calibrated mode. The colors weren't vivid and the shining city of King's Landing wasn't as bright as we believe they could have been, but the picture performance was consistently good. (Image credit: Tom's Guide) The good news is that out-of-the-box sound is passable, especially mid-range dialogue, which can be heard especially well if you just disable the DTS Virtual:X sound. Vizio M-Series Quantum X 50-inch Class review Gaming As far as gaming performance goes, the Vizio M-Series Quantum X performs as good or better than some of the best TVs this year. With 13.2ms of lag in game mode, the TV is well-under the 20ms we typically recommend for fast, responsive gameplay and with support for Dolby Vision, certain games in your collection are going to look brighter and more colorful than you've ever seen them. Of course, why you're really buying the M-Series Quantum X for is its HDMI 2.1 port that supports 4K/120Hz out of the box. We can confirm it works as advertised without any additional messing around with the settings. That said, we could only get it to work on HDMI 3 - thankfully a separate port from the eARC port in HDMI 1. If you have a gaming PC up to the task, you can even take things one step further by playing games at 1080p /240Hz. Without a powerful enough PC near to our TV testing station, we weren't able to test it for this review, but we were able to watch some clips of this in action and the results - from what our ageing eyes could make out - looked even smoother. No matter how neat 1080p/240Hz gameplay is, the issues that we talked about above with performance impact how games are going to look, obviously - i.e. capping the brightness at around 500 nits. It's not a game-ruiner, especially at this price, but it's a small drawback. Vizio M-Series Quantum X 50-inch Class review Smart features As far as smart platforms are concerned, Vizio's SmartCast is holding its own as one of the better - if not quite the best - smart TV platform. One of the reasons for that is because SmartCast has an interesting - and useful - layout. On the very top is a row of categories that include recommended movies and shows as well as free content (always with ads) and Live TV provided by Vizio's WatchFree+ service. Below that top row are the curated shows and movies, a recommended row of content and then, finally, a fixed number of apps in the center row that can be re-arranged depending on your preference. It's clean and efficient. (Image credit: Vizio) If you press and hold the microphone button on the remote, you'll activate SmartCast's built-in assistant that can help you find a show or movie. It's not as smart as the mainstream smart assistants from Google or Amazon - it can't answer questions like 'what time is it?', for example - but it does a good job of searching across all services. There's not really as much innovation happening with Vizio's remotes as, say, Samsung's that can now charge off of both sunlight and RF energy from your Wi-Fi router, but Vizio's clicker at least nails the basics. Vizio M-Series Quantum X 50-inch Class review Verdict For gamers, the Vizio M-Series Quantum X at a 50-inch size is going to be incredibly tempting, but it falls short of universal appeal for the most ardent of AV enthusiasts. Its HDR test results, while good, aren't mind-boggling and have some real soft spots. The good news is that movies and shows still look nice on the Quantum X. There's a fundamental difference in light output between the 50-inch version we reviewed here and the larger 65- and 75-inch variations, so don't let this review put you off from those - however, we ultimately found that the Vizio M-Series Quantum X brings the best of Vizio's top-performing TV to a budget price point … with a few compromises. Nick PinoManaging Editor, TV and AVNick Pino heads up the TV and AV verticals at Tom's Guide and covers everything from OLED TVs to the latest wireless headphones. He was formerly the Senior Editor, TV and AV at TechRadar (Tom's Guide's sister site) and has previously written for GamesRadar, Official Xbox Magazine, PC Gamer and other outlets over the last decade. Not sure which TV you should buy? Drop him an email or tweet him on Twitter and he can help you out. See all comments (0) No comments yet Comment from the forums Be In the Know Get instant access to breaking news, the hottest reviews, great deals and helpful tips. 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