VIZIO M-Series 50" (M50-E1) vs VIZIO P-Series 55" (P55-E1)

The M-Series is the best pick for HDR content in this price bracket. Compared to its direct competitors, it offers the best HDR experience because it has all the essentials for true HDR playback that its competitors lack: local dimming, fairly high peak brightness level, and a wide color gamut.

Its deep black levels are further improved with local dimming, which can make parts of the screen darker when the image calls for it. This results in a slight increase in overall picture quality - the black levels become deeper by a small margin, so highlights will stand out further.

Colors look vibrant in both dark and bright scenes, and the panel can reproduce the wide range of colors required for true HDR playback. In addition, it can also get bright enough to light up these colors sufficiently for HDR details to stand out, thanks to the peak brightness level of ~400 nits.

The M-Series can play all HDR content because it supports both HDR10 & Dolby Vision formats.

The M-Series looks great with vivid colors.

Dark scenes look amazing with great details, thanks to the panel’s contrast ratio of roughly 5500:1, which means it’s capable of producing blacks that are 5500 times darker than the brightest white pixel the screen can produce. This can be pushed slightly further to about 5800 with local dimming, which results in a slight increase in overall picture quality.

The colors are quite lifelike and accurate even without any calibration. They will look vibrant even in bright scenes because of the panel's high peak brightness levels of ~300 nits for SDR & ~400 nits for HDR.

Even in a decently-lit environment, the picture quality of the M-Series won't deteriorate by much. The panel is good at handling reflections and it can get adequately bright to fight off glare.

The M-Series is decent in bright environments.

The colors won't look dull thanks to the panel's high peak brightness levels and good handling of reflections. It's bright enough to fight off glare with peak brightness levels of ~300 nits for SDR & ~400 nits for HDR, and the intensity of reflections are reduced by panel's semi-gloss finish.

You can stream content to the M-Series from smart devices or apps that support streaming media to Chromecast.

The M-Series runs on VIZIO's SmartCast OS which has a brilliant, well-integrated phone and tablet app for iOS & Android. It can turn your smart device into a fully-functional remote, which makes it easy and convenient for you to control the TV without the physical remote. It's also particularly handy for text input, especially when it comes to searching for content from streaming services.

The M-Series has no ads on its interface.

Suitable for gaming, movies, and sports, the VIZIO P-series is one of the most versatile TVs in its price range. While the combination of low input lag and fast response time makes the TV suitable for gaming;, the VIZIO P-series also does a great job of processing highly dynamic content, such as sports. Furthermore, the TV’s uniform blacks, excellent local dimming, and reasonably high peak brightness makes it an attractive option for home theater.

It has great motion blur handling abilities and a dedicated gaming HDMI port with a reduced input lag of 15.9 ms makes the VIZIO P-series quite suitable for gaming.

The TV’s excellent motion blur handling is directly related to its ability to change the color of each pixel 80% of the way in just 3.9 ms so you won't notice any trails on rapidly moving objects. The VIZIO P-series by far outperforms all the competitors on the market when it comes to this.

The 55-inch model of the VIZIO P-series has excellent viewing angles because of its IPS panel which preserves correct colors and shades no matter the angle between the viewer and the panel. This property makes the TV ideal for watching with a group.

This TV is an excellent choice for those who like to ‘speed up’ the regular 30FPS media, sourced from cable/satellite boxes or old DVDs as it can boost up low frame rate content up to a whopping 120 frames per second rate. Some people call it a ‘soap opera effect’, but technically the process is called interpolation. Additionally, it’s worth mentioning that this TV’s biggest competitor: the TCL P607 cannot interpolate motion.

The VIZIO P-series is suitable for HDR-enhanced content because of its full HDR10 and Dolby Vision support. The HDR10 and Dolby Vision are currently the two flagship HDR formats used in the multimedia industry, which means that all the new HDR movies and shows are compliant with either one of those formats.

It’s also worth noting that in the HDR field, the VIZIO P-series outperforms its competitors, including the Samsung MU8000 which lacks Dolby Vision support.

The VIZIO P-series feels solid and rugged because its frame and stand are built from high-quality metal. In comparison, the most significant competitors of the VIZIO P-series: Samsung MU8000 and TCL P607 have their frames and stands built from plastic.

This TV comes with a brilliant, well-integrated phone and tablet application which can transform your smart gadget into a fully-functional remote. The application is particularly handy when you need to input some text, for example, while searching content on YouTube or Netflix.

This TV works fine with all the current generation consoles, including the Xbox One X, PS4 Pro, and Wii U, because of its 4K 60 Hz support.