VIZIO M-Series 50" (M50-E1) vs Sony A1E 55" (XBR55A1E)

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.

The Sony A1E has exceptional picture quality because of its infinitely high native contrast ratio, decent luminosity, and near-perfect black uniformity.

The TV does a fantastic job when it comes to reproducing dark scenes, as the infinitely high native contrast ratio and the near-perfect black uniformity allow it to display thick, rich, and immersive dark scenes.

As for bright scenes, the luminosity of 389 nits allows this OLED TV to fight glare and reproduce crisp and vibrant colors in vivid scenes.

Out of the box, the Sony A1E has excellent color accuracy, so the majority of users will not require doing the color calibration procedure. The A1E has better color accuracy than its competitors, including the LG seven series OLED TVs.

This 4K120 TV works well with all of the current-generation 4K consoles, including the Xbox One X and PS4 Pro, because of the A1E’s adequate input lag (30.7 ms) at 4K resolution. Additionally, the TV is a good choice for HDR gaming, since its input lag does not increase when processing high-bandwidth 4K HDR signal.

The Sony A1E looks good even from an angle since its colors only start to degrade when the angle between the viewer and the panel is greater than 29 degrees.

The Sony A1E sounds noticeably better than all of its competitors, including the LG Seven series OLED TVs.

The Sony A1E runs the Android TV which has the widest app selection among all the smart TV platforms currently available.

The Sony A1E is an excellent option for those who have a collection of old DVDs or Blu-rays, a cable or satellite box, or an Apple TV since the A1E can detect and eliminate judder from those sources and make 24p content playback nice and smooth.

The Sony A1E does an excellent job of managing reflections as its panel is coated with the anti-reflective material; therefore, the TV looks good even when situated right in front of a window.

The main interface of this TV is free of advertisements and sponsored content.

The Sony A1E can boost up the frame rate of low FPS content up to a stunning 120 Hz, making such content look more fluid and smooth. This feature is called motion interpolation, or in some sources, the 'soap opera' effect. Some people find the interpolated content very attractive.

The Sony A1E manages to balance all the features required for a good sports TV. It has well-handled motion blur, excellent color uniformity, and superb picture quality.

Motion blur handling is the most critical aspect of a good sports TV. The A1E has almost negligible motion blur because of its fast full pixel response time of 0.7 ms, which ensures that the pixels of this TV need only 1/1400th of a second to go from one color to another. Therefore, even fast objects don't leave noticeable trails on the screen.

As for the color uniformity, the A1E is currently the best TV money can buy. The overall color uniformity of a TV is essential for sports fans, as it allows a TV to reproduce realistic and good-looking football fields, hockey arenas, golf fields, and other large sports fields.