VIZIO M-Series 50" (M50-E1) vs Samsung NU6900 50" (UN50NU6900)

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 Samsung NU6900 offers smooth and lag-free gaming experience thanks to its low input lag and good motion handling capabilities.

Gaming feels responsive thanks to the TV's low input lag that measures ar around 22.2 milliseconds - It is on par with what the other gaming TVs in this price range offer.

The motion looks clear thanks to the TV's fast pixel response times that eliminates traces of motion blur. The full pixel response time of the Samsung NU6900 is only 16.2 milliseconds.

The Samsung NU6900 is an excellent option for those looking for a home theater TV because of its superb performance in a dark room where it can display deep, dark and inky blacks.

The blacks look genuine thanks to the TV's high overall native contrast ratio that measures at around 6100:1. Only a couple of the competitors in this price range can offer that high contrast ratio.