Samsung MU7000 Series 40" (UN40MU7000) vs VIZIO P-Series 65" (P65-E1)

The MU7000 is a great well-rounded option for watching movies, gaming, and sports. Its picture quality is decent, it has low input lag and low motion blur, and the screen uniformity is great. It can also be used as a PC monitor.

The MU7000's remote has a voice command feature that can perform actions as you physically would with the remote, and it can even be used to adjust settings directly.

The MU7000 runs on the Tizen smart platform, known for its simplicity and intuitiveness.

It’s easy to navigate and access all the functions of features of the TV - the whole menu of the Tizen OS is organized around a menu known as the “Smart Hub” which contains everything: apps, settings, input switching, etc.

It also has a section for quick access to frequently used items.

The MU7000 is a decent pick if you're a casual viewer. You'll get a great 4K/SDR experience, but the HDR performance might be lacklustre due to the lack of local dimming and low HDR peak brightness.

The MU7000 is decent for gaming thanks to the fairly low input lag and barely noticeable motion blur. Its input lag of ~20ms contributes to a responsive gaming experience, and the panel's response time of ~20ms means it can handle motion fairly well - most don't notice any visible trails behind fast-moving objects.

The MU7000 is suitable as a PC monitor because of its relatively small screen size of 40". It can be used up front thanks to the small minimal viewing distance, and it has full 4:4:4 color support that ensures text or shapes with clear, hard edges are not blurry.

The MU7000 looks good with really deep black levels and sufficient peak brightness levels for most content.

Dark scenes look amazing thanks to the panel’s contrast ratio of roughly 6300:1, which means it’s capable of producing blacks that are 6300 times darker than the brightest white pixel the screen can produce.

It gets bright enough for SDR content with a peak brightness level of ~350 nits, which is sufficient for making colors pop.

The best viewing experience will be in a dark environment where the panel won’t have to compete with light as the MU7000’s screen can’t get bright enough to perform as well in bright environments.

The P65-E1 performs extremely well for HDR content thanks to its black levels, high native contrast ratio (4675:1, up to twice of that at 9271:1 with local dimming), and wide color gamut — all three of which are essential to HDR.

The P65-E1 runs on Vizio’s SmartCast OS, which has a remote app for iOS & Android capable of controlling the TV.

There are two different formats for HDR — HDR10 and Dolby Vision. Some TVs support only HDR10 and can't play Dolby Vision content. The P65-E1 supports both HDR10 and Dolby Vision, giving it the ability to play any HDR content in 2017.

Unlike the OLED panels in this price range, the P65-E1 has a VA panel and thus it does not suffer from image retention issues.

The user interface of modern smart TVs can include some advertisements similar to those on the internet or in a mobile app. The P65-E1 does not include any.

The P65-E1 can handle dark scenes very well thanks to its high native contrast levels, which clocks in at 4675:1 native, and it can go up to double of that at 9271:1 with local dimming enabled. This, along with good black levels and uniformity, gives the TV the ability to achieve great representations of dark scenes beyond most expectations.

The P65-E1 is versatile enough to be used for sports & gaming — its handling of motion blur is fantastic at ~11ms, and the input lag is only ~16ms which makes it good for gaming where input lag matters (but it is not suitable for HDR gaming because of the ~45ms of input lag for HDR content).

The P65-E1 is great at handling motion with very fast response time (~11ms). It will have no issues with displaying fast-moving objects — they will look smooth without any blur or lag.

The P65-E1 does a decent job with color accuracy — the colors are accurate out of the box and there is no calibration required, although it would benefit from some adjustments to the white balance. Color calibration is recommended to get the most out of this TV, but not necessary if you find it alright.

The black levels of a TV affects the viewer’s perception of other colors next to it. If the black levels are not deep enough and doesn’t remain uniform across the screen, the overall picture quality will look “flat” without much depth. The P65-E1 handles this well with only <0.8% deviation (across the entire screen) from what a pure black screen should be — this results in a significant gain in its native contrast levels, thereby increasing the picture quality.

The color gamut of a TV refers to the range of colors the display can reproduce — the wider the color gamut, the more colors it can display, and the better the overall picture quality will be. This is extremely important for HDR content because it requires a much wider color gamut than SDR content. This TV has a wide color gamut and have no issues with accurately reproducing the colors necessary for true HDR, although its color gamut is not as wide as other TVs in this price range (e.g. the Sony X900E).

The picture quality is great on the P65-E1. It has one of the highest contrast ratios in an LED TV when local dimming is enabled (9271:1), giving it the ability to produce very deep and uniform blacks. The brightness level for HDR is decent enough at ~450 nits to fight glare in bright environments without much picture quality degradation.

Local dimming is the TV's ability to dim areas of the screen for deeper black levels and better contrast — they are separated into different dimming zones, where each zone can be individually dimmed as needed. The local dimming on the P65-E1 is by far one of the best in LED TVs of 2017 (only beaten by the Sony X940E). It is capable of doubling the contrast levels from 4675:1 to 9271:1.

The P65-E1’s panel has a semi-gloss finish for diffusing the light across the screen evenly to decrease intensity. This, along with its ability to get quite bright (practically, it peaks at ~450 nits for HDR and can maintain this level of brightness), means that this TV is decent at handling reflections and performs okay in bright environments.