I primarily bought this TV because I was using my Samsung XL2370 23″ monitor for playing my Xbox 360 and it was difficult having to sit so close to the screen (Console games are designed to be played on a largish screen from a further distance, as opposed to PC games which are designed to be played on a smallish screen from a close distance). I bought this TV for my Xbox 360 and also to watch 1080P movies because the HDMI port on the Samsung isn’t very good, it’s not native support so it’s blurry.

Anyways, the picture quality on this TV is excellent. The smart dimming may not be quite as expensive as a TV with a full-array LED backlights, but it works wells enough that really dark scenes look a little bit better, you can usually notice when only one area of the screen has dimmed or is dimming, it just doesn’t follow the movement of light colored objects as well as a full-array equipped TV. The contrast and shadow quality is great, and the colors are well saturated. I haven’t seen the non-LED version of this TV but it seems that this one does have better contrast because it’s the best I’ve seen on a TV under 40″.

The sound is pretty good, it’s better than a lot of flat-screen TV’s, especially because flat screens prevent the speakers being able to have deep mounts. It’s why LCD’s always have tinny sound, but the bass is fairly good on this TV. 10 watts each is actually better than average for built in speakers.

Standard definition TV looks pretty darn good if you put a lot of the post-processing on such as noise reduction. Everyone knows SD looks worse on an HDTV than a SDTV, but the plethora of post-processing options help a lot to make up for that as much as purists may not like those. There is a lip-sync option in the audio or video menu that can help make up for the input lag that is added for using these processes.

Movies are awesome. It’s pretty cool that this TV has a Toslink/Optical output built in so that if you have a speaker system with an integrated amp such as Logitech 5.1 speakers for computers, you can just plug it right in and get 5.1 from your HDMI. Note that this TV does NOT have a miniplug (3.5mm headphone jack) output so it will not work out-of-the-box with stereo or 2.1 computer speakers or non-Bluetooth headphones. The movie setting in the video menu worked well for Iron Man 2 and the 120Hz and smooth motion stuff makes action scenes a lot less nauseating.

Now the main con I have (which I will update if I remedy it with instructions). Vizio TV’s are apparently known for their input lag, which is due in part to their circuitry design, partially to their over-use of post-processing (color enhancement, noise reduction, smooth-motion, smart dimming etc.) and the last one is actually a blessing and a curse: they use IPS-Pro or S-IPS panels (I forget which), which have superior off angle viewing angles and color accuracy, but have far inferior response time (input lag) except in the most advanced and expensive displays. Despite going to a larger screen with way better contrast and twice the refresh rate, my Halo: Reach scores are WAY down because of the input lag. I’ve tried turning off ALL post-processing and trying with the “Game Mode” (not picture setting, there is something called “Game Mode” in the general options that isn’t defined. Usually this turns post-processing off or goes into overdrive mode to improve response time) and turning them on, separately, I haven’t been able to get the input lag to improve enough (there is a small difference so I’m on the right track). I tried using VGA with a crappy VGA adapter and it was better, so this is likely due to un-disable-able post processing (VGA is raw there are limited video options when using VGA) that occurs when using HDMI. I also tried setting my Xbox to 720P and I don’t think that made any difference (probably because of added upscaling). I’m going to try buying a wired controller (supposedly removes up to 1.78ms of input lag) and using Component to see if it’s better. A lot of time analogue inputs are faster for various reasons).

The Vizio Internet Apps are pretty awesome, albeit slow. Because it uses Yahoo! widgets, you can count on their being more options to surplus the already existing options (Great! There is even an app for seeing what my Xbox Live friends are playing! Most awesome show-off app ever, + Yahoo! Finance, weather, Wikipedia!! Vimeo, Vudu, Amazon Video On-Demand, Web Videos…) regardless of whether Vizio is committed to continual support, which is a nice comfort. The only thing that could make this more cool is if you could play Pandora in the background while playing Xbox.

Other cool things, picture in picture controls are intuitive. This seems to be a kind of neglected option in TV’s these days so it’s nice and nostalgic. The resolution of the screen is nice enough that using the side by side option you can watch both.

When I read some of the other reviews here and elsewhere, I see that their expectations for this TV were a little unrealistic when it comes to using it as a computer screen. Before I bought it through Sam’s for 8 (deal is off now, but probably will be back for Christmas), I researched it completely. The Internet Apps right now are OK, but more will come that will be exciting in the future through automatically downloaded firmware updates. I was told by Vizio that eventually, it probably will have the capability to Wi-Fi what is on your computer screen to this TV. But, as for now, I’m very happy with the picture quality and size of this TV, as I watch it from a 10 to 15 foot distance away. Like someone else said, it is not too big, and not too small. When I watch HD Theatre channel’s travel/nature shows, the picture quality is close to a Blue Ray’s quality, IMO.

Oh, the lower amount of heat that comes off, and the less electricity use than my 2 1/2 year old Sony Bravia S-Series KDL-32S3000 32-Inch 720p LCD HDTV that went bad, are great buyer benefits! Sony wanted me to take that tv to an authorized Sony repair shop and pay to find out why the picture went out with no guarantees that they would pay for parts and/or labor to fix it. I thought it was throwing good money after the bad 0 that I had paid for the TV. So, on my new 37 inch Vizio, I bought Sam’s 3 extra year extended warranty for .96 after reading the “fine print”. No extended warranty is perfect, but Sam’s was the least offensive, IMO.