This Television Is Heaven – Review Geek

Have you seen a Vizio TV lately? Then as far as design goes, you’ve seen this one. But bigger. Like a lot bigger. Like someone took the excellent 65-inch P Series, grabbed it by the corners, and stretched. That’s not a bad thing, though; if something ain’t broke, don’t fix it, right?

After all, you still get the epically thin bezels around the entire Vizio P85. That’s an improvement over other models, which have three “bezel-less” sides and a bottom chin. The Voice remote also makes its way to this television, and it’s as fine a remote as you can hold. And if you like the idea of TV feet with multiple positions to theoretically support a sound bar (yeah, you’ll want one), then you’ll be glad to know this model includes that same stand design.

At least, well, in theory. The Vizio P85 is so incredibly large that it requires feet placed much farther apart than other models. Because I already have a 120-inch projector screen in my living room, I brought the Vizio 85-inch into my bedroom. Admittedly that’s ridiculous. But to add to that ridiculousness, this is the first TV I’ve ever brought into my home that couldn’t sit on my wide dresser. The feet were farther apart than my dresser. And that’s well over 60 inches wide. Initially, I had to bring a minifridge into my bedroom and place it next to my dresser to hold the TV. It’s ridiculous in all the best ways.

I generally judge a TV’s OS by how quickly I want to plug a Roku stick into one of its HDMI ports. And I’m happy to say that generally, with SmartCast, I don’t want to. Nearly all the apps I want are available, with SyFy being one of the few exceptions, and it plays well with those apps too. Whether I’m watching HBO Max, Netflix, or Plex, I’ve never seen a sign of stutter or slowdown. Everything works.

The voice commands you get with the remote are surprisingly good, though I rarely use the feature. It’s a nice option, and I won’t complain, but talking to my TV (specifically the remote) will never stop feeling weird. Thankfully Vizio recently added a search option in the SmartCast interface, negating any need to use voice controls.

My complaints about SmartCast remain the same for now. First, there’s how you install and navigate apps. Every app that Vizio offers is automatically installed in one long row. The best you can do to make that better is rearrange them so the apps you want are first in line and the apps you’ll never use are last (I’m looking at you, CourtTV). All told, there are 125 apps and counting, and there’s got to be a better way to handle them.

You can get to an app catalog, but it’s just a list of the stuff already installed broken into categories. It’s not helpful. The good news is that a reliable source tells me that Vizio is working on making the app experience better than it is now, and I can’t wait.

As I have mentioned, I already have two screens far larger than the Vizio P85. As such, I honestly didn’t expect to be that impressed by an 85-inch screen on the wall. Thanks to a 120 HZ display, it should be better for gaming than my projectors. But for everything else, bigger is always better right? Wrong.

The Vizio 85-Inch P85QX-J01 is stunning. According to Vizio, the TV can reach 3,000 nits, and though other reviewers have confirmed the stat, I don’t need special tools to know it’s true. This is one of the biggest, brightest, most beautiful displays you could ever want. Looking at this TV is like staring at a beautiful work of art that just so happens to be backlit by the sun.

As I already mentioned, we have the TV in our bedroom. It’s so dang bright using default settings that at night you can’t tell the difference when we turn off the lights in the room and the TV is on. On one occasion, the thing lit up our house so well that it woke my eight-year-old up in his room, and he asked us to either close our door or turn off the lights in the room. But our lights were off—it was the TV alone.

I’d love to end the review right there on a high note of how glorious the P85 looks, but I can’t. Unfortunately, there are a few problems with this TV, and generally, you’ll find those issues across the Vizio lineup.

First up, we can’t escape the price. At $3,000 (or more if you go by MSRP), it’s not an affordable TV. There’s just no way around that fact. But frankly, that’s fine. This is not meant to be a cheap television—it’s a bombastic, in-your-face, giant TV designed to leave you awestruck. You just aren’t going to get a 4K 85-inch 120hz next-gen gaming-capable TV for less than what Vizio is offering here. If you want an affordable TV, there are plenty out there. The P85 is for someone who wants to drop a pretty penny on a stunning television.

Moving on to things you’ll find on all Vizio’s, let’s talk about the ads. SmartCast, like most smart TV interfaces, is replete with ads. Across the screen, you’ll find scrolling (muted, thankfully) videos from various services like Disney+.  That’s fine, I guess; it’s easy to ignore. But occasionally, when you hit the home button, SmartCast will interrupt you with a full-screen giant ad with no obvious closing method. You have to hit the right button on the remote (back), which may be difficult if the lights are turned off, and you’re unfamiliar with the remote. It’s obnoxious. At least it doesn’t happen often.

Ads on smart TV interfaces are nothing new. But the general logic has been, “you get this $500 TV at a discount, or this $40 streaming stick for super cheap in exchange for ads.” Let me remind you that the P85 is $3,000. And it feels wrong to get bombarded with full-screen ads that interrupt what you’re doing on ANY television, let alone one this expensive. I wish Vizio would consider turning them off for its top-of-the-line TVs.

It always comes down to this: “Would I buy the Vizio P85 now that I’ve had it in my home to test?” And that’s a tricky question to answer. At the moment, the only reason the answer is “no” is simply because I already have two bigger screens in my home. But let’s set aside for a moment and pretend I didn’t. I’ve easily spent more on my home theater displays than the P85 costs.

And now that I’ve gone hands-on with this enormous, glorious, beautiful TV? Absolutely in a heartbeat, I’d buy it. I’d probably have to fight to convince my wife, who usually would prefer to spend $500 or less on a TV. But I think I can get here there, especially now that she’s spent time with it too.

Because here’s the thing: I have two displays in my home that are bigger than the P85. And yet I still end up using this one often. Some of that is the location in my bedroom. But it’s also a better gaming display. Not to mention anything with a dark scene instantly looks better on the P85 than my projector setups.

Vizio’s P85 is nothing short of spectacular. If you would never spend $3,000 on TV, then I’m not sure I could convince you to try it. But if you’re willing to spend more on luxury, this TV should be on your shortlist. It’s spectacular.