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  • Tour & Design

  • Performance: Summary

  • Performance: Blacks & Whites

  • Performance: Color

  • Performance: Motion

  • Performance: Viewing Effects

  • Remote

  • Audio

  • Connectivity

  • Controls & Menus

  • Formats & Media

  • Power Consumption

  • Value & Comparisons

  • Conclusion

  • Ratings & Specs

  • Tour & Design
  • Performance: Summary
  • Performance: Blacks & Whites
  • Performance: Color
  • Performance: Motion
  • Performance: Viewing Effects
  • Remote
  • Audio
  • Connectivity
  • Controls & Menus
  • Formats & Media
  • Power Consumption
  • Value & Comparisons
  • Conclusion
  • Ratings & Specs

Tour & Design

From the front the Vizio V047L is dominated by the 47-inch LCD screen with a resolution of 1080p. Below the screen is the Vizio logo, which lights up white when turned on and orange when turned off. On the same glossy bar as the Vizio logo to the far right is the remote control sensor. Below this glossy bar is the main speaker for the TV, which is textured in a grid pattern that extends up and around the LCD.

The front of the Vizio VO47L with a 47 inch display.

**Back**

On the back of the Vizio V047L you find all of the TV's ports, arranged in a single strip that sits in a cutout near the bottom of the TV facing down. Below the ports is a legend that tells you what each port is for, and is color coded.

The back of the Vizio VO47L holds all the ports on a single strip.

**Left**

There are no features on the right side of the Vizio V047L.

**Right**

On the right side of the Vizio V047L you find the control panel for turning the TV on/off, changing channels and volume as well as navigating the menu. Normally you'll use the remote for these functions, but if you ever feel like getting off your couch, or if the remote has gone missing, this is where you'll find the stuff.

On the left side of the Vizio VO47L you find the on-TV controls.

**Stand/Mount**

The Vizio VO47L sits on a removable stand that does not rotate. In order to remove the stand you will need to remove the four screws that hold it in place. The TV can also be wall mounted with four mounting points found on the back of the Vizio VO47L.

**Controls**

TV controls are found on the right side of the Vizio VO47L, arranged vertically near the bottom of the right edge. From top to bottom you find Power, Menu, CH+, CH-, VOL+, VOL- and Input controls.

The on-TV controls sit on the left side of the TV.

**Remote**

The Vizio VO47L ships with a universal remote that is black with silver highlights. The remote takes two AA batteries.

The remote of the Vizio VO47L is rather long.

**In The Box***(6.0)*

The Vizio VO47L ships with the TV itself, a universal remote with batteries, HDMI Cable, Power Cord, Safety Strap, Cleaning Cloth and User Manual. Getting it out of the box is a typical affair, nothing special here.

**Aesthetics***(6.0)*

The Vizio VO47L is styled in black with a glossy bezel around the LCD and a textured edging around that. The TV measures 4.5 inches deep without the stand, which is not super slim, but better than average. The Vizio VO47L's styling is not particularly impressive, but it's not ugly either. Those who don't need their TV to make a fashion statement will likely find it's styling just fine.

Performance: Summary

**Calibration**

To get the best out of a display, it has to be calibrated, a process that finds the correct settings for the individual display. We use the DisplayMate calibration process to set the display up correctly; the calibrated settings that we use are listed below.

Part of our standard calibration process is to put the backlight to maximum and then to find the settings that produce the closes to 6500k for the color temperature. For this Vizio, none of the color temperature settings were particularly close, so we used a manual setting.

**Dot Pattern**

the VO47L is built around a thin film transistor (TFT) active matrix display, which has full HD resolution and a quoted dot pitch of .5415mm on both the horizontal and vertical dimensions.  To further examine the specifics of this, we look at the dot pattern of the screen using a microscope. The photo on the right (taken at a 20x setting with a microscope), shows the dot pattern of the display and the slightly unusual sideways-V shape of the LCD elements; each < shape is a single element. They are in groups of three; one red, green and blue element forms a single pixel. Because they are so small, the eye blurs the colors together to form a single color. In this image, the screen is showing white; all of the elements are active.Vizio does not reveal the number of individual elements, but given that this is a Full HD display, there are probably around 5760 horizontal and 1024 vertical.

Performance: Blacks & Whites

**Black Level***(4.78)*[

](https://reviewed.usatoday.com/televisions/content/How-We-Test.htm#blacklevel)

Deep blacks on the TV screen mean that your movies look good; there's nothing worse than the dramatic scenes of your favorite film noir turned into a grey goo because the display can't produce a decent black. The VO47L had fair to middling performance here; we measured the deepest black at 0.44 cd/m2 (candelas per square meter, a measure of luminance where lower is better), which is in the middle of the pack; several displays that we have tested have had deeper blacks. The Panasonic TH-46PZ80U, for instance had a much deeper black (0.06 cd/m2) and the JVC LT-47X899 had a slightly better black (at 0.37 cd/m2).

**Peak Brightness***(8.47)*[

](https://reviewed.usatoday.com/televisions/content/How-We-Test.htm#peakwhite)

The flip side of the coin is how bright the whites are, and we measured the VO47L at an impressively bright 313.8 cd/m2, which is pretty damn bright. Brightness is only part of the performance of a display, but it is an important part; more brightness means that the display will be more visible in bright daylight, making it more suitable for daytime use. The VO47L had no problem here; over 300 cd/m2 means there is plenty of screen brightness. If you rally want to crank it to the maximum, you ca gnet it to 395.47 cd/m2 by pushing up the brightness and contrast controls, but this is not recommended; it has a serious effect on the color accuracy of the display.

**Contrast***(5.52)*[

](https://reviewed.usatoday.com/televisions/content/How-We-Test.htm#contrastratio)

The relationship between the black and white is the contrast ratio; it gives a good indication of the range of shades that the display can manage to produce. We measured the contrast ratio of the VO47L at 713:18, which is a decent, if unspectacular ratio. Because they had better blacks, several other displays had better scores here; the Samsung LN46A750 had a significantly higher contrast ratio of 2842:1. But the VO47L is comparable with other similarly priced displays; the JVC LT-47X899 was only slightly higher at 830:1.

One thing to note here; our figures are different from the contrast ratio figures quoted by the manufacturer (such as Vizio's 2000:1 for the VO47L) because they measure the ratio between the dark with the backlight turned down, and the brightest white with it turned up (sometimes called dynamic contrast). We measure the contrast ratio with the backlight on the highest setting, so our figures are usually much lower than the manufacturer quoted ones. Our figures are more representative of the performance you would see in the real world, though.

**Tunnel Contrast***(9.42)*[

](https://reviewed.usatoday.com/televisions/content/How-We-Test.htm#tunnelcontrast)

The tests above are done with just whites or blacks on the screen, but that's not what displays have to work with; real images are composed of a mix of blacks, whites and lots of bits in between. And some displays have issues with this; the light from the white parts of the screen leak into the black bits, making them lighter (see the animation on the right for an example). To see if displays have this issue, we test what is called tunnel contrast, where we measure a small area of black in the middle of the screen with different amounts of white on the screen. The graph below shows the results of this test; the amount of white on the screen is on the bottom, and the luminance of the black area is on the side axis.

As you can see from this, the luminance of the black did not increase much, even when they were surrounded by white; the last point on the graph (at the right side) is for the screen with 95 per cent white, so only a small area of black is on the screen. Even with this extreme example, the brightness of the black was only slightly up from when there was little white on the screen.

**White Falloff***(9.65)*[

](https://reviewed.usatoday.com/televisions/content/How-We-Test.htm#whitefalloff)

Some displays have a problem with white; if there is too much white on the screen, they turn the brightness down so they don't overheat (plasma displays are especially prone to this). So, we look for this by measuring the luminance of the screen with different amounts of white on the screen. The results are shown below; the amount of white is on the bottom axis, and the luminance of that white is on the side.

As this shows, there were no issues here; the luminance of the white stayed pretty much constant across the range; the whites were the same brightness if there was 5 or 100 percent of the screen that was white. That's good; you'll get the same white if you are watching a gloomy horror movie or a documentary on polar bears frolicking in the snow.

**Uniformity***(6.3)*[

](https://reviewed.usatoday.com/televisions/content/How-We-Test.htm#uniformity)

The uniformity of the screen is also important; there's no benefit to having the brightest white and deepest blacks if they don't remain the same across the screen. The VO47L again had middling performance here; we found both white and black screen sot be reasonably uniform, but there were definite lighter areas in the black screen, and the corners were somewhat dimmer in the white screens. These issues were definitely noticeable when watching a video, but they didn't detract overly from the image quality.

**Grayscale Gamma***(9.22)*[

](https://reviewed.usatoday.com/televisions/content/How-We-Test.htm#greyscalegamma)

All HDTVs process images on the screen, and one aspect of this processing is called Gamma. This describes the way that the HDTV converts the shades of gray from the input signal into the different intensities of brightness that you see on the screen, and this transformation can vary significantly from display to display. We test this by feeding a series of screens of varying intensity to the HDTV, then measuring the luminance of the screen. The results are shown below; the intensity of the signal is along the bottom (from black at the left to the maximum intensity at the right) and the measured luminance of the HDTV is on the left axis.

An easier way to look at this test is to plot the data onto a graph with logarithmic axis; because we are dealing with a power sum curve, it should then come out with a straight line. That's shown below, where the black line is the measured curve, and the blue line is the trend. A perfect TV would have teh same curve and trend.

As you can see, the Vizio is pretty close to the ideal here; the curve is flat and ties in well with the trend. Form this we cna also work out a figure for the gamma; we look for a figure for this of between 2.4 and 2.5, and the VO47LF was at 2.33, just a touch outside of the ideal range. But that's close enough that it won't be an issue for most users.

**Resolution Scaling***(6.6)*[

](https://reviewed.usatoday.com/televisions/content/How-We-Test.htm#resolutionscaling)

The VO47LF is a 1080p display with the full 1080p resolution, but it doesn't always get a 1080p signal to display; many devices output signals in the lower HDTV formats, and the display has to work with these. So, we test how good of a job the display does by feeding it a series of test screens in various high definition signal formats. Let's look at each of these in turn.

480p (6.30)

480p signals are produced by many standard definition devices that have digital outputs, such as high-end DVD players or some standard definition cable boxes. We found that the VO47LF did a reasonable job of working with these; the text in our test screens was sharp and very legible. We didn't notice any significant issues with problems caused by the dithering that the display uses to upscale the image, edges and lines looked clean and sharp. The video was overscanned by about 4 per cent, which is pretty standard for this type of video.

720p (6.5)

720p high definition signals are often used by broadcasters when they are showing sports, as progressive video provides smoother movement than the higher resolution, but interlaced, 1080i. We found that the VO47LF  again did a reasonable job here; the images were sharp and clear. Again, the image was overscanned (by about 3 per cent), which is a little unusual: most displays don't overscan 720p images.

1080i (7.0)

1080i video is the most common form of high definition video; it's what most over the air high definition signals are sent in, and it's what most high definition cable boxes produce. The VO47LF did a decent job here too; images were sharp, but the interlacing of the signal was obvious; moving objects had a somewhat jagged look.

Overall, the quality of all of the scaled resolutions was more then acceptable, making the VO47LF usable with a range of video sources.

Performance: Color

**Color Temperature***(9.64)*[

](https://reviewed.usatoday.com/televisions/content/How-We-Test.htm#colortemperature)

Your washing machine might make your whites whiter than white, but your television should not; you want a TV that keeps your whites the same, however bright they are. So, we test the color temperature performance of displays such as the VO47L by looking at how similar the whites it displays are at differing intensities. To do this, we calibrate the TV to produce a white at as close to 6500k as possible at the maximum intensity of white, then gradually reduce the intensity of the white and see how much the color temperature varies. The graph below represents the results of this test; a perfect display would have a completely flat curve here, indicating that the color temperature did not change as the intensity of the white decreased.

As you can see from this, the VO47L did a very decent job; the variations of the color temperature as the intensity of the white decreases are very small. In fact, the differences are so small that they aren't perceptible. Another way to look at this is to look at the color values of the white instead of the color temperature; if the color of the white changes significantly, you'll see a color cast. The graph below shows this; the center of the graph is the color of the white at maximum intensity, and our measurements of the white as the intensity decreases are shown on the black line. The red line indicates the smallest color difference that the human eye can perceive. On this chart, a perfect TV would have all of the measurements in the center.

 

The VO47L did well here again; most of the measured points (the dots) are within the red line, and the ones that are outside of it are only just outside. This means that there are some color shifts in the whites, but only minor ones that should not be visible to most people.

We also test the color temperature of the various color temperature modes that the display offers; the results are below.

Because none of the built-in settings were close to our ideal target of 6500k, we used a custom color temperature setting that got us significantly closer.

**RGB Curve***(7.59)*[

](https://reviewed.usatoday.com/televisions/content/How-We-Test.htm#rgbcurves)

Televisions make the colors that you see on the screen by mixing the three primary colors: red, green and blue. So, it is important for the performance of a HDTV that the response of each of these colors is smooth and accurate; any issues with one of the primary colors  would lead to every color that was made using that primary coming out wrong. So, that's why we look at the response curve of each of the primary colors individually by measuring a number of test screens. The results from these tests are shown below.

As you can see from this, the graphs are all fairly smooth, although the red and blue are a little bumpy. This bumpiness translates into some minor issues, such as some slight evidence of banding on subtle color changes like blue skies and clothing. The blue also tops out a little soon, meaning that the blue elements of the screen reach their peak intensity before the signal does; they just have no more to give. This is a minor issue, though; we would not expect this to present a problem in daily viewing. Overall, the Vizio VO47LF had decent, but unspectacular performance on the RGB curves.

**Color Gamut***(6.0)*[

](https://reviewed.usatoday.com/televisions/content/How-We-Test.htm#colorgamut)

There are limits to most things in life, including color. For a HDTV, the limits to follow are defined by a group of international experts in a standard called Rec.709. This contains the limits of the colors that a HDTV signal should contain, and thus represent what colors a TV should show. So we test this and see how close every TV we look at gets to these limits. The results for the Vizio VO47LF are below; the solid line is the limits for the Vizio, while the dotted line is the limits set in the standard.

Again, the VO47LF did reasonably well here; it didn't hit the limits right on, but it did get pretty close; the main errors are in the green and blue, both of which are slightly off.  For all of you imaging geeks out there, the chromaticity coordinates for our tests are in the chart below, as well as the error (the difference between the ideal and the measured).

Performance: Motion

**Motion Smoothness***(5.0)*[

](https://reviewed.usatoday.com/televisions/content/How-We-Test.htm#motion)

The VO47LF lacks the 120 Mhz refresh rate of many of the other displays that we have looked at, and it shows; the video is noticeably jerkier and less smooth than other displays. It's certainly not unwatchable, but it lacks the smoothness of the more expensive models, and video with a lot of movement in particular can turn into a blurry mess. One of the standard sequences we use to test is a clip from the hand-held camera action movie Cloverfield, and this was particularly difficult to watch; small details on the action sequences were just not visible.

**Motion Artifacting***(5.0)*[

](https://reviewed.usatoday.com/televisions/content/How-We-Test.htm#motion)

There were a few issues with things appearing on the display that were not in the original video signal. One of our tests uses a moving color chart, and one of the greens in this chart seemed to move ahead of the rest of the chart. We weren't able to tweak the display to get rid of this issue. And, as mentioned above, videos with lots of movement lacked detail.

**3:2 Pulldown & 24fps***(3.0)*[

](https://reviewed.usatoday.com/televisions/content/How-We-Test.htm#3:2pulldown)

The VO47LF only did a lackluster job of detecting and processing a TV signal that included a telecine processing. Although it did  detect the telecine on the Silicon Optix HQV test disc that we use and tried to process it, the result was a blocky, jerky mess. This test disc is designed to highlight issues, but our experience with a real video with 3:2 encoding wasn't much better; there was still some noticeable jerkiness and jittering to the image. The VO47LF was able to work with a 24 frames per second video image, though, and preserved as much of the filmic look of the source as the issues we mentioned above allowed.

Performance: Viewing Effects

**Viewing Angle***(7.16)*[

](https://reviewed.usatoday.com/televisions/content/How-We-Test.htm#viewingangle)

The viewing angle of the 46W4100 was a problem; we found that moving even a few degrees away from right in front of the display meant that the blacks got lighter, and the whites got much paler. We test this by measuring the contrast ratio of the TV at a variety of angles, and working out when the contrast ratio has fallen by 50 per cent. We found that this happened on the VO47LF at 39 degrees, for a total viewing angle of 77 degrees. This might not sound like much, but it's pretty decent performance for an LCD; many have a significantly smaller angle (such as the 30 degrees total viewing angle of the Sony 46W4100). Plasma TVs (such as the Panasonic TH-46PZU) have a much wider viewing angle; in our tests, the Panasonic had a total viewing angle of 156 degrees.

We did also find that colors on the Vizio got somewhat pale at angles as well; reds in particular faded into pale shadows of their original selves when you were viewing from an angle of 35 degrees or more.

**Reflectance***(6.75)*[

](https://reviewed.usatoday.com/televisions/content/How-We-Test.htm#reflectance)

Like all HDTVs, the front of the VO47LF is a big piece of shiny plastic that shows reflections. But Vizio did put a matte layer on top of the screen that diffuses reflections to some degree, so they tend to be more diffuse patches than well-defined spots of light. And, as this screen is pretty bright, reflections do tend to be less irritating as all but the brightest are drowned out by the screen light. As long as you're careful where you put your lights, there shouldn't be a big issues with reflections on this screen.

**Video Processing***(3.0)*[

](https://reviewed.usatoday.com/televisions/content/How-We-Test.htm)

The VO47L offers several features in the advanced video menu that claim to help improve the image quality. To test these, we test each one with a variety of video sources. Here's what we found...

Are any of these features worth using? We don't think so. None of them will compensate for a poor signal, and none of them will do anything more for the image quality than calibrating the display would do. So, turn them all off and calibrate it instead.

Remote

**Ergonomics & Durability***(5.25)*

The Vizio VO47L's remote measures 8 1/8 inches long by 2 1/16 inches wide and tapers from 1 1/4 inches thick at the base to 7/8 inches at the front. The remote has a soft touch finish on the back that makes it easier to hold, and it is also contoured to provide a better fit in your hand. There are also a couple of ridges on the back near the middle that we believe are meant to help hold the remote better, but we did not find they helped.

When holding the remote with your thumb on the main directional pad (D-pad) we found the remote was a bit bottom heavy, something that only gets worse as you shift your hand up the remote to access controls above the D-pad. The Vizio VO47L's buttons are backlit in a brownish/orange light whenever you hit a button. The light is easy on the eyes, which is nice to see when you are using the backlight in dark conditions.

The buttons on the remote are soft rubber, with good key travel but not as much tactile feedback as we would have liked. We do worry a bit about the durability of the buttons as the soft rubber could be torn easily. The remote is constructed of relatively soft plastic overall, which makes us worry about scratches. The battery cover slides off with only medium pressure, and there's no latch to press down on. This design has a tendency to wear out over time. Overall we were not impressed by the remote's durability.

**Button Layout & Use***(5.5)*

The Vizio VO47L's remote is pretty long at 8 1/8 inches, with buttons laid out along it's entire length except for the very bottom of the remote. This means you'll inevitably have to shift your hand up and down quite a bit to reach some controls. Of more importance are whether the most important controls are within easy reach. Sitting with your thumb on the D-Pad we found that most users could reach all of the central controls without a major shift of the hand. This includes the D-Pad, Menu, Last, Mute Channel and Volume controls. Those with smaller hands may need to shift a bit, but not too much.

If you want to get your hands on the number pad or playback controls, however, you'll have to shift your hand quite a bit. In particular we found the number pad to be annoying to use as shifting your hand up makes the bottom heavy remote more difficult to use. This also makes it a bit of a pain to switch to another channel that isn't in easy reach using the Channel up/down buttons. We were able to control the Vizio VO47L with its remote at an angle of twenty degrees from the plane of the screen.

On the plus side the Vizio VO47L's remote is well labeled. As with most remotes there are a few arcane items, what does MTS mean for instance? That said the number of unintelligible labels is far fewer than many other remotes and most are easy to understand, making it easy to pick up the remote and use it without too much confusion.

**Programming & Flexibility***(5.5)*

The Vizio VO47L's remote can be used to control additional items in your home theater setup. To test this functionality we set up the remote to control our cable box provided by Comcast. We found the process simple, set the remote to the cable mode with the button found near the top. Point it at your cable box and press and hold the SET button until the LED blinks twice. Then enter the appropriate code for your cable box or other device, a list of codes is found in the back of the Vizio VO47L's manual. Sometimes there are multiple codes for a single manufacturer so repeat the process until you get the LED to blink twice letting you know the process is complete.

Audio

**Sound Quality***(5.0)*

The Vizio VO47L's audio quality is nothing to write home about, but it isn't terrible either. Voices can be discerned easily, even with a lot of background noise in the scene, and we detected no major problems that will throw people off. If you're used to the standard sound quality that a TV provides the Vizio VO47L will neither impress you nor disappoint you.

**Surround Sound***(2.0)*

The Vizio VO47L offers a simulated surround sound system, as is typical of most TVs nowadays. Unfortunately we found that it did not do much to actually simulate surround sound. The major effect seems to be to turn up the volume on background sounds, so you can hear that footstep coming a bit better, but at the cost of foreground sounds being muted, so you'll be straining to hear the dialogue. Compared to even an inexpensive surround sound system there's no comparison. We recommend that if you want surround sound to go buy a set of speakers, even a cheap set, and otherwise leave the simulated surround sound off.

**Loudness***(8.67)*

The Vizio VO47L's speakers measured 87.6 decibels in our test of loudness. This is quite loud enough that no one should have any trouble hearing the TV, in fact we believe that anyone who turns it up this loud will likely be deafened in short order. We made this measurement using a sound pressure meter from five feet away with the volume at maximum and using pink noise as our reference sound.

Connectivity

**Input Ports***(13.75)*

The Vizio VO47L has a good range of input ports, but it lacks the large number of some port types that other TV's have. Below you can see the input ports available on the Vizio VO47L. In particular we note that there are fewer analog video and audio in ports than some other TV's have. There are 4 HDMI ports, however. The antenna port supports an antenna for digital over the air (OTA) tv and digital cable. It does no support analog cable. Analog OTA is TK. There's also a one eight inch audio input for getting audio from a computer or Mp3 player to your TV.

Ports for the Vizio VO47L are located in a single strip on the back with labels below them.

**Output Ports***(2.0)*

The only output ports on the Vizio VO47L are an analog audio out and a digital audio out that supports SPDIF, for content that includes digital audio.

**Other Connections***(0.0)*

The Vizio VO47L does not support Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or any other form of wireless connectivity.

**Media***(0.0)*

The Vizio VO47L does not have any card readers, disc media players or any way to access any media directly.

**Placement***(4.0)*

The Vizio VO47L's ports are all placed along a single strip, facing down, found on the back of the TV at the top of a cavity that sits just above the stand. This means you know where you need to look to find the connection you want, which is good, but the placement means that if getting to the back of your TV is difficult so is getting to any port on the TV. The fact that the stand does not allow you to rotate your TV makes this even more problematic. If you have your TV stuck up against a wall or corner you'll have to physically move it or or climb behind it to connect or disconnect any cables, not very convenient at all. On the plus side the ports are well labeled and organized, but since you can't read the label unless you get behind your TV this doesn't mitigate matters very much.

Controls & Menus

**Ease of Use***(7.0)*

The VO47L takes a fairly simplistic approach to menus; they are organized into three sections; one for picture, one for audio and the last one for setup controls. This fairly simple approach makes the on-screen menus easy to use; you enter the on-screen menu by pressing the menu button on the remote and navigate with the direction buttons. The OK button in the center of the directional controls selects the current option. The controls themselves are also fairly straightforward; when you select a control such as brightness or backlight, the main menu disappears and a bar appears that shows the

*The VO47L on-screen menus are divided into five

sections: Picture, Audio, TV Tuner, Setup and Parental*

**Picture Controls***(5.0)*

The Picture menu contains all of the controls for the visual side of things; the standard set of controls (backlight, brightness, contrast, color, tint and sharpness) are here, plus controls of color temperature and a section called advanced video. The color temperature control offers settings called normal, warm, cool and custom. We measured the approximate color temperature settings of the presets as follows:

The custom option allows you to control the level of the red, green and blue components with 255 levels. Unlike some other displays, you don't get any more detailed control than this; you can't access the individual gamma settings or adjust the response curve any further than this.

*The custom color temperature settings screen of the

VO47L provides basic controls for red, green and blue
*

The advanced controls section of the picture menu contains the settings that can be used to tweak the various image processing options of the display.

*The advanced video menu, where settings such as

Dynamic Noise Reduction are controlled*

The various features on offer here are discussed in the image processing section of the Performance: Viewing Effects page.

**Audio Controls***(4.0)*

The audio controls of the VO47L are a fairly standard set; there are controls for volume, bass, treble and balance, all with a range of 100 steps. There is also a control to enable or disable the Surround sound option and another to disable the built-in speakers completely. For more details of the audio performance of this display, see the audio section of our review.

The audio controls of the VO47L are in a dedicated menu

**Other Controls***(4.0)*

The DTV/TV Tuner setup menu is where you configure the built-in DTV and analog cable tuner. Like all TVs sold in the past few years, the VO47L includes a DTV tuner thant can receive over the air digital TV channels, as well as analog cable channels. It does not, however, support digital cable channels without a seperate cable box. The DTV/TV Tuner menu provides options for setting the type of signal, for searching for and choosing channels and the time zone and daylight saving settings that the TV guide uses.

*The DTV/TV Tuner Setup menu is where the incoming

TV signals are configured*

The Auto search feature is used to setup and configure the list of received TV channels, either from an analog cable or OTA DTV source. You can either automatically scan for channels automatically, or enter specific channels directly.

*The Auto Search feature will automatically scan for DTV

or analog cable signals*

The next menu is the setup menu, which contains the other controls that don't fit in elsewhere. From this menu, you can control the language of the menu (only English, Spanish and French are offered), the closed captions style, the picture in picture feature and the position of the screen. You can also do a reset that sets all values back to their factory default.

The Setup menu is the home to the non-image and audio controls

The Setup menu is also home to the picture-in-picture (PIP) controls. The VO47L offers two styles of PIP; one (called PIP) with a small inserted image in the corner, and another with the two videos side by side.

The Setup menu is the home to the non-image and audio controls

Finally, there is the parental control menu. This menu is protected by a pass code, and allows channels to be restricted by channel number or by TV or movie rating. It does not, however, contain any way to restrict viewing hours, and there is no way to make your kids do their homework instead of watching cartoons.

The Parental menu is the home to the viewing restriction controls

**Manual***(9.0)*

The Vizio VO47L's manual does a good job, with large color illustrations, a good table of contents and large headers at the top of each page that make it easy to find what you're looking for. There's even an index in the back, a feature that many TV manuals don't include.

Formats & Media

**Formats***(8.0)*

The Vizio VO47L supports 1080p, 1080i, 720p, 480p and 480i content. The Vizio VO47L does not support 24p or 3:2 pulldown, which are used to enhance content produced on film or to look like film. It also doesn't support xvYCC, which is a new system for increasing the range of colors available to content.

**Photo Playback***(0.0)*

The Vizio VO47L does not support playback of your photos.

**Video Playback***(0.0)*

The Vizio VO47L does not support direct playback of video files.

**Streaming Playback***(0.0)*

The Vizio VO47L cannot stream video from sites like Youtube or Hulu.

**DVR***(0.0)*

The Vizio VO47L does not have a DVR built in.

Power Consumption

**Power Consumption***(8.13)*[

](https://reviewed.usatoday.com/televisions/content/How-We-Test.htm#powerconsumption)

At a cost of $37.40 per year for power the Vizio VO47L's power consumption is just above average. We test power consumption by setting the screen's brightness to 200 cd/m2, a level that is good for watching in dark or lit conditions. We play back a standard sequence and get an average power use of six minutes. As with all LCDs how high you set the backlight will have a significant impact on your power consumption. You can see below that setting it to maximum pushes your annual cost up to $60.67. This assumes watching five hours of television a day and uses the average national cost for electricity. For this reason we recommend that you keep LCD displays at the lowest backlight setting you find comfortable.

Value & Comparisons

**Value**

Vizio has gained a large chunk of the HDTV market by producing decent, low cost screens, and the VO47L continues this trend; it provides great value for money for the TV buyer on a tight budget. 

**Comparisons**

Sharp LC-46D64U - The Sharp is at a similar price point to the Vizio, but the Vizio has an edge in image quality. Neither TV is going to win any gold medals in the imaging olympics, but the Vizio is a better screen overall.

Panasonic TH-PZ80U - This plasma screen is similarly priced to the Vizio, so the choice comes down to the pros and cons of the LCD vs plasma display types. The LCD-based Vizio is significantly brighter; put the two screens side by side and the Vizio is much more appealing to the eye. The Panasonic plasma does has better viewing angle and color accuracy, though, and those who assume that plasmas are expensive will be pleasantly surprised by the price.

JVC LT-47X899 - The JVC has significantly better image quality than the Vizio, but it is much more expensive. Is the improved image quality worth the extra? For most people, the answer is probably no; the Vizio is good enough for general use and is much cheaper.

Conclusion

The VO47L manages something of a tightrope act; keeping the price down, while still producing decent quality. And it pulls it off; although it is not the best display we've ever tested, it's not the worst either, and it is one of the cheapest. And that's a good combination to hit; value and reasonable performance make this a great choice for the big TV buyer looking for a bargain.

Ratings & Specs

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Meet the tester

Alfredo Padilla

Alfredo Padilla

Editor

Alfredo Padilla is a valued contributor to the Reviewed.com family of sites.

See all of Alfredo Padilla's reviews

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