Black Friday models are specially made to have less features so they’re as cheap as possible.
For Vizio, that’s just normal.
I like my Vizio tv, it’s pretty great but the “features” in it suck and yeah it runs like dogshit in the menus.
I use an appleTV as my source and couldn’t imagine trying to use their smart stuff.
My “budget black Friday basement Samsung TV” is … probably as good as the Vizio but “lacking features” that I otherwise have turned off on my Vizio.
The best part about my Samsung relative to the Vizio is the Samsung turns on without issue whereas the Vizio sometimes seems to take forever to wake up. This might be an energy saving feature of the Vizio vs Samsung but it’s annoying.
Vizio is fantastic if you’re using your own source, I wouldn’t rely on their smart stuff though.
givesomefucks@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Dran_Arcana@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I’d still refute that claim. I bought a vizio tv about ~7 years ago and it was perfect when I first bought it. A few software updates later and now the TV will switch to it’s internal bullshit any time there isn’t an input source for greater than ~3 seconds. It’s infuriating that if my nvidia shield takes a second too long to push out a video signal the TV will just switch inputs on me. There is no way to disable this antifeature. The best part is after I noticed this behavior, I (at the network level) prevented all outgoing communication from this TV and it is still perfectly happy to just switch to a blank internal input whenever an external source takes slightly too long. “If I can’t track you, fuck you I’ll make your TV basically unusable”
prettybunnys@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
I just don’t have my TV connected to the network at all, I think there is an option (on mine at least) to disable the switch to “smart whatever” when no source. YMMV though.
I agree wholeheartedly though, I use my devices to power the tv on and off and when that fails it’s such a mess even just swapping inputs.
Dran_Arcana@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I connected it because it was in that like 2 year span where they had that a small android tablet as a remote. Legitimately cool feature but I should have known better than to let it update.
prettybunnys@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
I’ve updated mine and it’s generally made it better tbh, at least insomuch as now that I have that setting toggled I don’t have to deal with hitting their smart shit.
I just always update it and then reset it, stay at the firmware level but set it up like a new TV and don’t connect it.