VIZIO 55" 1080p Full-Array LED Smart TV

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Buyer beware!!! I purchased this same referbished 55" TV from a Woot+ event on July 18th. The TV arrived promptly and I set it up right away.

The first thing I noticed was that it had a decent size crack/dent on the top corner but that’s what you get sometimes with a referb. Once I got the thing up and running I then noticed the rather terrible way the backlight system performs. For example, anyone that has an Apple TV knows of the small spinning white slotted circle that appears on loading screens. When this is on the screen you can see a large rectangular backlit area behind the circle. Non of my other TV’s have this issue. This defect is noticeable in so many other instances that it is quite distracting.

The next thing I noticed was on any scene where there is a lot of motion, like a flock of birds on a BBC nature show, the “clear action 720” feature makes it look horrible! It is so choppy that it almost makes you sick to watch it. This happens also on any smooth pan shot like a nice mountain flyover. You can notice a slight jerky movement.

I could accept all of these imperfections as this was a replacement to our bedroom TV but what happened next was an absolute deal breaker. On August 2nd, after a long day we got to bed late and started one of our traditional sleep inducing movies. Then black pixeled light leak bars started dancing across the screen in large horizontal waves. Every light colored scene was riddled with them and all other scenes had black pixeled ghosting effects around each element. To be honest I wasn’t surprised that this was happening due to the other issues I had experienced up to that point. I planned to make a case with woot for a return in the morning and jokingly said to my wife “Of course with my luck, it won’t do it again until the warrantee expires, haha!”. You guessed it! The next morning it was back to its normal subpar performance and hasn’t done it since. I contacted woot to see if they would take it back but of course they wanted pictures. Pictures that I was too tired to take the night I discovered the problem and have been beating my self up for not taking ever since. I am still within the 30 day warrantee period and I am praying it shows its true colors again before it is too late.

I write all of this to hopefully help someone else avoid the same experience I have had. Pay the extra on new TV and avoid this Vizio model. There is a reason why they where initially returned and then referbished and it doesn’t seem to have been fixed.

To the poster above, I purchased this tv new, from Amazon, and I too was at first confused and disappointed with the picture. However, after researching a bit discovered that disabling most of the motion enhancements improved things considerably and we’re very happy with the set now. We’ve paired it with the soundbar in this sale and everything is running well.

It sounds like you had additional issues, but I wanted to point out that there may be some configuration to deal with out of the box.

Anyone else have any thoughts to share regarding buying refurbished TVs with 90 day warranties?

I got my refurb 55" vizio from woot about 2 weeks ago and I love it!

First off, I’m not sure why woot lists all of these as 60hz native and why no one else has mentioned the fact that they’re 120, but all Vizios that are 240 w/720 clearmotion are 120hz actual (not 60). I have very sensitive eyes and can’t stand watching HDTVs with 60hz, it’s almost a painful level of choppiness for me.

My refurb came shipped in the retail box with rather weak levels of padding (definitely not proper shipping material, and I have no idea how Woot gets Fedex to agree to ship like that, I know they would never allow it on a retail location level), but it arrived perfectly.

I personally prefer refurbs over new, since I know any kinks that are present initially will have been resolved by the time I get it.

I got mine today. Very excited. Problem is, the screen is completely cracked and unusable. Hopefully I can get a replacement from Woot.