6 tips and tricks to make your Vizio TV even better
Vizio TVs are some of the sleekest value picks on the market and are packed with tons of features for HDR movie nights and gaming. But even some of the best Vizio TVs can be made better using a variety of tips and tricks to improve the picture, controls, and so much more.
SmartCast, Vizio’s user interface, is where all the magic happens. There’s a lot you can do with SmartCast beyond simply searching up content and opening streaming apps. With the right settings enabled, you can easily turn on your TV when casting content and control your TV with your voice.
So, let’s get into it. Follow these several settings to get the most out of SmartCast and streamline your Vizio TV experience.
Tailor SmartCast home screen to your liking
Your home screen is where all your favorite content lives. It’s where you’ll find all of the best streaming services, but it’s not always set up to your liking right out of the gate. That’s why I tend to recommend changing the home screen up to better suit the content you watch on a daily basis.
To customize the home screen on your Vizio TV, head to the App store and select Home screen apps. From here you can not only rearrange the order of the apps to your needs, or delete apps that you don’t want on the home screen.
This should make it far easier for you to get to the platforms you enjoy the most and lets you limit all the extra apps that might clog up the starting carousel.
Turn off ACR
ACR, or automatic content recognition, is a new feature cropping on several smart TVs that’s a huge privacy risk. It essentially reads and records the content you watch on a daily basis to better understand your viewing habits and serve up ads that aligns with your interests.
It’s a nasty play to boost ad spend and target users for even more revenue by selling user data to third parties, main among them major advertisers. That’s why it’s a good idea to ensure you turn this setting off immediately after buying a new TV as it sets a terrible precedent for content privacy.
To turn it off, head to settings -> System -> Reset & Admin -> Viewing Data, then turn this off. It might be slightly different dependent on what specific Vizio TV or SmartCast software you’re running, but you’ll most often find it in “Data” or “Privacy” sections.
While this won’t thoroughly protect you from all the ways Vizio and others can target you specific ads, it will limit their reach in understanding the type of content you enjoy. Just look at how LG TVs are about to show you ads based on your emotions to see even more ways companies are set to abuse targeted ads.
Turn on voice control
Your TV remote is disgusting, so why not switch it for simply using your voice instead? I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve lost the remote and simply resorted to using voice controls to do all the heavy lifting.
Luckily, it’s super easy to enable on the Vizio SmartCast platform. Simply head to Settings –> Extras and look for “Smart Home Settings.” This will let you set up all of the neat voice-enabled controls to make navigation and opening an apps an absolute breeze on your smart TV.
What’s even better is that you can even use your Vizio TV to control all of your smart home products around the house. This will work primarily with SmartCast or Google Home supported devices, but gives your Vizio TV an extra leg up in the modern era.
Vizio SmartCast app
If you’re not one to use voice controls but still want a second option to use your Vizio TV beyond its included remote, the SmartCast app is a worthy pick. It’s similar to Samsung’s SmartThings app, allowing you to control your TV in a variety of ways.
Do note that it has a different name for Android devices on the Google Play store, called Vizio WatchFree+. It’s essentially the same thing on iOS, but also gives you access to free channels that you can watch anywhere on-the-go, which isn’t bad to have if you’re looking to kill some time.
If you have a supported soundbar, particularly a Vizio one, you could also control that device along with the TV through the SmartCast app. You’ll even have some Chromecast functionality, making it far easier to cast content to the screen.
Gaming picture settings
Although Vizio models aren’t often found among the best gaming TVs, that doesn’t mean we can’t tweak them to give them some better picture performance. If you head to the picture settings, you’ll find an option dedicated to “Game,” and from there we can make some minor adjustments.
For starters, you’ll want to make sure ALLM and VRR are both set to on if not already. Some Vizio TVs will even come with an “HDMI 2.1 mode,” which is adequate more for both modern consoles and some of the best gaming PCs.
You might even also have to enable “Game HDR” in the advanced picture settings, but some consoles (namely the PS5) might look slightly better without it. And, while the “Game” picture setting does often net you good-enough quality for gaming, I’d also recommend switching to “Vibrant” for slightly better colors. (Though, we often avoid this setting for shows and movies, as it tends to over-saturate the image).
Quick start and boot-up adjustments
No one likes waiting to enjoy they love to watch. If you’re like me and a bit impatient when it comes to jumping right into that new episode or movie release, you’ll want to enable Quick Start within the Power settings on your Vizio TV.
As the name implies, this essentially makes the TV boot up faster. You’ll dive into the home screen quicker and you can even customize which HDMI port or menu to prioritize when the Vizio TV powers on.
Another awesome feature this enables is automatic power-on when costing content from a mobile device to the screen. This makes it so much easier and faster to enjoy the content you love and you don’t even need a remote.
With a faster boot time, quicker access to your favorite apps and voice control through your choice of smart home device, you should be able to get to the content you want to watch faster than ever before.
