Vizio's 65-inch Mini LED Quantum TV is retailing for under $398, making it the lowest-priced quantum-dot television currently on the market, according to a review published by The Verge on July 5, 2026. The 2026 model-year lineup spans six screen sizes — 43, 50, 55, 65, 75, and 85 inches — with the series starting at $139, and the 75-inch variant (model VQM75C-10) priced at $498. Both Walmart and Sam's Club carry the line, which is a natural fit given Walmart's 2024 acquisition of Vizio.

The panel technology here is a combination of Mini LED backlighting and a quantum-dot filter layer, a pairing that targets higher sustained brightness and tighter color volume compared to conventional LED-LCD sets. The 65-inch model (VQM65C-1004) has a 64.50-inch viewable area. On the signal side, the TV supports 4K at 60Hz and 1080p at 120Hz on the 65-inch and larger sizes — meaning no HDMI 2.1 bandwidth and no 4K/120Hz for connected gaming consoles or PCs. The port complement reflects the price: three HDMI 2.0 inputs (one with eARC), a single USB 2.0 port, optical audio out, and an ATSC 1.0 tuner. HDR coverage is broad — Dolby Vision, HDR10+, HDR10, and HLG are all supported — and the audio side handles both Dolby Atmos and DTS:X passthrough.

The Data Question

The more consequential story here is not the panel spec. Walmart acquired Vizio in 2024 primarily for its advertising business, which was generating all of Vizio's profits at the time of the sale. That context is important when reading the TV's data-collection architecture.

Setting up the Mini LED Quantum presents a binary choice: agree to Vizio's activity data policy, which enables the full smart OS including Netflix, YouTube, and all other streaming apps, or decline and operate the TV as a passive display with no smart functionality whatsoever. There is no middle path that permits streaming while limiting data collection. A Walmart account is also required to access certain features.

The subtler catch applies even to buyers who run an external streaming device — an Apple TV, a Roku, a Fire Stick — and never touch the built-in OS. Unless the smart OS is fully bypassed during setup, Vizio and Walmart retain the ability to scan HDMI inputs and infer what content is playing. That capability is not incidental. Vizio was caught collecting viewing data from smart TVs without user consent in 2017 and settled with regulators over the practice. The current setup flow, which does offer a genuine opt-out, is a structural improvement on that history — but the opt-out erases the "smart" in smart TV entirely.

Worth flagging: the framing of "dumb TV mode" as a feature is doing some rhetorical work. A user who declines data collection gets a display; a user who accepts gets a platform. For buyers comfortable running their own streaming hardware and willing to navigate the setup opt-out, the value proposition is straightforward. For everyone else, the activity data policy is effectively the price of admission to the OS — and given Walmart's stated rationale for the acquisition, that policy is load-bearing to the business model, not optional plumbing.

At sub-$400 for a 65-inch Mini LED quantum-dot panel with full HDR format coverage, the hardware specification-to-price ratio is genuinely hard to argue with. Mini LED at this price point would have been unusual even two years ago; the technology has commoditized faster than most analysts expected. The absence of HDMI 2.1 and 4K/120Hz support matters primarily to PC gamers and console players who want to run current-generation hardware at full spec — for that use case, the connectivity tier is a real limitation, not a papercut.

For buyers whose primary display chain runs through an external streamer or a Blu-ray player, and who are willing to opt out of the smart OS during setup, the Mini LED Quantum is a competent, low-cost canvas. The engineering tradeoffs are legible. The data tradeoffs deserve equal attention.