as part of my job is tv repair, i see all the kinds of brands from the inside out.
vizio usually includes good guts and good design. they can be a miss sometimes, as they are a budget brand, but for the most part they are pretty much on par with samsung's budget tv's.
if you really want to know what brands to stay away from altogether- thats LG and hitachi. just about every model those companies put out is near garbage. the panels are even low quality. they might look good in the store, but they break and oh do they break often.
and my current favorite type of tv is LED backlit LCD. dont worry if its localized dimming, array or edgelit, it really doesnt matter that much. whats nice about led backlit tv's is power usage, heat output and internal simplicity. there are no inverters inside, and usually just 4 boards (mainboard, power supply, led driver and tcon.) this simple design is why they are lightweight, and also why they dont break very often. contrast that to plasma's and... yikes. inside plasmas you find about 50lbs of computer garbage just waiting for something to go wrong. they can be a downright nightmare to work on, especially if they are LG or hitachi.
and the final thing i want to add, always look at the tv you want to buy in person before you buy. even if you compare two tv's of the same model, they might have different panels or guts inside. which means the picture can vary when you think it wouldnt. see what youre buying, and like what you see.