Review of the Panasonic Viera 50
Panasonic have definitely entered the new vision era, and what is great is that they offer a range of Plasmas as well as LCDs, unlike Sony. Looking at the variety of plasmas on the market, we couldn’t help but notice the Panasonic 50-inch TH50PX60 Viera. Standing out a mile with its remarkably eye-catching design, it certainly grabbed our attention with both hands. Design |
| Panasonic’s Viera range is one of the best selling plasma ranges in the UK – and, in our opinion, part of this must be down to their gorgeous screen architecture. Every inch of the TH50PX60 attracted us, we had two options of a pedestal or a cabinet (neither of which are included), but we opted to wall mount this one. The visible screen is 127cm and as a whole it’s not too heavy to lift. This is partly down to the panel being 30% lighter than on previous models, this means less power is needed and you get a brighter performance. Viera models just seem to get the look right every time, and the TH50PX60 is no exception. The mixture of silver and matt black sets the screen perfectly, and is kind on the eye without any annoying reflections. |
| Setup/Installation |
| It took us approximately 20 minutes from taking the TH50PX60 out of the box to watching Freeview. The autotuner took charge while we sat back and watched it work its magic. This plasma can definitely boast the plug and play title. The futuristic connectivity will keep you happy too, with two HDMI connections, 3 scarts, 1 S-video, AV input, headphone jack, SD memory card slot, 2 HD-compatible component video connections, and an optical digital audio output. You may have noticed that the PC input, a favourite feature of ours, is missing. |
| Features |
| Panasonic always cram their plasmas with unique technology which usually delivers a great performance. The TH50PX60’s sports Panasonic’s latest technology, a chip-set, which processes HD video signals without the need to downsize. Reinforcing this good behaviour, is the digital re-mastering processor, this up-converts SD video signals to provide better motion control and exceptional detail. Next up in the line of goodies is the picture enhancing technology, known as the V-real Gamma control; this makes it possible for the TH50PX60 to reproduce 29 billion colours. Also assisting in this area is the advanced 3D colour management system, which claims to make all things bright and beautiful. When you have the TH50PX60 set up, you’ll notice down by the remote sensor, there is a tiny light sensor, this senses the amount of light in the room and adjusts the brightness of the screen accordingly. Panasonic claim this helps to reduce eye-strain, for example at night it will make the screen darker to help your eyes relax. Whoever named Panasonic’s features must have been the same person that gave bin-men the new title of refuse managers. An example of this would be their overenthusiastically named contrast management system, which controls… I’ll give you one guess - contrast. A refreshing feature after all these processors and chips, other bits and bobs, is the integrated digital tuner giving you access to Freeview channels. Last, but definitely not least on the TH50PX60’s list of features is its whopping 10,000:1 contrast ratio and 1366x768 screen resolution; with this combination you should not be disappointed. Sound is taken care of by the 20W Nicam Stereo SRS TruSurround XT speakers. |
| Performance |
| Our testing room suffers from a slight lack of natural daylight so the first ten minutes of watching Freeview on the TH50PX60’s made us think that the picture performance was too dark. But once we had let some more light into the room we were relieved to find that it is actually superbly bright enough. We plugged in a HD DVD player and watched scenes from Oceans 11, to see that it handled motion perfectly. George Clooney with his dark suits helped us test the black levels out too, and we were overly impressed. The detail on both HD and SD was excellent. SD colours suffered slightly, and were noticeably less robust than the colours on HD, but they were more than adequate for SD. We noticed a slight amount of muffling on dialogue when watching SD too, but this was only when the volume was up incredibly high. Apart from this minor problem, the audio was superb, with powerfully high volume levels. A common complaint of Panasonic plasmas is that they sometimes become dull over time, however this TV does come with up to 5-years warranty. |
| Overall Opinion |
| Asking this price for the stylish Panasonic TH-50PX60U offering fantastic picture performance, and equally as good audio is not a lot to ask in our opinion. If it had PC input it would have been awarded four stars, but because of this we are going to give it a three. If you want to upgrade a notch, check out the review of Panasonic's TH-50PX600 in all its plasma glory. |
| By Lisa Malyon |
|
Pros + Pedestal or cabinet available + 10,000:1 contrast ratio + 2 HDMI connections + SD memory card slot + 3 scarts + 160 degree viewing angle |
Cons - Slight noise on SD picture performance - Audio struggled at high volume on SD - No PIP |
|
Picture Quality 8/10
|
Sound Quality 8/10
|
|
Connectivity 8/10
|
Future Compatibility 8/10
|
|
Ease Of Use 8/10
|
Overall Rating 
|
By Lisa Malyon
19/10/2006 at 11:39:21pm
19/10/2006 at 11:39:21pm
Read Panasonic Reviews
