Panasonic’s Stellar 3D Plasma “One of the Finest TVs” Ever?

Two months before its NZ release, a top British website has acclaimed Panasonic’s 50-inch 3D plasma TV as “comfortably the finest mainstream TV Panasonic has ever produced, and one of the finest TVs ever seen period”.

Veteran Trusted Reviews critic John Archer rates it 9/10 for performance and value, 10/10 for features, and praises the “startling contrast ratio” for its vibrancy, brightness and “deepest, most  natural and involving black level Panasonic has produced to date”.

He also reckons the 3D image is “more consistent throughout its depth than on the Samsung LED set” and has scarcely any of its crosstalk ghosting. But he notes Panasonic’s 3D images are “substantially darker” than Samsung’s (and its own 2D images) while the colours with 3D footage look muted compared with Samsung’s “strikingly vibrant ones”.

CNET Asia echoes these mixed results with its four-way 3DTV shootout featuring two plasma TVs (Panasonic and Samsung’s), and two LED-backlit LCD TVs (Samsung and LG’s).

Concludes senior writer Philip Wong: “Sadly, there’s no clear winner among the four models. The Samsung was plagued by prominent double images, or crosstalk, which you’ll be hearing frequently about for 3DTVs. Panasonic’s 3D picture quality was slightly softer than the rest, with LG middle-of-the-road.”