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  • Tour & Design

  • Performance: Summary

  • Performance: Blacks & Whites

  • Performance: Color

  • Performance: Motion

  • Performance: Viewing Effects

  • Remote

  • Audio

  • Connectivity

  • Controls & Menus

  • Formats & Media

  • Power Consumption

  • Value & Comparisons

  • Conclusion

  • Ratings & Specs

  • Tour & Design
  • Performance: Summary
  • Performance: Blacks & Whites
  • Performance: Color
  • Performance: Motion
  • Performance: Viewing Effects
  • Remote
  • Audio
  • Connectivity
  • Controls & Menus
  • Formats & Media
  • Power Consumption
  • Value & Comparisons
  • Conclusion
  • Ratings & Specs

Tour & Design

On the front of the Panasonic TH-46PZ80U you see the 46-inch display, of course. The display is glossy and reflective and is surrounded by a glossy black bezel. Below the bezel is the power button and a small door that gives you access to several ports and the on-TV controls. On either side of the access door are the TV's speakers.

The front of the Panasonic TH-46PZ80U has a glossy bezel and a matt frame at the bottom.

**Back**

On the back of the Panasonic TH-46PZ80U you find most of the TV's ports organized in a bunch towards the bottom and in the middle.

Almost all the ports are located in the bottom middle of the back.

**Left**

There is nothing on the left side of the Panasonic TH-46PZ80U.

**Right**

As with the other side the right of the Panasonic TH-46PZ80U is devoid of features.

Nothing but curves on the side.

**Stand/Mount**

The Panasonic TH-46PZ80U's stand can be removed for wall mounting. In order to mount the TV on the wall you will need to purchase an additional mounting accessory.

The tapered stand feels sturdy.

**Controls**

The on-TV controls for the Panasonic TH-46PZ80U are found below the display between the two speakers. Most of the controls sit beneath a panel that folds up, however the power button sits exposed to the left of the panel. Once you open the panel you see, from left to right, Menu, OK, TV/Video, Volume Up, Volume Down, Channel Up and Channel Down buttons. These can also be used to navigate the TV's menu system.

You flip up a panel on front to access on-TV controls and some additional ports.

**Remote**

The Panasonic TH-46PZ80U's remote is a bit shorter than the remotes we saw from the JVC LT-47X899 and Vizio VO47L. The main controls sit at the center and top of the remote, with a keypad below them.

The remote is shorter than those we've seen from other manufacturers.

**In The Box***(4.5)*

The Panasonic TH-46PZ80U ships with a remote, batteries for the remote, Antenna Adapter, Cable clampers, AC cord and the pedestal. It does not ship with any cables, which is a shame. We expect HDTVs to at least ship with one HDMI cable. Getting the TV out of the box is no more difficult than any other television, but no easier either.

**Aesthetics***(7.0)*

The Panasonic TH-46PZ80U has clean lines and is more attractive than the JVC LT-47X899 or the Vizio VO47L. The glossy bezel and curved lines in the back lend themselves to a TV that will complement your decor. It's not the prettiest TV we've ever seen, but it's a step up from run of the mill TVs.

Performance: Summary

The TH-46PZ8OU is something of a conundrum in performance terms. Like most cheap displays (it's priced at about $1299) there are a number of compromises involved. In this case, the compromise is between color accuracy and brightness; you can have one or the other, but not both. The TH-46PZ8OU is capable of producing decent color, but to do that you have to put up with a rather dim screen. Or, you can go for brightness, and then the color accuracy falls off, with highlights in the image getting lost. And even then, its not as bright as other TVs. While brightness is only one factor in the performance of a TV, it's an important one; if a TV does not have decent brightness, it is not going to be visible in daylight.

We steer a middle ground in our testing; we calibrate the display to get as accurate color as possible, while getting the screen to be as bright as possible.  And that was a real balancing act on this display, as even the best settings that we could find involved compromising some slight color errors with brightness.

Overall, the TH-46PZ8OU had only lackluster performance. Although the screen had decent color when calibrated, it was very dim when compared to an LCD screen of about the same price. Motion did look good on the screen, and it did a decent job of rendering standard definition TV signals. But the fundamental issue remains; the color and brightness of this screen are disappointing at best.

**Calibration**

To get the best out of a display, it has to be calibrated, a process that finds the correct settings for the individual display. We use the DisplayMate calibration process to set the display up correctly; the calibrated settings that we use are listed below. To save space, we only list the controls that have been altered from the default settings.

Note that the settings that give the best results for you may differ widely from this; we look for the settings that give the most accurate colors with the maximum luminance for whites, but you may find another set of settings more pleasing to the eye. We also only use the controls that are accessible to the customer through the on-screen menus; we don't use the service menus that a professional calibrator might access to tweak the settings. If you want to get the best image quality out of your display, we strongly recommend that you use a professional home theater expert who can calibrate your set and advise you of the best settings for your display, the lighting around it and the type of material you like to watch.

**Video Modes**

The TH-46PZ80U has 5 video modes, which are detailed below:

Changes to these settings are retained, so if you boost the brightness in the cinema mode, the dislay will remembe that and use the changed setting every time you select it.

**Dot Pattern**

The-46PZ80U is a Full HD screen, which means it has enough dots to represent every pixel of a full 1080p signal. Each one of these pixels is created of three elements; a red, green and blue cell filled with gas that glows and a colored phosphor. You can see an image of the screen magnified 20x on the right. It is interesting to note that every third row of the elements seems to be larger than the others, presumably to help boost the luminance of the screen.

Below is a video that shows how the TH-46PZ80U creates colors; in this magnified view, the screen goes from black to white, then to red, green and blue in turn.

Performance: Blacks & Whites

**Black Level***(9.11)*[

](https://reviewed.usatoday.com/televisions/content/How-We-Test.htm#blacklevel)

The deeper the black that a display can manage, the darker the black bits of movies and TV shows will appear. And the Panasonic TH-46P80U doesn't disappoint here; we measured the deepest black that it could represent at an impressively dark 0.06 cd/m2 (candelas per meter squared, a standard measure of the brightness of screens). Plasmas typically do better than LCD displays in this test, because the light is created by the glowing gas of the plasma itself; if the gas isn't excited, there's no light emitted. On an LCD display, the display has to block the light from the backlight, and some inevitably gets through. The TH-46P80U is the first Plasma display that we've tested, so we don't have much to compare it with yet, but it has much deeper blacks than the LCD displays we have tested, like the JVC LT-47X899, which only managed a black level of 0.37 cd/m2.

**Peak Brightness***(2.81)*[

](https://reviewed.usatoday.com/televisions/content/How-We-Test.htm#peakwhite)

The brightest white that the TH-46P80U managed with our calibrated settings was a very disappointing 61.45 cd/m2, which is much lower than most. The Vizio VO47L, for instance, had a peak brightness of 395.41 cd/m2. Although brightness alone is no reason to choose a display, the extra brightness can be useful; more brightness can mean more visibility in daylight, which is why plasma displays are a poor pick for business use. But it is worth bearing in mind that 61.45 cd/m2 is bright enough for general use; it just won't look as bright as your neighbor's overcranked LCD screen. We were able to boost the brightness to a much brighter 189.6 cd/m2 by boosting the picture control to maximum, but this came at an unacceptable cost in terms of color accuracy; the color became overly pale, and many fine details in brighter colors were lost.  Although the screen is not as bright, the image quality is much better at the lower brightness settings.

**Contrast***(6.06)*[

](https://reviewed.usatoday.com/televisions/content/How-We-Test.htm#contrastratio)

The TH-46P80U has weak whites, and this is reflected in the contrast ratio; we measured the ratio of the  darkest black to the brightest white at 1024:1. That is comparable with the 964:1 of the Vizio VO47L or the 830:1 of the JVC LT-47X899, mainly because of the deep blacks. This is somewhat shy than the 20,000:1 that Panasonic claims, but this is because of the way they measure contrast; their figure is for they refer to as the dynamic mega contrast ratio, where they measure the black with the screen brightness turned down to the lowest setting and the white at maximum. We measure the black with the brightness at the same setting as for when we measure the white, as this is the way that displays are actually used (this is often called the static contrast ratio).

**Tunnel Contrast***(8.90)*[

](https://reviewed.usatoday.com/televisions/content/How-We-Test.htm#tunnelcontrast)

The tests above look at how the black and whites on screen perform on their own, but that seldom happens in the real world; real television images are a collection of colors on the screen at the same time. And this can be a problem; with some displays, one color can leak into another. So, we test this by using a DisplayMate screen that shows a small area of black in the center of the screen, and measuring how well this black holds up as it is surrounded by an increasing amount of white, right up to 95 percent of the screen being white. See the animation on the right for an example; the small circle in the middle is the section of the screen that is measured. The graph below shows the luminance of the black area against the percentage of the screen that is white.

As you can see from this graph, the TH-PZ80U did a very good job here; the black stayed very black, only taking a slight upturn when the screen was over ninety percent white. This shows that the light is not bouncing around inside the screen; the white areas are white, while the black areas remain black even if they are right beside each other.

**White Falloff***(7.66)*[

](https://reviewed.usatoday.com/televisions/content/How-We-Test.htm#whitefalloff)

Most plasma displays have a problem; heat. Because plasma displays work by heating gas until it glows, the display itself generates a lot of heat as it works, and the more white there is in the screen, the more glowing gas there is and the more heat that is generated. If a display was to run at full brightness with a fully white screen, it would quickly overheat. Displays deal with this by turning down the brightness of the display as the amount of white on the screen increases, and that's what we measure here. The animation on the right shows how we run this test; we put an area of white on the screen and gradually increase the amount of white, measuring the luminance of the screen as we go. The graph below shows the results of this test, with the amount of white as a percentage across the bottom, and the luminance of the white along the side.

As you can see, the TH-PZ80U did pretty well here; as the amount of white increased, the luminance of the whites didn't decrease much; they started out with 5 per cent of the screen as white at 46.78 cd/m2, and only dropped very slightly to 44.21 cd/m2 with the screen completely white. A big reason for this is that the calibrated settings we used don't push the display; the maximum luminance we found in this test is significantly less than what the display can generate if you push it flat out. So, even with the screen completely white, the display is not generating that much heat.

 

**Uniformity***(8.0)*[

](https://reviewed.usatoday.com/televisions/content/How-We-Test.htm#uniformity)

A good display should have a smooth, uniform look on both black and white screens, and that's what we look for in this test. The TH-46PZ8OU, like most plasma screens, had a very uniform look and feel across the screen; because the light is generated inside the display, there are none of the problems we see with LCD displays caused by backlights at the edges or other patterns of uneven lighting. We only saw some very minor issues; the left side of the screen was very slightly brighter than the middle on a black screen, and the same left side was very slightly dimmer than the center on a white screen. But this was a very, very minor issue; these differences were only noticeable on solid black and white screens, not in daily use.

**Grayscale Gamma***(9.04)*[

](https://reviewed.usatoday.com/televisions/content/How-We-Test.htm#greyscalegamma)

Update: We have rescaled our scoring for this section. The original score was 9.12.

The gamma of a screen controls how the display goes from black to white; the gamma is the shape of the curve of the intensity of the grays in between the two, so it's an important measure for judging the quality of a display. The ideal gamma for a television is between 2.4 and 2.5, and we measured the gamma of the TH-PZ80U at 2.36. That's just outside of the ideal range, and indicates that this display does a decent job of going from black to white smoothly. The graph below shows the way the intensity of the grey increases as the intensity of the grey on the screen increases. 

Because of the way that the eye interprets light, this graph has an power curve. It's a little easier to interpret if we plot it on a graph with a logarithmic axis. A perfect display would produce a straight line on this graph, with the intensity of the grey increasing smoothly as the intensity of the grey in the image increases. The blue line on the graph below shows what would be the perfect fit, the black line shows what the TH-PZ80U achieved in our tests.

The TH-PZ80U did a decent job here; the curve is relatively flat, and only has a couple of minor glitches at the low end. These are unlikely to be an issue, though; the glitches are minor and aren't likely to affect the quality of images. Overall, the TH-46PZ8OU does a decent job of going from black to white.

**Resolution Scaling***(7.37)*[

](https://reviewed.usatoday.com/televisions/content/How-We-Test.htm#resolutionscaling)

The TH-46PZ8OU is a 1080p screen that can display images at the full 1920 by 1080 resolution that these signals contain. But only a few devices can output this type of signal; most produce signals at lower resolutions, such as the 1080i signals from cable boxes and the 480p signals that many standard resolution DVD players will produce. To test how well the display scales these images, we view a number of test screens and consider how good of a job the display does of scaling and presenting them. Overall, the TH-PZ80U did a very good job of scaling these signals; the Let's look at each of the common types of signals in turn. *
*

480p (7.80)

480p signals are generated by devices such as DVD players that produce standard definition signals, but which have digital outputs (some produce higher resolution signals using a process called upscaling). We found that the TH-PZ80U did a decent job of scaling these screens; text was readable, and the details of our test patterns were well reproduced, and there was no evidence of interference patterns or other issues. The image was overscanned by about 4 per cent; a fairly standard amount that means that images are scaled to be slightly larger than the screen.

720p (7.55)

720p signals are used by many of the TV networks to broadcast sports, because the progressive nature of the signals produces smoother motion than the 1080i signals that they use for most other material. We found that the TH-PZ80U also did a decent job here; the images looked sharp and details were well defined. We did find one odd thing, though; the signals were overscanned by about 4 percent, and it wasn't possible to remove the overscan. Most displays have a full mode that puts high definition signals to the edge of the screen without overscan, but the TH-PZ80U always adds overscanning. This is something of a pain if you are using a computer as a video source in 720p mode; menus and the like on the edge of the screen won't be visible.

1080i (6.75)

1080i signals are what most people think of with high definition; this is the type of signal that most high def set-top boxes and devices produce. The TH-PZ80U did a decent job of putting these on screen; text was legible down to a small size, and image looked sharp. However, there was some evidence of interference produced by the processing the display does to show an interlaced signal on a progressive display. This showed up as some discoloration and a hazy, wavy pattern on a test screen and some flickering on some of our test images.

Performance: Color

**Color Temperature***(8.85)*[

](https://reviewed.usatoday.com/televisions/content/How-We-Test.htm#colortemperature)

You might think that white is white on a television, but it isn't that simple. Instead, the color of white can vary as a display shows different intensities of white, and that's what we look at here. On a perfect display, the color of the white would stay the same whether it is a pale grey or the brightest white that the display can manage. In reality, that doesn't happen; because of the way the display processes colors, the color of white varies slightly, and that's what we test here; how constant the white is. We do this by showing a series of images with different intensities of white, and measuring these. This graph shows the result; the intensity (from black to brightest white) is along the bottom of the graph, and the measured color temperature is shown by the line. If it goes above the center, the color temperature is higher (which means it is warmer, and bluer), and if it goes below, the color temperature us lower (or cooler, and more yellow).

The TH-PZ80U had good performance in this test; although the color temperature did vary with the intensity, it only varied by a small amount. This means that you aren't likely to see much of a shift in the whites on the screen; the only shift that is likely to be visible is at the lower end of the intensity range; the whites get a little warm at the low end of the range. Another way to look at this test is to plot the actual color data, which we do in the graph below. The red circle on this graph indicates the minimum color change that is generally detectable by the human eye, and the dots represent the measured color values.  The bottom line here is that if a dot falls within the circle, you aren't going to be able to spot the difference between the two whites.

As you can see from this, most of the measured points are within the circle, which means that you won't be able to spot any difference in the white. Some of the spots do fall outside the circle, though, meaning that you might be able to spot a slight difference in some shades of grey. But the differences are minor; the TH-PZ80U provided mostly consistent whites across the intensity range.

**RGB Curve***(7.05)*[

](https://reviewed.usatoday.com/televisions/content/How-We-Test.htm#rgbcurves)

All of the colors that you see on the screen are made of three basic components; red, green and blue, which are created by the individual elements of the display. To create yellow, the display turns on the red and green elements. To create violet, the display turns on the red and blue elements. To create white, the display turns on all three. So, it is fundamental that these three components of all colors are accurately represented on screen; any issues with reproducing one of the colors will affect all three. So, we test the response of each of these components, and these results are shown on the graphs below. For each of the primary colors, the intensity goes from 0 (at the left) to the maximum, for the most intense of the colors that the display can generate.

On a perfect display, these curves would be completely smooth like a child's slide, indicating that the intensity of the input signal was accurately reproduced; every slight increase in the intensity of the input lead to a similar increase in the intensity of the color on the screen. In practice, the graphs we see tend to look more like a bumpy mountainside than a child's slide. The reason for this bumpiness is the way that displays process color and control the individual elements of the display; because it is processed digitally, the signal increases in a number of discrete steps.

This processing seemed to be something of an issue for the TH-PZ80U; the graphs are somewhat irregular and don't always follow a smooth curve. There were odd jumps on the curve (particularly on the blue), and spots where an increase in the intensity of the input didn't lead to a corresponding increase in the luminance of the screen. This can lead to issues such as false contouring (where a band of color appears in a subtle gradient), and we saw some evidence of this in our tests using a variety of test photos; some images had banding and false contouring that made them look almost unnatural.

The other issue is at the top end of the red curve, where the curve flattens off. This indicates another issue; the luminance for red is being pushed too hard, and it reaches the maximum intensity too soon. In effect, the display can't produce any more red or blue at this point, even though the intensity of the signal is increasing. What this means for the viewer is that some subtle details will be lost; details of objects bathed in sunlight or particularly brightly colored objects will be lost because the display can't reproduce the subtle changes that these details require. We found this happening a lot in the images we use for testing; details like the stitching on a drum skin in bright sunlight were lost; the drum skin looked like a flat surface instead of the textured, contoured surface that it really is.

This issue gets much worse if you go for brightness and bump up the picture control. If you do that, the curves peak even sooner, and even more details are lost. In our sample photos, bumping up the picture control made the image brighter, but even more detail (such as the aforementioned drumskin and clouds on a bright blue sky) just vanished, replaced by flat white or flat color. And again, this underlines the compromise of this display, where you have to pick color accuracy and range or brightness; you can't get both.

**Color Gamut***(4.32)*[

](https://reviewed.usatoday.com/televisions/content/How-We-Test.htm#colorgamut)

Television signals contain a certain range of colors, called the color gamut. For high definition signals, these limits are defined in an international standard (called the ITU Recommendation .709). So, a decent display should accurately match this color gamut, and that's what we test here. We measure the red, greens and blues that the TV can produce and match them against the standard; a perfect display would exactly match the standard gamut

For the geeks amongst you, the chromaticity values of the colors are in the table below.

The TH-46PZ8OU didn't do that well here; although the blue was pretty close, the red and green were both somewhat off. In both cases, the maximum extent of the color gamut was too far out, meaning that the display can produce a wider gamut of colors than the standard calls for. While this might sound like a good thing, it's actually a problem; it will lead to inaccurate colors that will look unnaturally vivid. This was borne out with our tests with a series of sample pictures; objects such as tree leaves and red military uniforms looked somewhat lurid and slightly cartoonish.

Performance: Motion

**Motion Smoothness***(8.5)*[

](https://reviewed.usatoday.com/televisions/content/How-We-Test.htm#motion)

The TH-46PZ8OU is not a 120Hz display; instead the screen is refreshed 60 times a second. This means that the motion of objects on the screen may not be as smooth as the newer 120Hz models. However, the motion of objects on the screen was smooth, and even fast movements kept a smooth, organic look as they moved across the screen. One thing that we did notice was a slight amount of trailing; objects moving against black backgrounds had a slight trail of color behind then. UPDATE: an earlier version of this review erroneously listed this display as being a 120Hz model; it is not.

Update: please note that the text in this section does not explain that refresh rate on Plasma televisions is not the same as refresh rate on LCD televisions. In generaly Plasma televisions do not have the same issues with  motion blurring that LCD televisions have. You should not consider refresh rate to be an important spec in regards to motion for Plasma televisions like the TH-46PZ8OU.

**Motion Artifacting***(8.5)*[

](https://reviewed.usatoday.com/televisions/content/How-We-Test.htm#motion)

The flip side of motion is the amount of detail that the display manages to maintain in images on the screen; having smooth motion is no good if the details of the images turn into a glitchy mess. We saw little evidence of such issues on the TH-46PZ8OU; the smooth motion was accompanied by a good level of detail in the images. We did see some minor issues, though; some sharp color transitions (such as a transition from red to green) had a tendency to produce slight blotchiness in the areas of color, as if the screen was having some trouble making the transition from one color to the other quickly.

**3:2 Pulldown & 24fps***(7.5)*[

](https://reviewed.usatoday.com/televisions/content/How-We-Test.htm#3:2pulldown)

All movies and many TV shows are shot at a frame rate of 24 frames per second, then converted to the 29.97 frames per second of a TV signal using a process called Telecine. Many displays can detect this and try to restore the filmic look using a process called 3:2 pulldown. The TH-46PZ8OU is one such display; it did an excellent job of detecting the telecine signal and interpreting it to recreate the film look of a 24 frames per second video source. Our only complaint is that you can't control this; there is no way to enable or disable the setting through the on-screen menu.

The TH-46PZ8OU also did a good job of rendering a 24fps video source (we use a Blu-ray movie and a PS3 set to output a 24fps signal); again, the motion of the image was clean and smooth.

Performance: Viewing Effects

**Viewing Angle***(10.0)*[

](https://reviewed.usatoday.com/televisions/content/How-We-Test.htm#viewingangle)

The viewing angle of a display is a critical part of its performance. Only one person typically gets to sit right in front of the display (or two people if you are good friends); the rest get to sit at an angle to either side of the screen. So, we test how the display performs at a variety of angles, right up to 85 degrees from straight on. The graph on the right shows how the contrast ratio of the display of the screen holds up

The manufacturers produce ratings for the viewing angle of displays based on a number of different measurements (based on brightness, contrast, etc), but we look at the angle at which the contrast ratio falls by half. And, like most plasmas, the TH-46PZ8OU looked good across most of the viewing angle range; we measured the angle at which contrast fell by 50 per cent at at pretty amazing 78 degrees. Colors also remained bright across most of the viewing range, only becoming pale at a very extreme angle.

**Reflectance***(4.0)*[

](https://reviewed.usatoday.com/televisions/content/How-We-Test.htm#reflectance)

The TH-46PZ8OU has a shiny glass front to the screen, and this proves to be something of an issue. This reflects a lot of light, and you can distinctly see the shape of the light source if the angle is right. These are somewhat irritating; most TVs have a matte front of the screen which makes reflections more diffuse, but the shiny glass of this one makes the reflections sharper and definitely more irritating; we found the reflections to be somewhat distracting while watching a dark sequence of a movie.

Part of this is a question of positioning; as with any display, you should consider putting lights in a position that minimizes reflections. But you can't always do this, and the shiny glass of the TH-46PZ8OU will make any reflections that you can't control more irritating than they should be.

**Video Processing***(2.5)*[

](https://reviewed.usatoday.com/televisions/content/How-We-Test.htm)

Most TVs include some form of video processing that, the manufacturers claim, will help enhance the image quality. In this section of the review, we look at what they claim for these, and what we found.

Most of these are only useful if you are watching an analog video source; if you are watching a digital source (such as high def cable box, digital over the air TV or a digital DVD player), they won't make any difference, or aren't available. The Black Level control is also only available when you are using a digital input.  Overall, as with most of these processing effects, we don't recommend that you use any of them. Video NR and 3D Y/C filter might be useful if you are trying to watch a poor quality cable or analog over the air signal.  But if you really need to use these, you would be better off calling your cable company and complaining, or buying a new TV antenna and switching to a digital TV signal.  The other controls aren't that useful; the black level just pushes down the black point, making the image darker. Again, you'd be better served calibrating the TV to more accurately represent black than trying to fake it with this feature.

Remote

**Ergonomics & Durability***(6.05)*

The Panasonic TH-46PZ80U's remote is smaller than those we saw from the JVC LT-47X899 and Vizio VO47L, which is a good thing for balance and accessibility as you don't have to move your hand about as much to access controls. At neutral, the remote is well balanced. There's a contoured back to help you hold it in your hand a bit better, but we didn't feel that it added much. The slick plastic may mean that you will drop it easily, but the smaller size also helps here as less shifting about means there are less opportunities for the remote to slip.

The buttons on the Panasonic TH-46PZ80U's remote are made of soft plastic, but not so soft they feel squishy or uncomfortable. We did wish that there was a bit more key travel, but tactile feedback was reasonable. The remote's plastic seemed reasonably scratch proof, but we are a bit concerned that the long battery cover may break easily with a hard drop. The latch does seem reasonably strong, and the buttons also seem durable. Overall we were more impressed with the Panasonic TH-46PZ80U remote's ergonomics and durability than we were with those we saw from either the JVC LT-47X899 or the Vizo VO47L.

**Button Layout & Use***(6.5)*

The Panasonic TH-46PZ80U remotes' main controls are laid out across two-thirds the length of the remote, with the directional pad and menu button above and the Volume and Channel buttons in the middle. Although the remote is smaller than others we've seen this spread of controls is actually larger than what we saw from the JVC LT-47X899's remote. We found that someone with small or even medium sized hands may have to stretch a bit uncomfortably to reach from the menu button near the top to the volume or channel down buttons.

Shifting to reach other controls, however, is much easier on the Panasonic TH-46PZ80U's remote as it is significantly shorter than those seen on many other TVs. You will have to shift your hand slightly up to reach the power button and down to reach the number pad, but only a few inches at the most. The balance of the remote also remains good even when you move to reach the furthest buttons.

Labeling on the remote is very good, with a reasonably large text used that's easy to read. Unfortunately the remote does lack any sort of backlight, so you better remember where all the controls are if you are in a dark environment. We found that the angle of controls for the Panasonic TH-46PZ80U's remote was not as good as what we saw from the JVC LT-47X899 or Vizio VO47L. You can easily control the TV out to an angle of about 40 degrees, but beyond this you have to hit buttons multiple times and shift the remote about a bit to get the TV to respond.

**Programming & Flexibility***(0.0)*

The Panasonic TH-46PZ80U remote does not have any programmable buttons, and it cannot be used as a universal remote to control other devices in your home theater.

Audio

**Sound Quality***(6.0)*

The Panasonic TH-46PZ80U's two built in speakers provide reasonable sound quality. It certainly won't be the highlight of your home theatre system, but if you aren't an audiophile they should suit most users fine. We didn't detect any major problems with quality in our informal test using some standard movie sequences.

**Surround Sound***(3.0)*

The Panasonic TH-46PZ80U has a simulated surround sound mode. Many modern TV's have this setting that is supposed to create the illusion that you are using a surround sound system. Like most TV's the Panasonic TH-46PZ80U's simulated surround sound was unimpressive. Compared to an inexpensive surround sound system that we use it produced nowhere near the same effect, in fact we struggled to be able to tell the difference in audio with the feature turned on and off. If you do want surround sound we recommend you go out and by a real surround sound system, even a cheap set of speakers will be better than the Panasonic TH-46PZ80U's simulated surround sound.

**Loudness***(8.45)*

The Panasonic TH-46PZ80U measured 84.5 decibels in our test of loudness. This is quite loud enough to deafen you, and should be loud enough for almost anyone. We made this measurement using a sound pressure meter from five feet away with the volume at maximum and using pink noise as our reference sound.

Connectivity

**Input Ports***(7.25)*

The Panasonic TH-46PZ80U has a good selection of input ports, arranged in two locations. On the back you will find two HDMI ports, an antenna in, three analog audio inputs, two composite video inputs, and S-Video input and two component video inputs. In addition to these you will find an additional HDMI port, analog audio, composite video and S-Video ports on the front of the TV underneath a panel that sits under the display. The Panasonic TH-46PZ80U does not have inputs for VGA of DVI connections, which are often used by computers.

Most of the ports are found on the back of the TV.

A few additional ports sit next to the on-TV controls under a panel in front.

**Output Ports***(2.0)*

The Panasonic TH-46PZ80U's only output ports are an analog audio output and a digital audio output. Both are used to connect the TV to a home audio system.

**Other Connections***(0.0)*

The Panasonic TH-46PZ80U does not support Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, Zigbee, DLNA or any other form of wireless connectivity.

**Media***(2.0)*

The Panasonic TH-46PZ80U has an SD card slot located on the front of the TV in the same covered area that you find the on-TV controls and front ports. The slot supports both standard SD cards and high capacity SDHC cards up to 16GB in size. This port can be used to view photos stored on an SD card. There is no support for other media types like DVD, Blue-Ray, USB or other memory cards.

**Placement***(8.0)*

The Panasonic TH-46PZ80U's ports are located in two places. The majority are found on the back of the TV near the middle and towards the bottom. These can be a bit of a pain to reach if your TV is flush up against a wall, for example if you have it mounted. Thankfully, unlike the JVC LT-47X899 or the Vizio VO47L, the JVC LT-47X899 does provide you with several useful ports on the front of the TV. If all you want to do is plug in your camcorder or test out a piece of equipment that requires an HDMI connection these are easily accessible. All the ports are laid out in a logical manner, and the labeling is clear, although of course you'll have to get behind the TV to view the labeling on those ports.

Controls & Menus

**Ease of Use***(6.0)*

The Panasonic TH-46PZ80U's menu system is arranged in a vertical list of sections that appears on the left side of the TV. You navigate the menu using the D-Pad on the remote, press the Menu button to bring it up, the center select button to activate the currently selected item and the Return button to go back to the previous page.

A simple tabbed interface

At the top level the menu is divided into eight sections, as you an see above. Entering each of these sections will give you a selection of items that can be adjusted. Unlike the JVC LT-47X899 the menus are endlessly nested, there are only a couple of menus that go more than one level deep. Some of the sections do have multiple pages, but rarely more than two. This makes the menu system easier to navigate than the JVC LT-47X899.

Another nice usability feature is that many of the adjustable items have small indicators that show you how many options are available. For example Color Temperature offers three settings, and to indicate this you see three small pips above the setting indicator. Another nice feature is that all the menu options remain in a strip that takes up the left quarter of the display, this means that you can still see what is playing on the television while you make adjustments, even seeing the effect it has on the picture. Some TVs like the Vizio VO47L overlay the menu on the center of the screen instead.

We also like the large font and clear text used for the menu system, you can easily read the items on the screen even from ten or fifteen feet away. Overall we feel the Panasonic TH-46PZ80U's menus are well laid out and simpler than those we've seen on many other TVs.

**Picture Controls***(6.0)*

The Panasonic TH-46PZ80U's Picture menu includes all the options for changing the way items are displayed on the TV. Items can be changed individually or you can choose one of the preset Picture Modes: Vivid, Standard, Cinema and Game. When you make manual adjustments these are saved as a fifth Custom mode.

The Picture menu allows you to make simple adjustments.

All the standard adjustments are available, including Brightness, Color, Tint, Sharpness and Color Temperature. You can also turn features like Color Management and xv Color on or off here. There are also advanced features available, albeit not as many as offered on other TVs. For example you cannot make adjustment to the Red/Green/Blue spectrum. You can see a more detailed analysis of the impact of the more advanced controls on our Performance: Viewing Effects page.

The Advanced Picture menu is where you'll find more escoteric settings.

**Audio Controls***(5.0)*

The audio controls on the Panasonic TH-46PZ80U are straightforward for the most part. When you enter the Audio section of the menu you are given three adjustable options that will make sense to most people: Bass, Treble and Balance.

Not a lot of options in the standard Audio menu.

There is also an advanced audio menu that gives you access to features like simulated surround sound, Bass boost and lets you turn speaker output on/off. You can also control the audio source for the HDMI ports from this menu. See the Audio section of our review for more details on the quality of the audio.

The Advanced Audio menu offers a wider array of options.

**Other Controls***(5.0)*

In addition to the Picture and Audio features the Panasonic TH-46PZ80U's menu system offers controls for standards like the Timer and Closed Captioning as well as a Lock menu to control the content that can be viewed on the television. You can also access photos that are located on an SD card in the TVs slot from the menu, see our Formats & Media section for more on that. There is also a setup menu with basics like Language and Program Channel.

The setup menu is where you'll find miscellaneous options like language and clock.

**Manual***(6.0)*

The Panasonic TH-46PZ80U manual is pretty good. We like the table of contents in the beginning, although we would have liked to see an index in the back as well. There's a good quick start guide to get you going, and there are clear instructions on how to connect your TV to your other home theater devices. We also very much like that there are large headers at the top of every page telling you what the page is about, this makes it much easier to flip through and find what you're looking for. We also like the way menu systems are called out to make the clear and easy to read. All in all a good effort by Panasonic.

Formats & Media

**Formats***(10.5)*

The Panasonic TH-46PZ80U supports 1080p, 1080i, 720p and 480p formats. This is typical of modern HD televisions, there are still a few out there that don't support 1080p and 1080i, but they are becoming fewer and fewer. The Panasonic TH-46PZ80U also supports xvYCC color, which offers a wider range of color for content that supports it. There is also support for 3:2 pulldown and 24p, which is used for content that is produced to look like film.

**Photo Playback***(3.5)*

The Panasonic TH-46PZ80U supports playback of photos on an SD card loaded into its slot. Putting a card in will immediately launch the photo playback interface, which consists of a set of thumbnails taking up the right side of the screen and information about the currently selected photo and instructions on the left side of the screen. You navigate through the thumbnails using the D-pad on the remote, pressing the center select buttons will give you a full screen version of the selected photo. You can also play a slide show by hitting the R button on the remote, in the options you can control how long the transition between slides is, from 1 second to 120, but that's it.

We don't expect a lot from photo playback features on a TV, and the Panasonic TH-46PZ80U certainly didn't do anything to change these expectations. It did have one significant problem, however, which was the slow load time of photos. Using 12 megapixel photos it took the Panasonic TH-46PZ80U almost ten seconds to open one of the photos. In fact even when in slideshow mode it took the TV almost this long to make the transition, even when we set the transition time to a lower number like five seconds. This will make viewing photos on the Panasonic TH-46PZ80U a frustrating experience for many. So much so that we decided to deduct a point from the TV's score in this section.

**Video Playback***(0.0)*

The Panasonic TH-46PZ80U does not support direct playback of any video formats like Mpeg-4, QuickTime or Windows Media Video.

**Streaming Playback***(0.0)*

The Panasonic TH-46PZ80U does not support streaming playback of video over the internet from services like Youtube, Netflix or Hulu.

**DVR***(0.0)*

The Panasonic TH-46PZ80U does not have DVR capabilities built in.

Power Consumption

**Power Consumption***(4.63)*

To test power consumption we set the television's brightness to 200 cd/m2, which is a good brightness of both dark and light conditions. Unfortunately the Panasonic TH-46PZ80U gave us some problems, namely even with the brightness and picture settings maxed out at 100 it came nowhere near 200 cd/m2, instead it maxed out at 70.6 cd/m2. As this is as close as we could get to our baseline we used this for our test, and the Panasonic TH-46PZ80U used an amazing 549.3 Watts on average at this brightness level.

If you were to watch TV for five hours a day, which is the average for U.S. households, and pay average rates for electricity the Panasonic TH-46PZ80U would cost you $107.35 per year, by far the worst power performance we've seen to date. This is a common problem with Plasma televisions and one of the reasons you may want to consider an LCD display instead. For example the JVC LT-47X899 would cost you about one third over the course of the year, and it can easily reach our test level of 200 cd/m2. You can see below that you would have to turn down the brightness and picture settings to minimum to start achieving those kinds of power consumption costs with this television.

Value & Comparisons

**Value**

The Panasonic TH-46PZ80U is pretty reasonably priced for a Plasma TV at around $1300. Offering good viewing angles, dark blacks and reasonable color performance, as long as you don't pump up the brightness, there's a lot to like about this HDTV. Unfortunately there are also some negatives including lackluster brightness that will turn many off. It's a good value for a Plasma, but we think many will be more attracted to LCD's and their significantly better brightness levels.

**Comparisons**

Vizio VO47L - The Vizio is priced about the same as the Panasonic and has a number of advantages; brighter screen,

Sharp LT-47X899 - Priced at about the same as the Panasonic, this LCD monitor didn't impress us in image quality terms.

Samsung LN46A750 - For a bit more cash, you get a lot more in terms of image quality and features. We'd strongly reccomend considering the upgrade if the credit card will stand the strain.

Conclusion

The Panasonic TH-46PZ80U offers many of the strengths that we've come to expect from Plasma televisions, including an excellent viewing angle and deep blacks. Colors were a mixed bag, keep the brightness low and you get accurate colors. Turn it up, however, and they begin to lose detail. This is especially important as the Panasonic TH-46PZ80U's range of brightness is so small that we think most people will want to turn it up all the way. Even at maximum brightness many will find this HDTV to be dim in a normally lit room. Certainly in a show room the LCD's are going to outshine it, but don't discount the positives of a Plasma. Just be prepared to compromise for them.

Ratings & Specs

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Meet the tester

Richard Baguley

Richard Baguley

Contributor

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Richard Baguley is a veteran writer who has written about technology ranging from Alphabet to Zip file utilities. He has contributed to pretty much every major tech publication, including Amiga Format Magazine, PC World, Wired, CNET, Toms Guide, Forbes, and many others. He lives in the Boston metro area with his wife, dog, and an indeterminate number of cats.

See all of Richard Baguley's reviews

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