Introduction

Front

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The front view of the {{product.name}} shows off its new glass and metal design. The TV has a very thin bezel and a small glass lip along its underside. It's not a revolutionary design, but it does look nicer than glossy black plastic.

Back

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Nothing really of note on the TV's back. There's a cluster of right-facing and down-facing ports and not much else. We're not really a fan of down-facing ports, because they're awkward to access.

Sides

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The TV is pretty thin, which doesn't leave much room for controls.

Stand/Mount

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The stand is a stainless steel boomerang that looks a bit different than the average square of black plastic.

Aesthetics

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We generally like the {{product.model}}'s aesthetics. We've seen metal bezels before, but the stand is different and a bit interesting. Really, there's not a whole lot you can do with a TV other than minor touches like this.

Display Size & Technology

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The {{product.name}} has a 55-inch LCD screen, which uses an IPS Alpha panel. Panasonic recently redesigned their panels, and a good chunk of their booth was dedicated to showing how much better their new panels are compared to their old ones. Of course, until we get these new TVs into our labs, we're a bit skeptical.

Formats & Resolution

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The TV has a standard 1080p screen for viewing full HD content at its native resolution. At this screen size, that's more than enough: your eye wouldn't be able to differentiate between 1080p and a 4K2K display.

Brightness, Blacks and Contrast Ratio

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It was really hard to get a good sense of the contrast ratio on the show floor. Panasonic's demo video was of different movie trailers, and they'd turned on just about every available processing feature on. The TV does feature localized dimming, but there's no spec on the number of zones.

Color

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Again, the show floor and processing make it even hard to eyeball what's going on in terms of color. We saw a lot of peaking and oversaturation, but that's the norm for CES.

Motion & Refresh Rate

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While most of Panasonic's panel redesign propaganda focused on their plasma sets, they did throw one new bit of tech at their LCDs: 1920 Backlight Scanning.

In addition to a 240Hz refresh rate, the TV has a higher rate of backlight scanning. The claim is this technology allows the TV to cycle through colors more quickly, which should help eliminate motion blur. We're really looking forward to getting this in the lab for our battery of recently-revamped motion tests so we can see just how good this new panel is at reducing blur.

Viewing Angle

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We did an informal test on the show floor, and we'd say the TV's viewing angle is about average for an LCD. We got out to about a 45° angle before we noticed a significant drop in contrast ratio. We wouldn't expect the 178° listed on the spec sheet, but we're also reserving our final judgment for when we have our test results.

3D Glasses

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There weren't any 3D glasses on the show floor that we could check out, just kiosks like the one pictured below. Since Panasonic wasn't specifically showing off a brand new design, we wouldn't expect any dramatic changes to their existing design.

3D Effect

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The {{product.model}} will support 3D, but there wasn't much more information available than that. According to the flyers around, the new panel technology should help reduce crosstalk.

Basically, if the panel can dim and relight pixels faster, it should help refresh the screen fast enough to keep the left and right channels separate.

Panasonic was demonstrating their new 3D on the show floor, but their setup was disingenuous at best: it compared their TV to "simulated" 3D from some unnamed competition. We've seen some bad 3D, but even the worst wasn't as bad as what Panasonic was offering up in their comparison.

Audio & Video Ports

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It was a bit hard to differentiate some of the inputs from the shot we were able to get on the show floor, but it looks like you could expect the following ports:
• 4 HDMI
• 3 USB
• 1 SD card slot
• 1 PC slot
• 1 3.5mm audio

The TV also has built-in wifi for accessing a bunch of different online features and enabling streaming video and audio through various apps.

Internet & Other Media

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This year Panasonic, like most other manufacturers, revamped their software. This new suite, called SmartViera, has quite a few online and media features that take advantage of the built-in wifi. First up: the new browser.

The {{product.model}}'s browser is fully functional, but it is a bit awkward to navigate. In order to type in URLs, you need to bring up the on-screen keyboard. While you can do this with the normal remote, it's a lot easier with the touchpad remote that's included with the TV. Either way, you'll have to hunt and peck out URLs letter by letter.

The browser has a bookmark feature. You can set up to nine thumbnails on a shortcut screen for easy access.

There's also an app store, where you can download different programs for your TV. The old favorites are there, and there are quite a few new apps available.

We also got a shot of the TV's photo gallery, which is just a huge assortment of thumbnails.

Placement

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Port placement on the {{product.name}} is pretty standard. Since it's a thin TV, there are just side-facing and down-facing ports. We're really not a fan of down-facing ports, because they're really awkward to access.

Remote

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This TV ships with two remotes. The first is a pretty standard Vizio remote.

The second is a little more interesting. The black portion towards the top of the remote is touch sensitive, and tries to mimic the feel of a laptop's trackpad. This functionality should help make the online experience a little better.

Controls

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Menu

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As part of the SmartViera redesign, the {{product.model}} has an updated menu that looks a bit like the old menu.

It's set up as pages, with each page containing eight shortcuts and a link back to live TV.

While that isn't super different in and of itself, now you can browse between pages much easier.

You can also organize programs into folders to further help navigation.

Conclusion

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The {{product.model}} looks like a pretty solid TV. Its new software package seems interesting, it has built-in wifi, is 3D capable, and has a different aesthetic. The software seemed a bit sluggish, but hopefully it'll be a bit faster by the time the final sets roll out. We're also looking forward to testing the new panels in our labs, to see just how much they reduce motion blur.

Unfortunately, Panasonic didn't have a ballpark release date or price for this project. Keep checking back: we'll update as soon as we find out that information.

Series Comparision

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Specs

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