Panasonic’s 1-Inch Thin Z1 Plasma Deemed Beautiful, But Pricey
Who says plasma is dead? The 54-inch TC-P54Z1 improves upon the V10 series, and uses a separate box and wireless HDMI receiver. And after an exhaustive review, HD Guru says it delivers outstanding colour, deep black levels and superior motion.
The $US5500 beauty uses a G12 1080p NeoPDP panel. Like Pioneer’s Kuro, it does away with a top sheet of glass and bonds an anti-reflective coating directly to the top glass. HD Guru says this eliminates the internal reflections between the top two sheets of glass that you see on all other plasmas.
With the user controls tweaked, we sampled HD and SD content using source material from Verizon FIOS, DirecTV and HD movies from Blu-ray discs via Panasonic’s DMP-BD80. The deep black level and bright whites consistently produced images with punch; undoubtedly due to the real world high contrast ratio the Z1 is capable of producing. Although the Z1 didn’t ace the HQV jaggies tests, we noticed no problems with any source material we threw at it.
To connect the TV to the receiver set top box, the Z1 includes a wireless transmitter that can be fixed to the back of the set. You also get a pair of “elephant ear” side speakers, and a table stand.
The receiver has a built-in HDTV over-the-air tuner, and Ethernet (for Panasonic’s Viera Cast content…stuff like Picasa photos, YouTube and Amazon). It’s a sweet system, and HD Guru’s review is definitely worth a read if you’ve got that sort of cash to throw around. [HD Guru | Panasonic]
- Next Post: Shooting Anvils 60m In The Air Is As Bloody Crazy As It Sounds »
- « Previous Post: Philips DirectLife Turns Exercise Into A Status Bar
Comments (AU Comments | US Comments)
I have definitely been a fan of plasma and have an earlier panasonic model but the thing that has me considering the switch to lcd was when I was comparinng the latest thin plasma’s and LCD’s the one thing that blew me away was how hot the plasma glass was compared to LCD. I nearly got burns from the plasma but the LCD was cool to touch. Obviously much higher power consumption. Good to see the plasma camp keeping up with the thin sleek lines of the LCD’s though.