Key Specs
- OLED TV with native UHD decision
- HDR 10 and HLG help
- 800 nits peak brightness
- Professional-grade 3D Look-Up Desk color system
- Built-in sound bar
Fingers-on with Panasonic’s new flagship TV from CES 2017
For years now Panasonic has caught stubbornly – maybe heroically – to the identical message round its TVs: they need to reproduce footage precisely because the filmmakers meant. And given what I’ve simply seen of the brand new Panasonic 65EZ1002 OLED TV on the CES in Las Vegas, it appears the model has simply taken this quest to a complete new degree.
The 65-inch 65EZ1002 is Panasonic’s new flagship TV for 2017, usurping the highest spot beforehand occupied by the model’s OLED debut, the 65CZ952. And you’ll maybe get a sense for a way good it’s if I say that it crushes its much-lauded predecessor in nearly each manner.
Associated: Fingers-on with the Samsung Q9F QLED TV
The enhancements begin as quickly as you have a look at it. It sports activities a cleaner, much less ‘shouty’ design than its predecessor, and – in a transfer that appears certain to please most video fanatics – it carries a flat slightly than curved display screen.
Instantly I seen how the shift to a flat display screen has resulted within the 65EZ1002 struggling much less with onscreen reflections than its predecessor. That is strengthened additional by the obvious effectiveness of the brand new Absolute Black Filter system Panasonic has constructed into the 65EZ1002’s display screen.
It’s not simply the way in which you’ll be able to watch footage with out having their affect lowered by reflections that makes darkish scenes on the 65EZ1002 stand above these of the 65CZ952, although. Black areas on the 65EZ1002 additionally look black in ambient gentle, slightly than turning into tinged with purple like they do with LG’s OLED TVs.
Even higher, the unbelievable depth of the 65EZ1002’s black ranges is emphasised by the large leap in depth of vivid picture areas. Shiny peaks in HDR sources leap off the display screen with a punch and dynamism effectively past something I’ve seen from any OLED TV earlier than, together with LG’s 2016 fashions.
Panasonic claims a brightness peak of 800 nits for the 65EZ1002, up from 450 nits on the EZ952. That is spectacular in itself, however in actuality the height brightness truly feels increased because of the way in which OLED’s self-emissive nature permits the brightest image parts to sit down proper alongside the darkest ones with out both polluting the opposite.
There’s no denying that even the much-improved peak brightness of the 65EZ1002 sits manner beneath the 2000 nits being claimed by Samsung’s newest LCD TVs. However the 65EZ1002’s general distinction efficiency ensures you get loads of the ‘dynamic’ from its excessive dynamic vary.
The 65EZ1002 can also be extremely – for my cash, unprecedentedly – good at dealing with the very darkest, faintest particulars in darkish scenes. An evening-time clip of a pair of ninjas combating in a Japanese backyard loved nearly precisely the identical quantity of shadow element and black tone accuracy that the identical scene loved on a professional-grade ($30,000) OLED mastering monitor Panasonic was operating alongside the 65EZ1002.
There’s no sense of the flattening hollowness in darkish areas that different OLED TVs endure with, the place they wrestle to deal with the step from whole black to only above black.
There’s additionally not one of the greyness or backlight clouding you get with LCD TVs, and the way in which the EZ1002 is ready to retain color subtlety and accuracy even within the darkest areas is simply lovely.
Really, the EZ1002’s leap ahead in color phrases over the CZ952 appears as potent as its enhanced brightness. It makes use of an much more superior 3D Look Up desk system – a color registry system ‘borrowed’ from Panasonic’s skilled screens division – to that utilized by the CZ952 to ship far more correct tones. Pores and skin tones, for example, out of the blue look somewhat over-stated and jaundiced on the CZ952 as soon as they’ve been in contrast with the stellar stability and accuracy of the EZ1002.
The brand new HCX2 image processor contained in the EZ1002, in the meantime, makes its presence clearly felt in the way in which Panasonic’s new OLED TV does away nearly fully with the problems of bitty noise and rainbow striping in areas the place there ought to be advantageous, clean color gradations. This nearly noise-free color efficiency offers the EZ1002 a serious efficiency edge over any OLED TVs we’ve seen from LG up to now.
Don’t simply take my phrase for it about how excellent the EZ1002’s color dealing with seems to be, although. Movie and TV colourist Dado Valentic was readily available to remind us that the 3D Look-up desk system of the EZ1002 is so superior that skilled customers can add their very own 3D LUT parameters, enabling them to truly use the EZ1002 to grasp movies and TV exhibits for house leisure functions. In different phrases, you actually may find yourself watching a movie at house on the identical display screen it was mastered on in Hollywood. That is, after all, an enormous deal for Panasonic’s ‘because the director meant’ ambitions.
If pushed to seek out fault with the EZ1002’s footage, they’re clearly not as vivid as these being pumped out by Samsung’s newly revealed QLED TVs, and I seen some indicators of element and gradation ‘clipping’ within the explosions of a sci-fi motion clip Panasonic was operating. However to say the great overwhelms the unhealthy could be a laughable understatement.
Panasonic was not, sadly, capable of allow us to hear a demo of the EZ1002’s built-in soundbar. It actually appears to be like prefer it means enterprise, although – and in any case, frankly it may sound like two cans and a bit of string and it nonetheless wouldn’t dampen my enthusiasm for getting an EZ1002 put in in our take a look at room.
CES 2017, you’re spoiling us, you actually are.
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