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Eyes-On with Panasonic's AX900 LED/LCD Ultra HD TV: Is It Really a Plasma Killer?

By Chris Boylan

Teased in prototype form at CES 2014, and shown this week as a final production model at this year's IFA conference in Berlin, Panasonic's latest flagship in the LED/LCD TV category, the AX900 may actually give plasma a run for its money in picture quality. With competitor LG investing in OLED technology and Samsung apparently concentrating on making everything bigger, more curved and uber-expensive, it seems that only Panasonic and Sony have focused on squeezing the highest picture performance out of LED/LCD TV technology.

Sony's 2014 LED TVs have been getting good marks for black level and contrast performance, thanks to their full array LED backlighting and local dimming, but their colors still seem a bit muted to me, there is some minor haloing around bright moving objects and off-axis viewing is not ideal. Meanwhile, Panasonic's AX900 set offers excellent black levels and color saturation that approaches plasma. And its off-axis viewing is remarkably good as well.

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Panasonic's 65-inch TX-65AX900 LED/LCD TV.

You don't normally see LED/LCD TVs on display at a trade show in very dark rooms, as this environment tends to highlight LED/LCD sets' poor black level performance and lighting uniformity, but that's exactly what Panasonic is doing this week in Berlin. Behind black drapes in a pitch black room we find three TVs: a WT600 model (2013 flagship 4K TV), the new AX900 (also 4K), and last year's killer plasma, the ZT60. I've honestly never seen an LED set really compete with a plasma in black level performance and color saturation but the AX900 does give plasma a run for its money.

Panasonic plasma vs. LED
Panasonic put their top-rated ZT60 plasma (right) up against their WT600 LED (left) and new AX900 LED TV (center). The results were encouraging for fans of LED TVs.

The WT600 (2013 model) really isn't even close in performance, but one would be hard-pressed to actually pick out which is the plasma between the ZT60 and the AX900. Fellow journalist Brent Butterworth came in for a peek with me and actually pointed at the AX900 and said, "that's the plasma." Sorry, Brent! But that's OK... he's more of an audio guy now. To Brent's credit, the picture quality on the two sets was extremely similar: deep inky black levels, no visible haloing, excellent color saturation. In some ways, the AX900 actually looked better: specifically in picture detail, due to it having four times the resolution of the 1080p plasma next to it.

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Another look at the AX900 LED TV (left) and ZT60 plasma (right).

The secret to its success is primarily the use of full array LED backlighting with enhanced local dimming. Panasonic calls it Local Dimming Ultra. Rather than having the LED lighting elements either on or off as in some LED TVs with local dimming, each lighting zone on the AX900 can be varied in intensity to better match on-screen content. Panasonic says this gradation in backlighting allows them to attain high contrast between light and dark images without those annoying halos around bright objects. Also, Panasonic has enhanced its color management in the AX900 to better reproduce color throughout the brightness range through expanded color lookup tables. This combined with its "Ultra-Bright" LCD panel deliver vivid colors which compete with self-emissive technologies like plasma and OLED.

This is not to say that the AX900 is the definitive "plasma-killer." The content being shown was all very controlled, from a 4K source (stepped down to 1080p for the plasma). There were good tests of black level and skin tones as well as some vivid color tests (mostly flowers) but there were no fast-moving patterns that can plague LED/LCD sets and no torture tests like white credits scrolling on a black background. To really gauge picture performance, we'd want to get the TV in house and run it through more tests. But I would say the AX900 does make me cautiously optimistic about the future of television. Oh yeah... and it's flat!

The AX900 will be available in 55-inch (TX-55AX900) and 65-inch (TX-65AX900) sizes. No word yet on exact pricing or U.S. availability dates but we'll be sure to post updates as this information becomes available.

What did you think?

View all articles by Chris Boylan
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