Gadgetory

hi I'm David Katz my from CNET and I'm standing next to the Panasonic TCP 55 st 50 this is a 55 inch plasma TV this review will also apply to the 50 the 60 and the 65 inch member of the series it doesn't come in any sizes smaller than that this is Panasonic's mid-range plasma TV it as 3d it also has the company's high-end neopdp plasma technology for all that picture quality goodness we'll get to that and a little bit but first I'd like to talk a little bit about one of the big improvements this year over the ST 30 which was our pick last year for best bang for the buck among plasma TVs that's the styling this TV has pretty slick styling for a Panasonic Plasma actually looks almost as good as some of the Samsung plasmas out there and that is a compliment around the edge of the screen it's a pretty thin bezel there's also this sort of acrylic border the bottom edge is a little bit thicker and there's a little bit of indent there to give a little bit of an accent and TV is also thinner than it was last year The Stand however does not swivel the set includes of Viera casts smart TV functionality which has all the usual apps Netflix Amazon video on-demand Vudu there's also a couple of audio apps including Pandora there's a few additional apps Panasonic did include the social TV app this year which places Twitter or Facebook right next to the TV screen so you can simultaneously watch TV and tweet if that's your thing this TV does not have the higher-end touchpad remote however Panasonic reserves that for the more expensive VT & WT series this year the ST 50 does get built in Wi-Fi however so we figure that's a big convenience bonus of course a lot of xx 12 TVs do also include that feature compared to the competition the S 250 has fewer picture controls than seen on a lot of the other higher-end TVs it doesn't have the 10-point grayscale it gets by with the two-point there's also a fewer settings for color management but on the flip side we found that the presets were pretty darn good this year for the custom mode and that's a big improvement compared to last year let's talk a little bit about pitch quality now which is the real reason why we like the ST 50 this set has extremely deep black levels for a plasma in fact it's even deeper than last year's flagship TV the VT 30 by just a little bit that deep black as usual adds to a lot of punch a lot of perceived contrast a great looking picture overall under all different lighting conditions speaking of lighting conditions Panasonic improve the filter on this TV this year it actually rejects ambient light even better than before which means that those blacks can say deeper even in brighter lighting situations which is again among the best we've seen on any plasma TV that also has pretty accurate color once you play around if the settings in the custom mode so all told we really liked the picture quality this TV did we mention it's also 3d Panasonic does not include 3d glasses that include 3d glasses are new for this year they're about 70 bucks apiece they use Bluetooth functionality the 3d picture quality wasn't quite as good as we expected we did see more crosstalk than a lot of competition but that's not really a deal-breaker in this TV does still produce pretty good 3d images around back the ST 50 is a little bit sparse however instead of the normal four HDMI there's only three there are two USB and a rare SD card slot however in addition to one analog input of course the real kicker on the SD 50 is its bang for the buck this TV does produce a very good picture for the price and I think would be hard-pressed to see other TVs this year that can match its value proposition and that's a quick look at the Panasonic TCPS T 50 series I'm David Katz Meijer