Panasonic TH-75EX780

A WALL-SPANNING BEHEMOTH.

IT’S FULLY HDR COMPLIANT, THOUGH USES THE ‘4K ULTRA HD TV PRO HDR’ LOGO TO INDICATE THIS, WHICH WE’RE NOT CERTAIN IS COMPATIBLE WITH THE TWO MAIN HDR STANDARDS.

PANASONIC IS GETTING onboard the OLED bus this year, which is why the arrival of this set was a little bit of a surprise. It uses an LCD panel instead, but boy is it big — a huge, wallspanning 75-inches to be precise. It’s huge and heavy; the Panasonic reps weren’t lying when they said we’d need at least two people to set it up, as it tips the scales at a whopping 54kg.

Despite the use of LCD technology, our test results showed results on par with OLED displays. The digitally enhanced backlight dimming allowed it to reach a pure black result, while the contrast ratio was also off the charts, outdoing what our colorimeter could reach. It didn’t quite cover as much of the RGB colour gamut as OLED screens, though, but the difference wasn’t huge.

However, when we set the TV to pure cinema mode, we found that the colours were already perfectly calibrated. It’s fully HDR compliant, though uses the ‘4K Ultra HD TV Pro HDR’ logo to indicate this, which we’re not certain is compatible with the two main HDR standards. It’s very bright, though, maxing out at 569 lux during our testing, while it’s also extremely power efficient, using just 79W during our calibration.

One area we weren’t too fond of was the interface — for TVs in this price range, we felt that this set had the least intuitive when it came to accessing the myriad of smart TV options.

PANASONIC IN 2017

A huge focus for Panasonic this year will be its flagship OLED EZ1000 series, as the company is finally taking on LG’s dominance in this arena. It’s the first OLED TV launched by Panasonic in Australia, with the 65-incher landing last April, and a larger 77-incher due in November. A secondary OLED range, the EZ950 series, will be available in July in both 65- and 55-inch models.

Just because the company is getting into OLED doesn’t mean it’s abandoning its LCD roots, though. As mentioned above, the set we reviewed was based on LCD technology, which Panasonic refers to as its ‘4K Pro HDR Ultra HD LED LCD TVs’. Like all of the premium sets this year, Panasonic is heavily investing in HDR, and it uses three technologies to do so: the Studio Colour HCX2 (Hollywood Cinema Experience 2) 4K Processor, HEXA Chroma Drive 4K Pro and Hollywood Tuning. It’s not saying that it’s going with either Dolby Vision or 4K Ultra Premium, instead stating that they support HDR10, the format necessary for HDR support via NetFlix or HDR Blu-Rays. We really wish companies would use one of the two main logos just to make things clearer for consumers. We were very surprised by the black levels of our LCD review sample, and it appears that Panasonic uses digitally enhanced localised dimming of the backlight to enable this.

Based on the table sent to us by Panasonic, it seems the company is launching 14 new TV sets in 2017, ranging in price from $1,399 for the TH-40ES500 LCD all the way up to $8,899 for the TH-65EZ1000. The 77-inch version of this 65-inch OLED TV doesn’t have a price announced yet, but we’re guessing it’ll breach the ten grand mark.

PANASONIC TH-75EX780

$7,199 www.panasonic.com.au

CRITICAL SPECS

3,840 x 2,160; 75-inch; HDR10; LCD technology