Panasonic TC-PST50 series (50, 55, 60, and 65 inches)
Whether it's worth $300 or $3,000, you want to know that the TV you're buying represents the best you can get for the price. That's where these TVs excel.
While it's not the cheapest TV on the market, the PST50 gives you the most for your money of any TV we have yet seen. Superb image quality, a modest price given what you get, and an understated design make this Panasonic our favorite big-screen TV of the year.
The good: The affordable Panasonic TC-PST50 series exhibited outstanding overall picture quality, characterized by exceedingly deep black levels with great shadow detail, accurate colors, and solid bright-room performance. Unlike LCDs, as a plasma it has superb off-angle and uniformity characteristics. The styling is attractive and the feature set well-chosen, including excellent onscreen help options.
The bad: The ST50 uses more power than competing LCD TVs, and doesn't perform as well in bright rooms as those with matte screens. It doesn't come with 3D glasses, and it showed more crosstalk in 3D than some competing TVs. The ST50 is only available in 50-inch and larger sizes. Three HDMI inputs is one fewer than most midrange TVs offer.
The bottom line: With flagship-level picture quality for a midlevel price, the Panasonic ST50 series sets the value standard among videophile-grade TVs.
October 31, 2012 9:47 PM PDT
Photo by: Sarah Tew/CNET
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