Panasonic 50ds630e Full Tv Review

Hi everyone and welcome to the review of Panasonic 50DS630E Full HD 3D Smart TV. This is the first 2016 TV I review and also the best Full HD model Panasonic is offering this year. I already covered unboxing, setup and picture calibration in previous videos, if you want to know more about those topics check links below. It's clear that manufacturers are no longer focusing on improving Full HD TVs and DS630 is a great example of this trend. This model is a pure copy of last year's CS630 and that TV was not so much different from AS600 series from 2014. Both DS and CS series are designed completely the same, with slim silver bezel, metal stand and plastic backplate. Connector arrangement is also the same and so is the remote control. Smart TV is based on 3 year old my home screen 1.x version which did not change at all from its release. The biggest modification was done when Panasonic embraced Firefox OS, but it is pretty clear it will stay exclusive to their UHD line. DS630E is equipped with MVA LCD screen with LED backlight. MVA panels achieve very high contrast ratio, but at the price of really narrow viewing angles. What happens when you watch this type of screen under angle? Well, contrast ratio becomes smaller, gamma changes, blacks are elevated and colors are less saturated and shifted. Some scenes do not suffer so much from this, but some do quite significantly. Good example is this Severine introduction scene from Skyfall. Very warm, orange and red tones accurately represented when watching from the front. Under angle, completely different story, instead of warm colors we get green tint all over the screen. Conclusion – for the best picture sit directly in front of the screen or under angle smaller that 30 degrees. So now that we are done with the biggest downside of this model in terms of picture quality, let's focus on other aspects. ANSI contrast is above 4300:1 which is great for watching movies in dark room environment. True Cinema preset is decently set by default although I've seen better. Still, you have plenty of controls for very accurate calibration. Screen uniformity is very good, dirty screen effect practically doesn't exist. True 120 Hz panel improves motion resolution to approximately 600 out of 1080 lines, which is not perfect, but still enough for blur-free watching sports and other dynamic content. In dark room environment I could see backlight bleed on the right side of the screen, but during critical viewing this wasn't distracting. Processing is excellent for both standard and high definition content – picture is sharp and detailed. Interlaced signals are not Panasonic's strong thing, so depending on the cadence type you can see so-called moire effect and stairstepping. Blu-ray movies looked excellent due to combination of high contrast panel, high quality processing and well implemented interpolation for smooth playback but without soap-opera effect. For best result I recommend to use 24p Smooth Film feature on Minimum value. Input lag measurements revealed surprisingly high input lag of around 70 ms, which could seem as a no-go for gamers. But while I was using this TV on my desk as a monitor for office work and gaming, I could not notice any significant lag, not at least for casual gaming. Speaker quality is average, no better or worse than what was offered last year. Built-in media player support video, photo and audio playback through USB or network. It plays h.264 content with Dolby Digital audio, but not HEVC and DTS audio. Also, some of content that usually works fine with other TVs was freezing on this model and playback would stop. So I can only recommend separate media player device with this TV. To conclude, DS630E does not bring anything new to the table compared to last year but keeps great performance in terms of pure picture quality, especially after calibration. If you are looking for a great Full HD TV that you will watch directly from the front and you do not care about latest Smart TV platform, DS630E or last year's CS630E are my recommended choices. I will continue on to review best Full HD TVs manufacturers are offering this year – stay tuned for new reviews and also comparison videos that will help you make the right choice. Thanks for watching and see you soon.