There are few things in life that really, honestly wow you; things that inspire a true sense of awe. The birth of your child. The light cascading down Ayr's Rock as the sun sets. A sober appearance from Amy Winehouse.

Quite simply, the range-topping PDP-LX6090 is the best TV in the world bar none. The 60incher's smaller sibling, the LX5090, runs it a close second and is, in itself, a standard-setting TV. But size, in this case, is everything.

At present, I'd argue that there is no better way of viewing hi-def movies or games than on Pioneer's king of screens, unless you require a much larger picture and therefore a projector. But I'd even suggest that the image quality of the LX6090 is so good that it represents a viable alternative to a projection-based home cinema installation.

Such is the power of Kuro. For those unfamiliar with Pioneer's flat panel branding, 'Kuro' (the
Japanese word for black) has been adopted because the set's black performance is key to why this latest iteration of its TV technology is so astoundingly good.

The black level response on both the LX6090 and the LX5090 is so intense that while the screen is on but not displaying an image, you can't see a thing in a darkened room. Nothing. Nada.

It's coal miner time. 'Oh yeah, we've seen it before,' 8th-gen Kuro owners might cry. But not like this. Not this deep. Not this scary.

The tech talk

For its G9 panels, Pioneer has nigh-on eliminated light bleed from individual cells and, therefore, can directly control the luminance of each separate pixel of the 1920 x 1080 resolution without any 'muddying' of colours or, indeed, black itself.

This has a secondary benefit; while blacks retain their integrity, brightness (white) is also
represented with pinpoint accuracy.

Add in excellent colour fidelity and you get an astonishing picture. A simple example is illustrated with many disclaimer scenes at the front of DVDs or Blu-ray discs, which are generally white text on a black background.

Most, if not all, TVs will show glowing or ghosting around the edges of the words, not so here.

On both of these Kuro screens, they are as solid as if they'd been printed. And the white is, well... completely white. Not yellow or grey, but Duluxstyle white. Oh, and there's the small matter of the fact that, even in our own Tech Labs, we tested the contrast ratio of the LX6090, in real world circumstances, at almost 47,869:1 - not claimed, tested...

The 50in Kuro did even better, clocking a contrast figure of 50,615:1.

No other screens tested have ever come anywhere close.

From the box, the preset settings are very watchable, although it's worth experimenting with the controls to optimise the picture or, better still, employ a trained engineer to calibrate it for you.

Both panels, like their G8 counterparts, feature ISF-calibration options so they can be tweaked to get images spot-on.

Curiously, you won't find anything in the manual about them but ISF Day and ISF Night modes are available. But even without intricate tweaking, I was able to get the colour temperature to a perfect 65K without compromise and therefore spin the Blu-ray edition of Men in Black safe in the knowledge that I was seeing it as the director intended - at 24 frames per second, with a wholly accurate colour field.

I'm used to seeing stunning hi-def pictures, it comes with the job, but I don't have the words to describe how bowled over I was at the visual luxury on offer.