Panasonic TX-L37V20B review

LED TV with excellent HD credentials, but ultimately disappointing performance

Panasonic TX-L37V20E
This TV eschews the new found fad of 3D and concentrates on the picture processing basics

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Panasonic tx-l37v20e

The TX-L37V20B does a better job with sound than the vast majority of edge LED TVs. There's more power and dynamic range than you would usually expect to find, enabling the soundstage to open up at least a little during the transition from a quiet to a loud scene. There's even a hint of bass in the soundstage, which is almost unheard of on modern flatscreens.

While it's got the features and processing power to justify its price, the TX-L37V20B's performance isn't dazzling enough to make it a particularly tempting thing on which to blow the best part of a grand, especially when you can the superior, larger TX-P42V20 plasma TVs for around the same money.

Ease of use

The more other brands serve up vibrant, colourful menus able to handle huge amounts of features effortlessly, the more out of date Panasonic's current menus start to look. They're drab to look at, text heavy, prone to forcing you to scroll down long boring lists, and rather unintuitive with some of their organisation.

The remote control feels plasticky for a unit supplied with a premium TV and, although Panasonic zappers used to have the best button layouts in the business, all those extra features haven't been accommodated particularly well and relegating the main Menu button to a small key in the top left corner proves problematic.

The good news is that the onscreen menus are pretty free of jargon and the system feels like a first step towards a more sophisticated operating system.

John Archer
AV Technology Contributor

John has been writing about home entertainment technology for more than two decades - an especially impressive feat considering he still claims to only be 35 years old (yeah, right). In that time he’s reviewed hundreds if not thousands of TVs, projectors and speakers, and spent frankly far too long sitting by himself in a dark room.