Panasonic TX-65CZ952 review

Has Panasonic just made the best TV ever?

Panasonic TX-65CZ952
Has Panasonic just made the best TV ever?

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While it's a shame the 65CZ952 doesn't benefit from Panasonic's Firefox OS platform, it's still overall an easy TV to use.

It's easy to find and access apps, and to configure the menus to suit your specific requirements. Also, while the tools are provided to calibrate every aspect of its pictures to the nth degree, the set also features an unusually strong set of picture presets - especially Mike Sowa's True Cinema one - that help even the most extreme technophobes get great results with minimal technical knowledge or manual input.

Sound

As might have been expected given how mind-bendingly slim the 65CZ952 is, it struggles to work the same magic with its sound that it does with its pictures.

Its speakers hold up fine with relatively straightforward TV shows, but when pushed with a pumping Hollywood action scene and/or dense score you start to notice a distinct lack of bass, which in turn leaves the midrange sounding over-burdened and thin.

Panasonic TX-65CZ952

I'm talking average rather than bad here, to be clear, but this is one area where LG, with its Harman Kardon audio systems, steals a march on the 65CZ952.

Value

If LG's recently tested 65EF950V steals a march over the 65CZ952 with its audio, it rolls over it in a tank when it comes to value. After all, remarkably LG's 65EF950V 4K OLED model is, at the time of writing, available online for just under £4,000.

This is literally half the price of the 65CZ952.

Also the 65CZ952 is as much as five times as expensive as some highly specified 65-inch 4K UHD LCD TVs out there.

The opposite side of the coin is that the 65CZ952 is an incredible television that, for me, produces the best all-round picture quality I've ever seen.

How much the 65CZ952's unprecedented performance is worth to you is ultimately something only you and your bank balance can decide.

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.