Panasonic Viera TH-42PX80B review

Motion is smooth, and our test HD DVD Serenity, played on a Toshiba HD-EP35 at 1080/24p, looked delightfully judder free. The opening scene, with plenty of tracking shots of CGI-heavy landscapes, usually sorts the boy plasmas from the man plasmas. This screen is a hulking brute of a bloke, offering just about enough judder to remind us that we're watching a film and not a soap opera, and reducing the motion artefacts to the point where we could simply enjoy what we were watching. We also took the opportunity to watch a little more James Bond on Blu-ray. We were impressed by the sharpness of the picture and fantastic colour reproduction.

Gamers won't be disappointed either -- our test with a PS3 and the ludicrous Burnout Paradise managed to waste a pleasant amount of our working day. The graphics looked glorious and gameplay was as smooth as silk, with the TV presenting a judder-free game experience.

Freeview picture quality is striking. While MPEG-2 over DVB-T is never perfect on large-screen TVs, the PX80 does a good job of making everything look sharp and well defined. We've always preferred the way plasmas handle Freeview over LCD screens, and this one is no exception. We watched some of the student's favourite, Neighbours, and were pretty impressed by the picture quality overall. Some shows fare better than others, and some channels offer better picture quality, but the main broadcaster's channels all looked perfectly acceptable on the TV.

One of the flaws that used to affect plasma TVs quite badly was the solarisation you would sometimes get on bright objects. This is when the TV can't produce enough distinct shades of colour. This screen is much better than older ones, but we did notice some gradation steps when there was a bright object on a dark background, but it was only evident when there was a camera pan. All in all, a massive improvement.

Sound quality overall was good, but not exceptional. Watching movies yielded good results, dialogue was pretty clear, but at the cost of any low-end bass. General TV viewing was fine, as we have much lower expectations for the sound quality of EastEnders than we do with a movie.

We mentioned earlier that the Panasonic tries to set itself up in a way appropriate for its location. Although this makes some difference, we did think the default brightness setting was still a little too high for most viewing environments.

Conclusion
The Panasonic Viera TH-42PX80B is an excellent choice at this price -- if offers fantastic picture quality, deep blacks and a simple and intuitive experience, with no fancy gimmicks or complicated setup procedure.

Edited by Jason Jenkins
Additional editing by Nick Hide