Panasonic Viera WT50

With TVs sporting cleverer software and shrinking bodies, manufacturers continually have to strive to tickle our fancy with ever more attractive sets. Panasonic hopes to stay ahead of the crowd with the 42, 47 and 55-inch Viera WT50 -- a slim and attractive LED TV that promises speedy performance from its powerful dual-core processor.

There's no word on availability or pricing yet, but don't expect it to come cheap. 

My thoughts are based on a fairly brief hands-on time at a conference centre in Hamburg, so stay tuned for the full review soon.

Design

Aesthetic values may not be the most important aspect of a TV, but if an object is going to dominate the wall space in your living room, you're unlikely to feel too positively towards an ugly square of nasty plastic.

Thankfully then, the WT50 is about as far removed from that as it's possible to be. The immediate thing you'll notice is the extremely slim bezel which, at only around 9mm, almost gives the screen the appearance of hovering in the air. It's not very deep either, which adds to the effect of it looking like a moving poster on your wall.

The TV is available in three sizes, so you can work out which one fits your room best -- and start thinking about how many organs you're going to need to sell on the black market to afford one. Panasonic hasn't revealed any details on pricing yet, but based on the £2,222 price tag of its other top-end TV, the VT30, we don't expect this new chap to come cheap.

The glowing Panasonic logo in the plastic strip at the foot of the screen is powered by magic.

The front of the WT50 is a single piece of glass that runs edge to edge, so there's no nasty plastic bezel creeping around the sides. It's an extremely stylish TV, although I'm not sure how well it would look in my flat among the discarded pizza boxes. If you've got a keen eye for minimalist design, it's probably going to be right up your proverbial.

On the bottom edge is a thin strip of clear perspex, which you'll either love or hate. I was personally quite fond of it, particularly the way the Panasonic logo glows through it.

Around the back of the TV you'll find a USB port to connect an external hard drive. This allows you to record your favourite shows, much in the same way you would with a Virgin Media box, only without the storage limitations.

Smart Viera

No TV is complete these days without ever more impressive software stuffed inside it. To that end, the WT50 is packing Panasonic's Smart Viera software that provides access to on-demand services such as BBC iPlayer, as well as running apps for YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and various other bits and bobs.

Panasonic has stuffed a dual-core processor inside the WT50, which it reckons will make apps run much more smoothly. In my brief hands-on time, navigating around the interface was straightforward and nippy. But I'm not convinced TVs really need such high-powered processors. A lot of the content that you access is web-based, so the TV itself isn't doing that much in the way of processing. Still, we'll see how it performs against other models in the full review.

The trackpad on the remote is a step up from navigating the sreen with arrow keys, but it's still pretty horrid to use.

Panasonic has played about with the remote as well, adding a trackpad at the top. It's the same sort of thing you'd find on your laptop, requiring you to slide your finger around to navigate a cursor over the screen. While trying to make your way around the interface using only arrow keys on a normal remote is horrible, I'm not keen on the trackpad option either.

For one thing, it's very small and it's designed to be used mostly by your thumb. It quickly feels uncomfortable, especially when you're having to do a lot of scrolling -- an issue that's compounded by its unresponsive operation.

Moving the cursor over the large tiles to select your app is fairly easy to do. But using it to scroll around an on-screen keyboard to input text into a URL bar was a nightmarish experience that I quickly gave up on. Panasonic was quick to point out that you can buy wireless keyboards for its TVs, so I'd highly recommend you grabbed one of those as well if you're planning on writing more than "This sucks".

Forget trying to type in a URL using the remote, lest you end up putting your foot through the TV in frustration.

Picture quality

Few would argue that the most crucial aspect of a TV is its picture quality -- after all, having apps is fine, but if they're shown on a grainy, low-resolution screen, you're not going to have fun.

Luckily then, the WT50 seems to offer a glorious experience. I only had a brief eyes-on with the TV in a somewhat dim room, where any screen would shine like burning magnesium, but it certainly seemed extremely bright. Contrast levels were superb, making high-definition videos look stunning.

It can handle full 1080p resolution video -- which you'd expect from a TV of this class -- so you can set your YouTube clips to their highest quality when playing back. When I fired up my favourite YouTube test clip, I was met with extremely rich colours and clarity. Based on my brief tests, I'd be very happy to kick back with a good film on the WT50, but I'll save the final conclusion on the image quality for the full review.

It's 3D-enabled and comes with two pairs of active glasses. I sadly wasn't able to test its 3D skills, so we'll come back to that later as well.

Outlook

The Panasonic WT50's addition of a dual-core processor may well be more of a gimmick than a necessity, and the trackpad remote is rather awkward. But its beautiful design and seemingly excellent image quality may well make up for it. Keep your eyes peeled for a full review soon.

Editors' note: Andrew Hoyle saw the Panasonic Viera WT50 at a Panasonic event in Hamburg. His flight and accommodation were paid for by Panasonic, but the company had no input into the content of this article.