Features and specifications are subject to change without prior notification. Internet connection is required with smart functions. The LZ980’s lengthy onscreen menus underline its flexibility. Naturally, there are plenty of in-depth tools that calibrators can use to optimise the accuracy, but there is also a remarkable number of options available designed to increase colour intensity, motion smoothness, sharpness and so on no matter what source you’re watching.

I’d also recommend leaving Panasonic’s Intelligent Frame Creation processing turned off for most types of content. The ‘mid’ and ‘max’ settings cause noticeable artefacts.We’re definitely not saying here you should merrily go around turning everything up to 11, of course. But we do appreciate a set that cares about trying to be all things to all men. Especially when it tries to simplify this process with an excellently wide-ranging set of picture presets. Energy consumption XYZ kWh per year, based on the power consumption of the television operating 4 hours per day for 365 days. The actual energy consumption will depend on how the television is used. This feature highlights, too, the LZ980’s exceptional spread of HDR support. While many TV brands still only support either Dolby Vision or HDR10+, all of Panasonic’s OLED TVs support both. So no matter what sources you play, you can rest assured that the LZ980 will always be able to receive the best version available. Percentage Luminance drop at 35 degree horizontal angle from the centre of the screen with 50% white output However, the LZ980 can get pleasingly loud without suffering distortion or harshness, and while the sound might not project forward, its soundstage spreads impressively far to the left and right. There’s even a vague sense of height to the sound ‘wall’ with Atmos sources too, and vocals are impressively clear and convincing even during dense action scene moments.

Percentage luminance drop at 20 degree vertical angle from the centre of the screen with 50% white output Max light output HDR (high dynamic range) while displaying a live scene and white square taking up 60% of the screen (measured in Nits)

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Languages (English, German, French, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish, Croatian, Czech, Dutch, Greek, Bulgarian, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Turkish, Lithuanian, Latvian, Estonian, Ukrainian, Serbian, Arabic, Persian, Hebrew, Gaelic, Macedonian, Kazakh, Thai, Belarussian) Percentage luminance drop at 20 degree vertical angle from the centre of the screen with 100% white output The LZ980 turns out to be a seriously good gaming screen too. Its immaculate light and colour control joins with Panasonic’s new-found sharpness and improved motion performance to play beautifully with even the most challenging and cutting-edge game graphics. The TV is pleasingly responsive, too, in its Game mode, getting input lag down to a very respectable if not world-beating 14.2ms with 1080p 60Hz content.

Shifting attention to the 55DX650's rear, the set sports a solid rather than spectacular set of connections. Three HDMIs will provide the main port of call for most external sources – although you should note that only two of these HDMIs are equipped with HDCP 2.2 anti-piracy protocols, and the capability to play 4K at up to 60 frames a second. ConnectivityFile formats that are not supported by your Network Contents server (DLNA compatible server, etc.) cannot be played. While it might not boast the sort of fancy, multi-channel speaker systems that are suddenly all the rage on premium TVs these days, the LZ980 still sounds pretty good. Better, actually, than some of those supposedly more sonically advanced models. It doesn’t harm the sense of clarity and detail, either, that the LZ980 delivers better motion performance than any previous Panasonic OLED TV generation. This is true regardless of whether you prefer to ‘go native’ without any image processing, or you call in Panasonic’s motion processing on its low setting to take the edge off the 24p judder.