Firefox, 4K and a smart design make Jamie Carter an instant fan of Panasonic's TX-50CX700
Many will expect a 50in 4K TV that sells for less than £1,000 to care little for design. Corners have to be cut somewhere. And yet Panasonic's £900 TX-50CX700 offers one of the most arresting style flourishes of all – two barely visible feet providing that ‘floating look’ that so many TV designers aim for but usually miss. This may be a budget TV, but it's a beauty.
If the design is surprisingly fresh, so too is the user interface. This is our first look at the much-hyped Firefox OS, a new approach to Smart TV employed by Panasonic to challenge Sony’s Android TV, LG’s WebOS and Samsung’s Tizen OS-driven Smart Hub. It’s officially called 'myHomeScreen 2.0 powered by Firefox’, but it bears zero resemblance to the first iteration of myHomeScreen, which featured on the brand's 2014 crop of TVs.
Firefox isn’t exactly a revelation, but it is highly impressive. It delivers a truly joined-up user interface where apps, inputs, external devices and catch-up TV are integrated and as one. It’s also powered by a quad core processor, and is swift to navigate.
Firefox is minimalism at its best; the hub screen consists of a transparent carousel of icons – no more than four onscreen at any one time – that fl oat over a live source. By default it contains large icons for Live TV, Apps, and Devices, but Firefox is all about customisation. Specific TV channels can be pinned to that carousel, as can individual sources, an app or two, or an input. For instance, it took me only a minute or so to get the carousel to host icons for BBC One, BBC iPlayer and Netflix.
There’s a further dimension to Firefox that’s something of an ‘easter egg’, only accessible if you hold down the remote’s Home key for a few seconds. However, it’s a largely fruitless hunt; this Info Pane page – the only visible remnant of the former myHomeScreen OS – does contain a useful list of Freeview HD channels if you scan to the left, but go anywhere else and you’re greeted with pointless weather info, a blank notifications panel and thumbnails of random web videos. The latter is fed by Viewster and YouTube, and is at best awkward, at worst irritating.
As well as being the entry-level for the Firefox OS, the TX-50CX700 will play host to another welcome new feature; Freeview Play, the rival YouView platform that integrates catch-up TV into the Freeview EPG via a scrollback function. It hadn't gone live at the time of writing, but should be there now.
Another slight disappointment about the Firefox OS is that picture settings remain completely separate, though they’ve also been streamlined and are easier to skip through, being displayed as one continuous list.
The TX-50CX700 also marks the level where Panasonic TVs begin to use the upgraded Super Bright LED panel, which is self-explanatory in its ambitions. High Dynamic Range support is, however, not offered. Panasonic's latest 4K-centric Studio Master Colour and Studio Master Drive picture processing tech is onboard.
Connections include built-in Wi-Fi, three USBs, an SD Card slot and a trio of HDMI inputs, all at the 2.0 specifi cation and off ering HDCP 2.2 support.
Pristine pixels
The TX-50CX700 makes the most of its eight million pixels, with the overriding impression one of clean, pristine pictures from anything Full HD and over. You might assume that the Super Bright panel, which lends more lustre to colour performance, would impact on black levels and increase LED light leakage, but the TX-50CX700 remains spotless and accurate throughout Grand Budapest Hotel on Blu-ray. Using the well-judged True Cinema picture preset as a base to calibrate, the animated opening credits showcase the TX-50CX700’s colour accuracy and blemish-free images, while during Gustav’s ring-around of Europe’s concierges the bold colours appear well saturated and the black suits of hotel staff contain plenty of shadow detail.
Motion handling is also impressive – to a point. As the Hotel Excelsior Palace’s car rushes into shot, there’s the expected loss of detail, but it's not disastrous. Activating Panasonic's Intelligent Frame Creation improves the situation, and helps to reduce film judder that's visible when watching Blu-ray discs. Such frame interpolation tech is routinely ignored by many home cinema enthusiasts, but it’s getting cleaner with every passing TV. Keep it on its low or even midstrength setting and it lends a pleasingly smooth and clean look.
Full HD pictures are crisp and that goes double for native 4K material. Marco Polo from 4K Netflix features close-ups in Khan’s pleasure dome that are delicately detailed, while the peak whites and sweeping colours of the Taklamakan desert’s big, blue skies are beguiling.
Although the TX-50CX700 is 3D-ready, no Active shutter 3D glasses are included in the box. Get some spex, and you'll find that Super Bright panel does its job again, making sure there’s no discernible drop in brightness with stereoscopic material. That said, the blue of Earth in Gravity on 3D Blu-ray looked ridiculously over-saturated. There were also a few minor crosstalk issues as the astronauts bounced around the outside of the International Space Station.
The 4K era is not forgiving. While Blu-ray discs on the TX-50CX700 are upscaled with ease, standard-definition sources are left looking exposed. The ‘ticking clock’ opening sequence of Back To The Future on DVD appeared soft and ill-defined, while a broadcast of The American President on ITV 4 contained a lot of mosquito noise around actors and all moving objects. However, the TX-50CX700 does present a cleaner picture than many 4K TVs from 2014, so progress is being made. Besides, even compressed HD broadcasts contain some visible artefacts, with solarisation of colour blocks common.
The TX-50CX700 also trades in 4K digital files; as well as supporting Netflix 4K and Amazon Instant 4K thanks to its HEVC decoder, both MP4 and TS files containing 3,840 x 2,160 pixel material played stably and with excellent detailing, though uncompressed 4K MOV files aren’t supported.
Watch TV or documentaries and the TX-50CX700 spits out clear, concise vocals from its two 10W speakers, and with no distortion at high volumes. However, the nuanced musical brilliance of Grand Budapest Hotel suffers from a distinct lack of mid-range body. Best head for the optical digital output and take everything to an AV amp and beyond.
Accommodating appeal
With superb colours, a welcome brightness boost and black levels that do just enough to convince, the TX-50CX700 makes a fine 4K canvas, while the presence of the easily customisable and impressively intuitive Firefox OS pushes Panasonic up the Smart TV pecking order. It may lack the stellar impact of high-end models, but its accommodating size and price will appeal to many.
Specifications
3D: Yes
ULTRA HD: Yes. 3,840 x 2,160
TUNER: Yes. Freeview HD
CONNECTIONS: 3 x HDMI; 3 x USB; SD Card;
RGB Scart; headphone jack; component video;
Ethernet; built-in Wi-Fi; optical digital audio
output; RF input
SOUND: 20W
BRIGHTNESS (CLAIMED): N/A
CONTRAST RATIO (CLAIMED): N/A
DIMENSIONS: 1,126(w) x 652(h) x 47(d)mm
WEIGHT: 23kg
FEATURES: myHomeScreen 2.0 powered by Firefox OS; Freeview Play (via update); HEVC codec 4K streaming support; Studio Master Colour; 4K Pure Direct; V-Audio Pro Surround; Voice Assistant; media playback via USB/DLNA/SD Card; Screen Mirroring; Panasonic TV Remote 2 iOS/Android app; Swipe & Share between phone/tablet and TV; native 4K digital file support (MP4 & TS formats)