Panasonic pulled big crowds at its CES booth in January with their CZ950 OLED, a 65-inch Ultra HD television that adds advanced processing to an LG-supplied OLED panel, with quite stunning results. Unfortunately, that set is only sold overseas for now (priced at €10,000 or about $11,000, no less), and it remains unclear when or if Panasonic will release it in the States.
In the meanwhile, though, the company recently filled out its line of traditional LED-backlit LCD sets with a couple of budget models in the guise of the CX400 and CX420 series, apparently identical but for a difference in the color of the bezel: black for the CX400 and silver for the CX420. Models are available at 50-, 55-, and 65-inch sizes for the CX400, or 55- and 65-inch for the CX420. These entry-level Ultra HDTVs join Panasonic’s current top-of-the-line CX850 and CX800 models, and the mid-line CX600 and CX650 series, and are designed more than anything to provide value.
Not surprisingly, then, the 65-inch TC-65CX400U we’re testing here lacks today’s most advanced UHDTV features and technology, notably the ability to accommodate content mastered with high dynamic range (HDR) and wide color gamut. On the other hand, it does arrive with a full-array direct LED backlight— which has the potential to offer better light uniformity across the screen versus the often streaky edge-lit backlight found in many of today’s ever-slimmer TVs. And then there’s this claim, found on the company’s Website, of outstanding out-of-box performance: “With the CX420 Series TV, there’s no need to spend time calibrating picture color gamut, white balance, or anything else. All TV default settings are pre-optimized for you. Just open the box, plug in the TV, and turn it on to enjoy an exceptional cinematic experience at home.” Given that the average consumer doesn’t even understand the terms color gamut or white balance, I’ve assumed that pitch to be targeted at the geeks among us, including brazen reviewers who might actually put that claim to the test. In other words: Game on!
Clever Compromises
Right away, I could tell the TC-65CX400U was unlike most other Panasonic sets I’ve reviewed. Details like the remote design and internal menus were not the usual Panny offerings, and this Panasonic doesn’t offer the Firefox operating system the company has been touting in its other 2015 models; it’s replaced here with a simplified smart TV offering. Sure enough, Panasonic confirmed that the CX400 and CX420 models are being outsourced from an unidentified supplier, though this hardly disqualifies any TV from performing well.
Like many other sets today, the TC-65CX400U’s industrial design is intended to evoke a picture hanging in space, with a relatively fine ½-inch matte black bezel around the top and sides that grows to ¾ inch on the bottom. At 2.9 inches deep, it’s not the most svelte set out there, but a direct LED backlight usually does add some depth compared with edge-lit models. The fancy pedestal found on many TVs is eschewed here in favor of a pair of solid brushedmetal leg stands affixed to the bottom. This has the advantage of being both stylish and more stable than some of the shaky plastic stands we’ve seen in low-end sets, but note that the legs are mounted at the far edges of the set. You’ll need a surface that is at minimum 55 inches wide to rest the TV.
Around back, you’ll find the typical complement of inputs, including a trio of 18-gigabit-per-second HDMI 2.0/HDCP 2.2 connections capable of handling up to 2160/60p signals, and one each USB 3.0 and 2.0 ports. Panasonic touts the full-array LED backlight, but the company confirmed there’s no local-dimming going on. The panel is a VA (vertical alignment) type, which doesn’t offer the exceptionally wide viewing angle of in IPS (in-plane switching) panel but should generally offer better blacks and contrast than an IPS panel in the absence of local dimming. A 178-degree viewing window is claimed here, and the off-axis image did hold up pretty well, though at an 8-foot distance, some very subtle loss of contrast was already detectable on a red field pattern starting at about 30 degrees off center.
There’s no 3D playback, and as noted, no HDR capabilities. The set uses the more common 8-bit panel rather than the 10-bits that will be provided on the best UHD sources (such as Ultra HD Blu-ray). A Color Space menu option allows selection of Standard (Rec. 709), Dynamic, and Custom. The TV’s native color space is 72 percent of the NTSC standard, which fully encompasses Rec. 709. (By comparison, DCI-P3, the new target for wide-gamut UHD content, is about 82 percent of NTSC.) In Custom mode, there’s a full color management system (CMS) that allows tweaking of hue, saturation, and brightness for all the primary and secondary colors. There are also two-point white balance adjustments for the grayscale. I found both only mildly effective (more on that below). There were no adjustments available for the backlight (not even a basic backlight level control) or for gamma. The TV’s Cinema and Custom presets are said to default to a gamma of 2.2, which is desirable for a wide range of existing content, while the Vivid, Standard, and Game modes default to 1.8.
The supplied remote lacks a backlight but has a logical and relatively uncomplicated layout that didn’t take long to learn. Pressing the power button results in a 7-second delay before a Panasonic logo finally lights up the screen, and then another annoying 13 seconds before the image from your active source appears. There’s a dedicated Netflix button above the nav cluster, though the internal streaming options are quite meager compared with much of the competition, with apps for only Netflix, Vudu, YouTube, Toon Goggles, Pandora, and Accuweather— Amazon Prime being the notable omission. Surprisingly, the Vudu app does not support that service’s 4K content offerings, though the apps for Netflix and YouTube (which require, respectively, onboard HEVC and VP9 decoding) will accommodate UHD streaming.
The TV’s sound, through its pair of small speakers, was average for a flat panel—which is to say nothing special. I confirmed that the set’s digital optical output will send either a PCM stereo signal to a soundbar or (with the audio output set to Raw) pass through a 5.1-channel Dolby Digital multichannel bitstream presented to its HDMI inputs from a cable box or Blu-ray player. DTS bitstreams presented from the source are output as PCM stereo.
Out of the Box
Among the TC-65CX400U’s several video presets, the out-of-box default Standard seting had a grayscale that leaned toward blue and showed Delta errors as high as 5.8 across the brightness range, and some color point errors about as high, notably in green. (A Delta E below 3 is considered indistinguishable from perfect.) Not ridiculously bad, but definitely a candidate for improvement. I ultimately setled on the Cinema mode as the best for dark-room viewing, but it too was far from perfect, with both the grayscale and color points noticeably deficient in blue—a fact that was evident in noticeably rosy fleshtones. Delta Es ran mostly in the 4 to 7 range for grayscale and right at seven for the blue color point.
Making just the basic adjustments to brightness, contrast, color, and tint that anyone could make with a test disc brought the peak white down to 38 foot-lamberts from this mode’s default 52 ft-L, and also brought the grayscale and color point errors more in line (to an average 4 for grayscale and a max of four (in blue) for color
points). Gamma measured a bit high at 2.35, though there was no way to tweak it directly. I’d call this good to very good for an inexpensive commercial TV with no instrument calibration, so we’ll give Panasonic the pass on their claim of accurate Rec. 709 out-of-box performance. But in making these adjustments, I did notice that the set clips video levels below black (video level 16) and above white (video levels above 235), which makes setting proper black level a tad tricky and leaves no headroom for occasional content with above-white information. Not a deal-breaker, but not the preferred approach.
My attempts to further improve the image were frustrated somewhat due to inconsistent behavior of the White Balance and CMS controls and a lack of granularity required to achieve fine-tuning. For example: Moving the Red Offset slider for white balance across its full range should show a gradual and subtle addition or subtraction of red to a dark gray box that displays 30 percent of peak white luminance. The control behaves normally up to a setting of 51, but moving one tick from 51 to 52 results in a quite noticeable boost of red tint and prevents tuning in between those levels. Ditto for moving the Blue hue in the CMS from 63 to 64, which radically shifted the color. Ultimately, there were only limited variations from the default settings, but I did get Delta Es to average around 3 across the set’s range for grayscale and to below 2.4 for the primary color points.
I also struggled to get a decently low black level out of the set without crushing shadow detail. The Cinema mode default Brightness setting left a lot of darker details invisible, but raising it for the proper transition out of black made the overall black level unacceptably high. Activating the Dynamic Luminance option in the menu resulted in a crushing of near black but restored some punch to the picture with most content.
There were several additional controls that I left as is or tuned to improve image quality. The Panasonic’s default Sharpness setting of 50 greatly exaggerated video noise and film grain and added highly noticeable edge enhancement; it was reset to 12. The Noise Reduction settings were progressively more effective in eliminating random noise and produced no detectable softening of edges, so it moved from the default Medium setting to Strong. MEMC, which uses frame interpolation to improve motion clarity of the native 120-hertz panel, worked effectively on motion test clips but added some degree of soap opera effect with 24-frame content even at its lowest setting, so I left it off. The picture format, which defaults at Wide (with about 10 percent overscan of the image), was best left at Just Scan, which provided pixelperfect edge-to-edge framing. This option was not available for broadcast content brought in from the set’s antenna input and ATSC tuner, which, incidentally, performed admirably in capturing all my local stations, including some I’d never seen before, though the onscreen channel list accessible from the remote lacks any program titles as I’ve seen with other sets.
Performance
Thus adjusted, the TC-65CX400U delivered mostly pristine and engaging pictures characterized by excellent color. Pixels may be a preposterously inane Adam Sandler vehicle about aliens who atack earth using oversized classic videogame characters as weapons, but it proved surprisingly amusing—with a few genuine laugh-out-loud moments—for a guy who grew up floating around late ’70s arcades. (There must be a reason it grossed $240 million in box office despite weak reviews.) Plot aside, it’s a stunningly bright and colorful movie (with all those game characters come to life) and perfect for showing off what this TV does well. From the punchy orange truck driven by home theater installer-turned-hero Sam Brenner (Sandler); to the natural green foliage and lawns at a park in London where the aliens make an atack; to the red, pastel-blue, orange, and pink Mini Coopers driven by Brenner and the Arcaders as they batle a yellow, glowing, pixelated Pac-Man on the streets of New York, every scene seemed to offer up another splendid bit of eye candy. In the final act, when Brenner and his cohorts find themselves batling to save Earth against a
bigger-than-life Donkey Kong, I noticed how the dark red erector-set ramps of the game nicely cast the blue-and-black Arcader uniforms into relief. Fleshtones were well delineated, something made obvious in an early scene depicting an emergency cabinet meeting where I could clearly make out differences in the tanned face of President Conner (Kevin James), the fairer skin of Lieutenant Colonel Van Paten (Michelle Monaghan), and the red-faced Admiral Porter (Brian Cox).
Scaling of 1080i and 1080p to the set’s native 3840 x 2160 grid was superb and artifact-free on this and other discs and broadcast content. (Aside from the clipping test mentioned earlier, the set passed our usual processing tests save a fail for chroma resolution, a not uncommon result). Critically, I was impressed by the Panasonic’s superb backlight uniformity, which was utterly even across the screen, absent any kind of distracting streaking in either the black bars or the active image area. White credits on a black background were crisp and largely free of haloing, and even the bouncing white Oppo screensaver logo, which moves randomly around a black screen and can be helpful in exposing backlight inconsistencies, was reproduced perfectly.
Not surprisingly, given the TC-65CX400U’s lack of any sophisticated zone dimming, black level was its weakness. My usual dark torture scenes (Harry Potter, Prometheus) lacked the kind of depth I see on my reference plasma, and for those scenes that mixed some brighter highlights with darker portions, getting any kind of real punch required flipping on the Dynamic Luminance setting at the sacrifice of some shadow detail. The scene in Oblivion in which Jack (Tom Cruise) explores the dimly lit abandoned library was an example; the image seemed terribly washed out and dull without Dynamic Luminance. Switching that on brought it to life, though it crushed some subtle shadow detail and did nothing to improve the ultimate black level, which was higher than I’d like to see, even for a budget set. I measured a not-so-great 0.016 ft-L black level for the TC-65CX400U. As a comparison, Vizio’s 65-inch M-series model from 2015, with 32 zones of active dimming, achieved a measured black level of 0.0007 ft-L in our test. Also, very dark scenes tended to produce a bit more random video noise than I’ve seen on some sets, even with the Noise Reduction control set to max.
Meanwhile, my viewing of most native 4K material revealed a stunningly crisp image. The best short features resident on our staff’s Sony 4K media server looked fabulous and engaging. One brief video about the making of a sports jacket from cork fabric showed beautiful scenes of a rolling green orchard and close-ups of the bark from which the cork is harvested, all looking totally natural and delivered with pristine detail. A tight shot of a backlit spool of golden brown yarn revealed a hazy layer of lint and fuzz at its top, with the very finest individual hairs glistening in the light. Scenes from the movie Chappie also looked natural and clean. On the other hand, a 4K download to the Sony’s hard drive of Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula turned out to be noticeably inferior to the 1080p Blu-ray Disc mastered from the same 4K scan. While it offered just a touch more detail in some scenes with close-ups of intricate ironwork or embroidery, it was darker and noisier, with more highly exposed film grain. There’s probably a lesson in there for all of us as we begin purchasing 4K content now on discs and streaming services. I also streamed some 4K nature clips from YouTube via the Panasonic’s onboard streaming platform, which looked as good as can be expected given the limitations of the delivery.
Conclusion
There’s much to like about Panasonic’s TC-65CX400U, including good out-of-box color, a crisp 4K screen supported by excellent scaling of regular HD content, and an exceptionally even direct-array backlight that’s a refreshing change from the streaky and inconsistent performance of super-thin edge-lit models, even some pricey ones. Unfortunately, without any local-dimming circuitry, it falls short in contrast performance, and its streaming platform lacks access to Amazon Prime (one of just three or four services now streaming UHD) and limits Vudu to 1080p maximum resolution. At press time, this 65-inch UHD set was being offered at an attractive $1,400 street price, but it faces a challenge in providing the kind of overall performance and value its near-priced competitors (notably Vizio’s well-regarded M-series) can deliver. That said, the TC-65CX400U was a consistently strong performer with all but the most demanding content, and even with my critical eye, gave me many hours of viewing pleasure.
VERDICT
Though it delivers solid entry-level performance, Panasonic’s CX400 faces more fully featured competition at its price.
SPECS
Dimensions (WxHxD, Inches): 57.4 x 33.34 x 2.9 (without legs); 57.4 x 35.1 x 12.2 (with legs) • Weight (Pounds): 53.1 (without legs); 54.2 (with legs) • Inputs: HDMI 2.0 with HDCP 2.2, 4K/60Hz compliant (3, 1 with Audio Return Channel); component video (1); composite video (1, shared with component video) • Outputs: Digital audio optical (1) • Other: Ethernet (1), USB 3.0 (1), USB 2.0 (1)