Review: Panasonic TX-65EZW1004 (TX-65EZ1000) OLED TV

The Panasonic TX-65EZW1004 (in Belgium the TX-65EZ1000) is the successor of the CZ950 OLED TV that was released in 2015. Panasonic wants to bet high, as it did then; the EZW1004-series oled TVs should be a film studio monitor for consumers. The device carries a THX certificate, the Ultra HD Premium logo, and supports isf calibration. The soundbar comes from Technics and gives the device its distinctive look.

Panasonic TX-65EZW1004 – specifications

• What: Ultra HD OLED TV
• Screen size: 65 inches (165 cm), flat
• Connections: 4x HDMI (1xARC 2x v2.0a), 1x component / composite video, 1x stereo cinch, 1x optical digital out, 3x USB (1x 3.0), 1x headphones, 3x antenna, Bluetooth
• Extras: HDR10, HLG, WiFi (802.11ac) built in, My Home Screen 2.0, USB / DLNA media player, In house streaming, double DVB-T2 / C / S2, double CI + lock, voice control, HCX2 processor, Technics soundbar
• Dimensions: 1.452 x 918 x 330 mm (including foot)
• Weight: 27.0 kg (including foot)
• Consumption: 180 / 0.3 watt (Energy label B)
• Models Netherlands:
  • 65-inch (TX-65EZW1004): 6,999 euros
  • 77-inch (TX-77EZW1004): nnb
• Models Belgium:
  • 65-inch (TX-65EZ1000): 6,999 euros
  • 77-inch (TX-77EZ1000): nnb

Panasonic TX-65EZW1004 – design

A 65 inch screen can not seem small in any way, but you can aim for elegance. If you see this Panasonic for the first time, you wonder how you make that screen hover above the furniture. Where Sony chose to show some image, Panasonic also made sound visible. The surprisingly compact foot is perfectly hidden in and behind the soundbar. Only a slender neck seems to support the screen. The soundbar itself has a wedge-shaped cross-section which makes it look very slim from the front.

The screen has no frame, only a dark chrome-colored edge, and it’s just a few millimeters thin as we expect from an OLED screen. At the rear the lower part is thicker to make room for the electronics. The design will undoubtedly sow divisions, but we could certainly taste it.

The Panasonic TX-65EZW1004 (TX-65EZ1000) requires extra attention during set-up, since you have to guide the cable from the sounbar to the back and connect it before you screw everything.

Connections

The connections are on the left at the back of the device. On the side we find HDMI twice, one USB, an SD card reader, the three antenna connections, the headphone jack and the component / composite video input. Wireless network and bluetooth are also present, the latter only for keyboard and mouse, not for audio devices.

At the back we find two more HDMI, two times USB, the optical digital output and the network connection. All connections at the back are directed towards the wall, which will require extra attention during wall mounting. The EZ1000 is also supplied with a number of extra components for wall mounting, the wall bracket itself you have to purchase separately.

All connections can be hidden behind a panel, but that is only possible if you use the side connections. For those connections, Panasonic has also provided cable management, but more than two HDMI cables can probably not be eliminated.

Panasonic TX-65EZW1004 – ease of use

The TX-65EZW1004 (TX-65EZ1000) uses the former Firefox OS just like the other Panasonic models. Now Mozilla, the maker of the operating system has stopped development, Panasonic has decided to continue that task itself. For the time being, relatively little has changed compared to last year.

Remote control

The EZW1004 comes with two remote controls. The first is a large, more luxurious metal color version of the classic Panasonic remote. The keys are slightly smaller, but the classic, excellent layout has been retained. It is slightly more difficult to find keys, but the remote is equipped with illuminated keys (the light key is on the top right). This remote is also provided with the ‘My App’ button at the bottom left. You start an app that you choose with this button.

The smaller remote is a touchpad remote. He has a minimum selection of keys and a spacious touchpad. We were not very enthusiastic about the touchpad remotes in the past, because the touch pad turns out to be somewhat unreliable in many cases. A swipe gesture may as well result in two clicks as in a click. There is no clear improvement in that respect. But the arrow keys, which initially seemed a bit redundant, are therefore a useful alternative.

The Panasonic supports voice commands, for example to adjust volume, launch apps or record searches. Those who want to use it, however, must use the touchpad remote, or you install the Panasonic TV Remote 2 app on your smartphone.

Panasonic TX-65EZW1004 – features

Smart TV platform

The EZ1000 offers exactly the same possibilities as the EX780 , so we largely resume our text from the other review. The Panasonic smart TV system is fairly fast and responsive, thanks to a decent Quad Core processor. The settings menus appear on the left side of the screen. We continue to find the presentation somewhat difficult, especially because Panasonic offers so many possibilities in its menus and the subdivision here and there can be more logical. It will be very intimidating for most consumers. But for the enthusiasts a lot of keys are possible.

Smart functions

The Home screen initially shows only three options: live TV (for those using the internal tuners), Apps and Devices. However, you can ‘pin’ and organize various things so that they also appear on the Home Screen. Specific channels, external sources or favorite apps are available so quickly. Unfortunately, they all appear in a long line. Who therefore pins a lot of things, will have to scroll regularly. Apart from that detail, we find the Home interface handy.

Panasonic offers a full set of tuners (DVB-T2 / C / S2) and thanks to the twin tuner and dual CI + lock you can record a program with a USB hard disk while watching another one. That makes a good alternative for those who do not want to work with a set-top box for digital television. Thanks to ‘In House TV streaming’ you can also watch the TV channels on another TV set at home.

The Panasonic TX-65EZW1004 (TX-65EZ1000) is equipped with a good media player who knew what to do with almost all of our videos. He just choked on one of our 4K tests, and unfortunately does not play DTS audio in your video files. He plays the most important subtitle files (srt and sub). The audio player only reads tag information from MP3 files but is also complete, and also plays FLAC and ALAC in addition to the most common formats.

Panasonic TX-65EZW1004 – Image quality

Panasonic gives its OLED screens the term ‘Master HDR OLED’ and claims that the screen can display more blacks than competitors. That has indeed been a point of attention in the current (and previous) generation of OLED TVs . In addition, the screen is tuned by Hollywood specialists for optimum color rendering.

Main settings

Here you will find an explanation of the most important picture settings and tips for setting up your TV. With the basic settings we have come to the settings below for this TV.

Explanation of main settings;

• The THX-Cinema and THX-Bright room are the choice par excellence for those who absolutely do not want image enhancement.
• The True Cinema is almost identical to the THX Cinema preset. She uses a gamma of 2.4 and is therefore slightly darker, and better suited for a dark room.
• With the illuminance at 30 you should be a bit dark, choose 60 for a better experience in ambient light.
• If you can activate the light sensor, set the backlight to 70.
• Noise Reduction and MPEG remastering can best be activated if you start from a bad source (old DVDs or low quality YouTube).
• Intelligent Frame Creation: Off for purists, but the Middle stand gave a lot of extra detail and smooth images without obvious artefacts. We still recommend that you leave the minimum setting activated.
• Advanced, Contrast control can be set to Auto for a slight boost in contrast.
• Search in Picture, Picture settings, 16: 9 picture scan and set it ‘off’. This prevents the device from hiding a part of the edge of the image.
• For a slightly more edited image, but still very true to nature, select the Cinema setting. Set ‘Warmte Kleur’ ​​to Warm2, and take into account the above recommendations.

General image properties and image processing

Of course, this top model is equipped with the HCX2 processor for image processing. We can therefore be clear about the image processing: it is excellent. Important film and video frame rates are correctly detected and the deinterlacing is fine, so that you hardly see serrated edges. The noise reduction is good with random noise, but leaves a bit of compression noise, especially when you start from low-resolution images. The upscaling is excellent. The ‘resolution remastering’ setting may, in our opinion, accentuate slightly more detail, even in the highest position the effect is very small to almost invisible.

The motion sharpness is very good, and the combination of the OLED panel with Intelligent Frame Creation provides smooth and detailed images. The ‘Sharp Images’ setting is best left out, because the gain in detail in fast moving images is very small. Moreover, you lose some recollection, and above all, the image flickers slightly. Intelligent Frame Creation at maximum created a small amount of image artefacts, so we chose the middle mode. We recommend not to switch IFC off, but to leave it at minimum.

Enjoy the beautiful OLED black and the impressive contrast. The THX cinema preset does have a fairly low maximum brightness (about 100 nits). To give the image more power, you can set the Illuminance to a higher level, up to a maximum of 60. The EZ1000 shows very nice black detail, but fails to clearly outperform the performance of the Sony A1, for example. We find both devices very similar in this respect. This means that some black details are still lost here and there. You can opt to bring the brightness from 0 to 1 or 2, but we actually do not recommend that.

The THX Cinema calibration is of reference level. Almost perfect gray scale, color temperature and gamma value, combined with a perfect color range. Our general color test and the specific color test for skin colors scored a DeltaE value lower than one, a result that you normally only achieve with calibration. The EZW1004 (EZ1000) can be calibrated fully automatically with the help of Calman, and for real professionals it is even possible to load your own 3D LUT (lookup table). With that, Panasonic is really aiming for filmmakers who want a reference monitor.

It was striking that the panel struggles with uniformity with very low brightness. There are visible vertical stripes across the full width of the screen. That problem lies with the OLED panels themselves, because we saw this last year on some LG samples. The photo clearly illustrates the effect (overexposed for clarity, and the grain comes from the high ISO value of the photo).

In practice you see this effect very rarely, even in dark images, but whoever watches it can sometimes see it. This is also dependent on panel to panel, so other devices can be spared from this effect.

HDR

The Panasonic TX-65EZW1004 (TX-65EZ1000) supports HDR10 and HLG , but those who had hoped for Dolby Vision should disappoint. The peak luminance amounts to 685 nits in True Cinema mode, which is more typical of an OLED (perfectly in line with the Sony A1). For a completely white field, the luminance drops to 134 nits. The color range does not surprise: 96% DCI-P3 and 71% Rec2020 is exactly what we expect.

Also in HDR the calibration looks very good, top class even, at least if you choose True Cinema. The THX Cinema preset not only had a lower brightness (about the 450 nits) but was also a bit too dark over the entire gray gradient.

Reflections and viewing angles

The viewing angle is excellent, thanks to the OLED screen. The striking puper-red tint of the screen seems to have largely disappeared, but can still be clearly visible in bright reflections (which you still want to avoid). The screen also reflects reflections pretty well.

Gaming

In the normal image modes (dynamic, standard, natural, film) we measure an input lag of 115.1 ms, which is too much for decent gaming. In game mode (found in the image menu, options) the lag drops to 25.8 ms which is an excellent result. We also see these two results in HDR mode. Consolegamers can therefore choose this TV with peace of mind.

Panasonic TX-65EZW1004 – Audio quality

The Technics soundbar is a very nice asset to this television. Especially in the midtones the sound is very beautiful and rich. High tones sometimes sound a bit too sharp. The bass reproduction is decent and you can get a lot of volume, more than enough for a dramatic movie experience.

Even for music, we found this solution an excellent choice. The voice of Sinéad O ‘Connor sounds beautiful through the room, and classical music transports you effortlessly to the concert hall. Only for raw rock like Metallica the sound seemed less suitable. Choose in the sound settings for the music preset, which sounded the most pleasant.

Review equipment

For the lag measurement we use a Leo Bodnar Display lag meter. For all other measurements we rely on a Spectracal C6 colorimeter, Xrite i1 Pro spectrophotometer, an AVFoundry HDMI Pattern Generator, an HDFury Integral for HDR patterns and the Spectracal Calman for Business software.

Panasonic TX-65EZW1004 – Conclusion

The TX-65EZW1004 (TX-65EZ1000) is the showpiece of Panasonic. The OLED TV is equipped with the best image processor, comes with all kinds of certificates and a good sound solution. Certain known OLED obstacles remain. The device is a little less clear than hoped (albeit in line with most competitors), and it shows that an OLED screen sometimes struggles with uniformity.

But you will undoubtedly enjoy this Panasonic television. The calibration is without a doubt reference level and that means that you enjoy very natural images that are a real pleasure for the eye thanks to the excellent contrast. The Technics soundbar underlines the images with good sound, which makes a separate solution superfluous. The price for all that beauty, and the option to use it as a professional monitor, however, is not tender.