Panasonic hasn’t just focused on delivering yet another round of improvement to its typically stellar ‘made in Hollywood’ picture quality for its new flagship OLED TV for 2024. The 65-inch 65Z95A also sees the brand replacing its trusty old My Home Screen smart platform with Amazon’s Fire TV interface (backed up in the UK by the new Freely service), and is going to be at the vanguard of a long-hoped-for return to the US TV market by Panasonic after an eight year absence.
That’s a lot of stuff for the 65Z95A to have to deal with - but happily it rises to the challenge in imperious fashion.
Picture quality
Despite its TVs not having been sold in the US for the best part of a decade, Panasonic’s flagship OLED models have long been all about Hollywood. They use processing that draws on input gleaned from genuine movie industry creatives through Panasonic’s Hollywood Laboratory. They’re tuned by renowned Hollywood colourist Stefan Sonnenfeld. And they’re deemed capable of delivering pictures so accurate that they’re used in many Hollywood mastering studios as reference ‘big screen’ displays.
The 65Z95A retains the brightness-enhancing heat sink hardware Panasonic has been working with for way longer than any of its OLED rivals, and backs it up with the second generation of WRGB OLED technology’s Micro Lens Array (MLA) technology. This places tiny lenses behind the screen to help more of the light produced by an OLED panel’s self-emitting pixels emerge from the screen.
The 65Z95A’s new brightness boosting features are unlocked by an improved generation of Panasonic’s HCX AI processor to such an extent that the TV can deliver a measured peak light output on a 5% HDR window of 1700 nits, or 1400 nits on a 10% window. This puts it at a similar level of brightness to LG’s G4 TVs - though I’d say that subjectively the Panasonic typically looks a little more intense.
This is especially true with the TV’s Cinema and Normal picture modes, despite both presets also retaining a sense of balance, insight and restraint that similar modes on other TVs just can’t match. I’m not saying these two bold modes on the 65Z95A are totally ‘accurate’ to Hollywood mastering standards; they’re not. But that doesn’t stop them from being incredibly watchable.
Of course, though, if absolute accuracy is what you crave, then you can have that too. The 65Z95A’s filmmaker mode gets astonishingly close out of the box to the sort of accuracy most TVs would struggle to deliver even after a comprehensive calibration.
The amount of detail the 65Z95A’s pictures contain is breathtaking - and I’m not just talking about how sharp everything looks. The panel’s control of light is out of this world for starters, delivering degrees of subtlety right across its luminance range - though especially in dark scenes - that are unlike anything I’ve seen on any other TV. Bar, perhaps, Sony’s A95L Quantum Dot OLEDs from 2023. Though even those TVs can’t combine their finesse with quite the same levels of punch and brightness the 65Z95A manages.
Handling ‘near black’ picture information is extremely hard for OLED technology, despite its general, much-loved black level prowess. The 65Z95A, though, handles the subtlest of shadow details and brightness changes with peerless precision. This means that as well as dark scenes looking as detailed and three-dimensional as bright ones, there’s also remarkably little evidence of the blocking or fizzing noise in very dark areas that OLED TVs can sometimes suffer with.
At the other end of the light spectrum, the set’s fantastically bold bright highlights are delivered with exceptionally little ‘clipping’ (loss of subtle shading detail) in many of the set’s presets. In fact, I’m not sure I’ve seen the bright sun that sits beside Neverland as a kidnapped Peter ‘sails’ towards it in the aggressive 4K Blu-ray master of Pan rendered with as much control and detail as it is by the 65Z95A.
This is achieved with a basic HDR10 transfer, too, highlighting the outstanding nature of the 65Z95A’s dynamic tone mapping system if you choose to use it. Though unlike many rival HDR TVs, pictures still look vibrant and punchy even if you’re a purist who wants to turn dynamic tone mapping off.
While the 65Z95A works brilliantly with the relatively basic HDR10 HDR format, it’s also capable of handling both of the Dolby Vision and HDR10+ formats, which add extra scene-by-scene picture information to the HDR video stream. Many rival brands, most notably Sony, Samsung and LG, only support one or other of these two formats, but the 65Z95A’s universal approach means it will get the best out of any source you feed it.
The 65Z95A’s epic picture prowess extends to its colour performance. It’s profoundly good at preserving balance and relativity between its colour tones, despite also being able to render a spectacularly wide range of tones thanks to its combination of brightness, immaculate black levels and powerful picture processing. All of which contributes further to the screen’s wondrous sense of detail and depth.
With Panasonic equipping the 65Z95A with a reasonably effective anti-reflection filter and having now fixed the little motion stutter problem its OLED TVs used to suffer from, the only residual issue I could find with its pictures, really, was the occasional trace of colour banding with some HDR scenes. The moments where this appeared are down compared with previous Panasonic OLED flagships, though (as you’d hope given that it’s one of the claimed focuses of the latest HCX Pro AI processing system), and while it would be great to find Panasonic completely sort this issue one day, it’s an absolutely puny moan in the context of the colossal amounts the 65Z95A’s pictures get gloriously right.
Sound quality
The 65Z95A carries the latest version of the multi-channel ‘360-degree’ speaker system Panasonic has long equipped its flagship TVs with. Designed to deliver a real Dolby Atmos experience without needing an external audio set up, the 65Z95A’s speaker configuration includes integrated upward (for Dolby Atmos’s overhead channels) and side-firing speakers, a subwoofer, as well as a substantial built-in soundbar running along the bottom of the screen delivering forward facing left, right and centre channel sounds. In fact, in a unique Panasonic feature you can actually get the forward speakers to steer their sound to wherever you’re seated in the room.
As you would hope, the 65Z95A’s 360-degree sound is a substantial cut above your average TV audio system. For starters, its sound stage is impressively large, spreading far beyond the physical boundaries of the TV, and includes a sense of verticality capable of creating an engaging layering effect for musical score work as well as placing specific effects at just the right height to match their onscreen placement.
Vocals remain correctly locked to the screen, though, rather than seeping into any of the other channels, while the forward impact of the sound produced by the integrated soundbar is very welcome - especially when it comes to vocal clarity and impact sounds such as punches and gunshots.
The powerful, well-spread sound is handily underpinned by a beefy, willing-to-get-involved bass presence that handles its impressively deep frequencies even at high volumes without succumbing to significant distortions.
Bass can sound a little rough and ready compared with the rest of the sound, though, and occasionally voices sound as if they’re coming from the speaker below the screen rather than marrying up with the onscreen action. Overall, though, the 65Z95A gives us comfortably the most satisfying 360-degree sound system Panasonic has delivered to date.
Living with
The 65Z95A is an imposing chunk of hardware - especially as it’s one of the deepest OLED TVs around thanks to its need to accommodate that Dolby Atmos multi-channel speaker system. The screen is beautifully finished, though, and the build quality is excellent from back to front and top to bottom.
Having got used for countless years to seeing Panasonic TVs running the brand’s own My Home Screen smart system, it initially comes as a surprise to see Amazon’s Fire TV on the 65Z95A. It doesn’t take long, though, before you start to embrace the new partnership. Panasonic has clearly worked hard to ensure that Fire TV integrates seamlessly with its long-established picture and sound menus and features, resulting in a harmonious, comprehensive and pleasingly familiar (to anyone who’s ever had a Fire TV device or Prime Video subscription) smart experience that feels as if the two brands have been working together for years.
The only negative thing about the 65Z95A’s new smart set up is that it can run a touch sluggishly, but that seems a fairly small price to pay for all the positives the Fire TV connection brings.
The 65Z95A is also getting the new Freely service later in the year, which allows you to live stream all BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5-related UK channels, rather than having to watch these over the aerial. Complete with all the navigation advantages associated with streaming. I’ve seen Freely working on other TVs and found it to be an impressively stable and high-quality alternative to traditional broadcasting.
Other excellent convenience features include an impressively thought through and wide-ranging array of picture presets, the ability to automatically adapt the way pictures look to your room environment, and excellent gaming support across two of its four HDMI ports that includes playback of 144Hz frame rates and variable refresh rates. There’s a dedicated gaming onscreen menu system, too, giving you detailed information on the signal your gaming device is delivering, and offering quick access to a few handy gaming aids.
Conclusion
The 65Z95A’s switch to the globally recognised Fire TV has been beautifully realised, while the gorgeously immersive pictures we - and the filmmaking world - have come to expect from Panasonic’s flagship OLED models have got even better. Add to the mix a much-improved 360-degree audio system, and you’ve got arguably the world’s most fully rounded all-in-one home cinema TV.
Test samples
Wonka 4K Blu-ray
The vibrant colours of Wonka’s delirious sweet ‘performances’ and laboratory look incredible on the 65Z95A, thanks to a combination of brightness, contrast, vibrancy and colour control that has to be seen to be believed. But the deliberately drab parts of the film’s dismal city settings also look almost unreasonably beautiful too.
The Revenant 4K Blu-ray
Despite being the first 4K Blu-ray ever released, the film’s stunning landscapes and photography look as good as anything the format has ever delivered. Especially when played on the 65Z95A, which has the brightness, contrast and clarity to deliver every last gory detail of the film’s brutal 19th century American wilderness survival story with a level of insight I’ve never seen before.
Slow Horses Apple TV
Panasonic’s latest processing system includes a new focus on making streamed video look better. And if the fantastic clarity and dynamism with which the 65Z95A delivers Apple TV’s brilliant Slow Horses series is anything to go by, this new processing element works a treat.
Panasonic’s latest ‘Master OLED’ panel delivers the brand’s finest picture quality yet, as more brightness and better video processing are added to the already heady combination of perfect contrast, impeccably natural and subtle colours and peerless detail and three-dimensionality that have long been the lovable trademark of Panasonic’s loved-by-Hollywood flagship OLED TVs.
The pretty much flawless pictures are joined by a substantially improved version of Panasonic’s 360-degree built in sound system too, while the switch to a Fire TV operating system makes it a TV that’s truly equipped to take on the world.
The 65Z95A’s built-in 360-degree sound system reduces the need to add an external audio system. If you want to partner the glorious pictures with a full surround sound system, though, you might want to think about a true multi-component soundbar such as Samsung’s HW-Q900D.
Picture quality as good as the 65Z95A can give you deserves to be partnered with the best possible sources. So think about running it with one of Panasonic’s own UB9000 or UB820 4K Blu-ray players. You should also subscribe to the premium performance tiers of the any streaming services you’re interested in, too. And while the bass element of the 65Z95A’s built-in speaker system has been substantially beefed up from previous versions, we’d still recommend using the TV’s unusual facility to attach a subwoofer via the switchable headphone/bass line out port.
