Panasonic TC-P42S2I’ve owned this for 3 days now, and wanted to wait until I fully tested it to write a review. After seeing how it performs with videogames, blu-ray movies and basic cable, I feel I know the television enough to offer my thoughts.
Picture quality: Incredible. Blacks are as deep as the bezel surrounding the TV. Colors are bold – everything you’d expect from a top of the line plasma. I own a 62″ DLP, a 26″ LCD, a 50″ panasonic 720p plasma and this plasma, and the plasmas are the only sets that really “pop.” This model is head and shoulders above even the 50″ 3-year-old model I own.
Video game play: There’s a game mode, which bumps up the brightness and sharpness. It’s great for PS3 games. I’ve played Demon’s Souls and Wolfenstein on it so far, and both look amazing. The system touts “1080 lines of moving picture resolution” to help with motion blur. Honestly, I never felt plasmas had an issue with motion blur to begin with, so I’m not sure how much of a difference this feature is making, but from what I understand in doing research it helps to have it.
Cable: HD looks good – even the reds aren’t blown out. Basic cable is standard definition – a thing on it’s way out anyway, lol.
Aesthetics/connections: The TV is very sharp looking, and the anti-glare feature on the S model (as opposed to the U model) actually makes a difference. I rolled my eyes when I read the feature, but I’m watching it in the daytime in a well-lit room and the glare is really minimal. The only minor dissapointment is no VGA connection, but I’ll figure out a way around that. Was going to use VGA to hook up my 360 (since I’m using computer speakers for audio at the moment), but will go the component route now. By the way, a TON of controls and an HDMI input are on the side of the tv, making it very easy to get to.
Burn-in/image retention/ghosting: Haven’t experienced any signs of even ghosting yet. Had my game on pause for a few minutes a couple times to test it.
Audio: Haven’t tested the TV’s speakers, just using an external set of logitech speakers with subwoofer at the moment.
Overall: For the price, I highly recommend the set. Like I said, I own 4 televisions of 3 different technologies and this one shows off the best picture. I have a collection of almost 800 blu-rays, and stay up to date on all the high-def news, etc… I do extensive research before purchasing a product, and actually went into this thinking I was going to give in and get an LED. I don’t want to get into an LED vs. Plasma thing here, but the LED’s are simply LCD with different lighting, and it brings all the inherent LCD problems with it. They make catch your eye in the store, but once you get home and get into your environment, it’s a different story. That said, this plasma in game mode gets the picture as close to LED as I’ve seen but with much better blacks.
Reviewed by : Joshua Pearl, Mar 13, 2010
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