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Review: Panasonic TX-50CX700

Introduction and features

This 50-inch edge LED-backlight LCD TV is all about the three 'F's'; Firefox, Freeview Play and 4K.

Selling for around £1,200 at the time of writing the TX-50CX700 is comfortably in the mid-range of Panasonic's line-up for 2015, though expect major discounts down the line.

Unlike most Panasonic TVs further down the food chain, the TX-50CX700 looks great.

A dark grey metallic bezel measuring just 7mm on three sides and 11mm at the bottom gives it a razor-sharp appearance, while the panel itself is only 46mm slim. Meanwhile, the two feet that grip the TV from the extreme edges are barely there at all, which helps create a super-slim, floating look.

Happily, there's no use of the transparent plastic or light-up logos that other TV brands seems to love. The TX-50CX700 looks so big on those two tiny feet that it ought to be unsteady, though in practice it's no less solidly held than any large TV.

It's an awesome effect, but, no, there is no pointless curve. Get over it.

Features

4K isn't just about pixels. That's clearly the message from Panasonic on the TX-50CX700 and beyond.

Aside from its 3840x2160 resolution, probably the most significant innovation on the TX-50CX700 is its Super Bright LED panel, which isn't used further down the Panasonic TV ranges for 2015. As the name suggest, these are all about producing more brightness, but without using any more energy.

Other image improvers onboard include 4K Studio Master Drive processing and the 800Hz motion-suppressing tech used, though it's a backlight-blinking technology (i.e. an illusion) rather than a natively super-fast panel.

However, probably just as big a reason to buy the TX-50CX700 as 4K and picture boosters is the presence of Freeview Play.

Well, it would be, but that particular innovation hadn't quite gone live at the time of writing, so I was unable to test it. It promises to be something special, with the Firefox OS on the TX-50CX700 already studded with a Freeview Play Catch-Up TV app in its core menu structure, though sadly there's no sign of Freetime, which would have made a nice stop-gap feature.

Apps

Although Firefox OS is all about streamlining and customisation, there is a fairly deep well of apps to choose from.

The Firefox OS user interface contains the likes of Netflix, Amazon Instant, YouTube, AccuWeather and the BBC iPlayer by default, while Panasonic's online shop contains dozens more including Twitter, Facebook, Dailymotion, BIGFlix, TuneIn, Deezer, Eurosport Player, Picasa, BharatMatrimony, Al Jazeera, CNBC Real-Time, Meteonews TV, Withings, Bild, CineTrailer, Rovi Guide and HappyTrips.

Where's ITV Player, 4OD and Demand Five?

It's irrelevant; the TX-50CX700 will soon have Freeview Play, which integrates all catch-up TV apps available in the UK into the core Firefox OS experience by default. Consequently, they'll all soon become an app accessed by the remote's main Home button.

Ins and outs

You'll not want for much on the TX-50CX700, though its ins and outs aren't 100% generous.

Positioned on the TVs left hand side as you look directly at the screen, a side panel includes an impressive three USB slots alongside a HDMI input, a headphones jack, a Common Interface slot and an SD card slot.

The latter has fallen out of fashion of late, with Panasonic itself dropping this feature a couple of years ago on all of its TVs, but photographers will love it.

There are also some outward facing inputs on the back of the TX-50CX700 (namely a RGB Scart and a set of component video inputs), though the most important are reserved for underneath; pointing downwards are two HDMI inputs, a RF input for the Freeview HD tuner, an Ethernet LAN slot (though the TX-50CX700 also has Wi-Fi), and an optical digital audio output.

It's good to have the SD Card slot back, but we'd swap it in an instant for a fourth HDMI input. For a main living room TV like the TX-50CX700, a fourth HDMI input is a must.

Also available

Also in CX700 Series is the 40-inch Panasonic TX-40CX700B and larger 55-inch TX-55CX700B and 65-inch TX-65CX700B models.

Note that while most of these models are Edge LED TVs, the TX-55CX700B has a Direct LED panel, so can indulge in a bit of local dimming. That's not an inconsequential upgrade; if you spot the TX-55CX700B for a price close to the TX-50CX700B, go for it.

Picture quality

The finest characteristics of the TX-50CX700's images are their pure, clean, spotless look.

Without a hint of processing artefacts even when there's some serious stuff going on – whether that be motion compensation, frame interpolation or vicious upscaling from standard definition – the TX-50CX700 aways dishes-out a compellingly clean image.

With Marco Polo from 4K Netflix playing, the TX-50CX700 provides exceptional contrast; a shot of Polo in a prison cell deep in the 'pleasure dome' reveals fine shadow detailing and mostly convincing black, while another sequence in the desert shows-up stunning brightness and peak whites in the vast sky.

It's an involving image that always has lots of depth.

When the going gets quick, the TX-50CX700's panel natively does reasonably well, with little distracting motion blur visible, though the 4K detail does take a noticeable hit.

The TV's Intelligent Frame Creation mode, if kept on its mid-strength setting, brings back a smooth, fluid picture and suppresses film judder well, though that 4K detail doesn't fully return. Some hate the realism such frame interpolation brings. Personally, I like it if it's cleanly done, and on the TX-50CX700, it's spotless.

4K is all about realism, and in that regard the IFC helps, though arguably it's too instrumental.

While the Cinema setting on Panasonic TVs has long been a favourite, the use of the Super Bright Panel means that the slightly more accurate True Cinema preset is now the best. Bolstered by an extra dose of brightness, and with those black levels in the bag, colours are spot-on, luscious though natural.

I've said that many times about various incarnations of LED technology, but this time the TX-50CX700 seems uniquely accurate.

With no sign of any structure of the LEDs along the edge, and certainly no light leakage or blotching, Panasonic's decision to abandon IPS LED panels seems like good one. While those struggled in recent years with viewing angles, the TX-50CX700 can be watched from the wings without any colour or contrast draining.

You might suppose that the TX-50CX700 – and any 4K TV, but especially a large screen like the TX-50CX700 – would struggle with standard definition TV channels and DVDs. The TX-50CX700 doesn't offer a flawlessly upscaled image, for sure, but a broadcast of Question Time on BBC 2 is clean and colourful.

Soft, yes, but never noisy. And that's quite some achievement on a TV as big as this.

The TX-50CX700 also has a 3D mode, though my review sample (and, indeed, the boxed product itself) did not have any active shutter 3D glasses with it, so I couldn't test this. No mater – the TX-50CX700 is already able to offer one of the finest mid-range LED TV images so far.

Usability, sound quality & value

From a user point of view, smart TV has thus far been a huge failure.

Every year or so for the past six or seven we've seen TV manufacturers bring forth their latest attempt, usually to an apathetic response. That all changes with Panasonic's employment of a Firefox OS for 2015.

It may not mean a smart packed with content – it can't, for instance, match Android TV's access to the Google Play Store et al – but it does mean a TV that, for once, presents a joined-up user interface.

The Firefox OS – officially called my Home Screen 2.0 by Panasonic – is exceptionally well designed.

Minimalist yet functional, and very colourful, it abandons the habit among smart TV platform designers of having one major hub page, and instead relies on carousels of icons that allow live TV to continue playing underneath. It's really easy to use and customise.

Press the home button and you instantly get three icons appearing in the middle of the screen; Live TV, Apps, and Devices. Crucially, you can add whatever you want to those three with just a couple of touches of the remote.

In under a minute I had shortcuts up there for BBC1, a Blu-ray player connected to HDMI, the Netflix app, and the BBC iPlayer.

There are though two slight downsides to Firefox OS, aside form the lack of content.

The first is that the TV's central menus for tweaking sound, picture, etc, remain separate (though they're smoother to use than in previous years). The second is the Info Pane, a feature that only comes to life if you depress the Home button for a few seconds.

It puts arrows on each of the four sides of the screen, giving one-touch access to things that really don't need such a treatment. The transparent digital TV channel roster is good, admittedly, but the other three – drop-downs for weather, notifications (of what we don't know – it's always empty) and a recommended section (that rather bizarrely offers thumbnails of random videos from YouTube and on the Viewster app).

Info Pane is worth skipping, though I'm pretty sure 90% of users of the TX-50CX700 will never once notice it, apart from by accident.

Happily, the Firefox OS is powered by a quad core processor, which makes everything speedy and a joy to operate. Ditto the remote control, which apart from the rather too easy-to-access placement of a Netflix shortcut (which I engaged by mistake about six times) is fantastically simple to use.

However, there was a couple of flies in the ointment during my review.

Oddly for a Firefox OS TV, the web browser is poor. Let's put that in perspective; we have never seen a good web browser on a TV. However, the Firefox effort changes nothing, which was slightly unexpected.

Though the TX-50CX700 claims to play everything from AVI, MKV and MP4 to WMV, FLV and 3GPP video files – as well as almost every audio file format you've ever heard of – the USB sticks we inserted into its side were consistently not recognised, and never once appeared on the Devices list.

However, I did manage to get an SD Card to engage, from which I managed to play a vast swathe of video files including 4K video files in the MP4 and TS format, though not uncompressed MOV.

As a bonus, the TX-50CX700 can record from Freeview HD channels to a USB stick or HDD, and trade files back and forth via the Swipe & Share feature on a phone or tablet installed with Panasonic TV Remote 2 app for iOS or Android.

Swipe & Share also lets you second-screen live TV and recorded TV from the TX-50CX700.

Sound quality

The TX-50CX700 does have two 20W speakers, and though they're nothing special, provide more than enough punch for everyday TV watching.

Forget the quasi-surround mode – it doesn't work and only serves to increase the volume of background noise in soundtracks – instead head for the music preset, which is easily the most detailed.

Vocals sounds fine whatever the preset used, and the volume can be pushed up to near maximum levels without much distortion. However, as usual the TX-50CX700's speakers lack the mid-range required for movies, so I would recommend using its optical digital output and hooking-up a home cinema or a sound-bar.

It's there for a reason.

Value

While the TX-50CX700 is good value overall, I'm sure almost all potential buyers would be more easily swayed by a fourth HDMI input, especially considering that almost all of this TV's competitors will have just that.

Still, that's a small criticism for a TV as fully-featured as the TX-50CX700.

Verdict

A good value mid-ranger with lots of new features and an advanced picture quality, the arrival of the TX-50CX700 will help push Panasonic up the TV food-chain once again.

4K and Full HD pictures are pin-sharp and spotless, while the colourful and brilliantly designed Firefox OS is all about customisation and ease of use.

Does that make-up for a slight lack of content? Perhaps not, though Freeview Play – when it arrives later this summer – ought to help make the TX-50CX700 a real standout telly. It's a shame the Freeview Play is delayed, but from what I can tell it will be nicely integrated into the core Firefox OS.

We liked

With an extra dose of brightness, and with great black levels and spot-on colours, the TX-50CX700 makes a fine canvas for 4K to impress.

The Firefox OS is impressively simple, well designed and easy to use, with customisation options making it a smart TV standout. Physically, build quality and design are exceptional, with the TX-50CX700's two tiny feet an engineering masterpiece.

The appearance of an SD Card slot on the side-panel is good news for photographer who want a quick slideshow rather than getting tied-up in Wi-Fi home networking for the sake of it.

We disliked

Fitting a centrepiece TV like the TX-50CX700 with only three HDMI inputs is stingy indeed.

Some will miss the chance to swivel the TV slightly, which those otherwise impressive fixed feet do not allow.

I also had an issue with USB sticks not being recognised, while other gripes include the provision of a poor quality web browser, so-so upscaling for standard definition, and the delay of Freeview Play.

Verdict

Making the most of its pixels and upscaling well from Blu-ray, the TX-50CX700 is bolstered by an extra dose of brightness, and convincing black levels and luscious, though natural colours that are as accurate as any I've seen.

However, a fourth HDMI is missing in action, and there's a question mark over its USB slots.

It's not often I can say this about a Panasonic TV, but the TX-50CX700 enjoys a ground-breaking design; not so much in its super-slim bezel and all-round professional-look, but in the design of its two barely-there, razor-sharp feet.

That's a no inconsiderate achievement that helps make the TX-50CX700 a good value all-rounder ripe for the 4K future.

Also consider

A similar effort to the TX-50CX700 is the Samsung UE55JU6400, which is five inches larger but doesn't have a 3D mode. However, a 50-inch version, the UE50JU6400, is also available.

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