Panasonic TC-L32X1

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Panasonic TC-LX1 series

Suddenly, electronics store shelves seem flooded by iPod-friendly HDTVs. OK, not exactly flooded, but at least two contenders are busily competing to be the place where your precious iPod or iPhone nestles nightly, charging and serving up yummy music and videos onto a much bigger screen than iTunes or your favorite video conversion software ever intended. The Panasonic TC-LX1 wasn't quite as friendly as the JVC LT-P300 we tested earlier, although it's still mighty convenient. The Panasonic's picture quality also lagged behind, but its relatively low price could overcome those issues for iPod-centric buyers.

Editors' note, November 20, 2009: This rating on this review has been updated since its initial publication to reflect changes as a result of further comparison testing with more recent reviews of like-priced 32-inch LCDs. Its features score was raised from 7 to 8, to give credit for iPod compatibility, but performance was lowered to a 5, to reflect differences between comparison models. The review also initially reported that photos from an iPod cannot be viewed on this TV; that is incorrect, and the correction has been applied to the text.

Series note: We performed a hands-on evaluation of the 32-inch Panasonic TC-L32X1, but this review also applies to the other screen sizes in the series, namely the 26-inch Panasonic TC-L26X1 and the 37-inch Panasonic TC-L37X1. The three sizes have identical specs and should offer very similar performance.

Design
Editors' note: Many of the Design and Features elements are identical between the Panasonic TC-LX1 series and the Panasonic TC-P50X1 we reviewed earlier, so readers of the earlier review may experience some déjà vu when reading the same sections below.

Shiny black plastic covers the entire frame of the TC-LX1, which is relatively compact and rounded-off at the edges, down to the gently curved bottom edge of the panel. Speakers are invisible from the front--they're mounted along the bottom edge of the panel and face downward--and controls and inputs are tucked to either side, hidden from view. All told, the TV's styling is understated and probably won't draw many "ooohs" and "ahhhs" from guests. The matching oval stand does not swivel.

The external dock can fit numerous iPod models.

Unlike the iPod-friendly JVC LT-P300 series, which has an iPod dock integrated into the TV itself, the Panasonic TC-LX1 series relies on an external dock. We prefer the integrated version since it's cleaner and more convenient, but the external dock is functional enough (if you're wondering, no other iPod dock works with this set, just the included Panasonic one). Unlike the JVC, the dock on the Panasonic doesn't call for a separate dock adapter.

As soon as you insert the iPod into the Panasonic's dock it begins charging, and remains charging regardless of whether you access its content or whether the TV's power is turned on or off. Although the iPod menu pops up automatically when you insert a compatible 'Pod (as long as the "Plug and Play" TV menu item is selected), we would have liked to see a dedicated "iPod" button on the remote--you have to use the "Viera Tools" button instead.

A variety of music categories is available, and shuffle and repeat options are available for all of them.

To break down playable content, Panasonic's iPod menu system offers Music, Videos, and Podcasts categories. Music is categorized by playlists, artists, albums, songs, and audiobooks. We appreciated that you can page up or down long lists using the remote's soft keys, but we would have liked to see cover art supported. To shuffle or repeat songs you'll have to get to the "settings" menu--we preferred the JVC's method of offering shuffle in the main music menu. The Video section offers categories for movies, music videos, TV shows, video podcasts, and rentals, and the Podcasts section gets video and audio categories.

Video playback can also be expanded to fill the screen, but you cannot change aspect ratio.

Podcasts merit video and audio categories, and we appreciated the ability to page up and down long lists of titles.

Videos begin playing in the inset screen to the right of the menu structure, enabling you to browse during playback. You can expand the videos to full screen, but unfortunately aspect ratio control is not supported (see below). Dedicated transport keys on the remote let you pause, rewind, and fast-forward videos and music, and unlike the JVC's remote, Panasonic also offers forward and reverse skip.

You can also operate the iPod using its own control system, be it the touch screen of an iPhone/iPod Touch or the wcroll wheel of a conventional iPod. The only real reason is to access digital photos stored on the iPod, a function that's not available using the TV's on-screen iPod interface. To do so you'll have to engage "remote" mode from the main menu. You can initiate a slideshow as normal on the iPod and the images display on the big screen, and you then skip, pause and resume playback of the slideshow using the remote's keys. Running additional slideshows is again handled via the iPod's controls.

The remote is dominated by a trio of keys--Viera Link, Viera Tools, and SD Card--that arc above the central cursor control. Aside from Viera Tools for iPod access, each of the three provides direct access to functions we'll warrant most users won't access frequently, and the important-yet-tiny Menu key takes a secondary spot near the top of the clicker. We like the feel of the keys, and appreciate the size, color, and shape differentiation that helps us forget that none of the buttons is illuminated. The remote cannot control other devices via infrared (IR) commands, but it does allow some control of compatible HDMI devices connected to the TV via Viera Link (aka HDMI-CEC).

Panasonic tweaked its main TV menu design for 2009. The same yellow-on-blue color scheme is in evidence (albeit a lighter shade of blue) and navigation is basically unchanged, but the main menu actually has a couple of icons now, and edges throughout are a bit more rounded. Overall it's still one of the more straightforward, basic-looking menus on the mainstream market, but we still wish the company would see fit to include onscreen explanations of more-advanced items.

Features
iPod access is the LX1's main selling point, and the TV offered most of what we expect in an iPod dock. It's compatible with most newer iPods for music and videos, so check out the compatibility chart for full details. iPods not listed, mainly older ones, are not compatible, although our testing with an iPhone went well despite the fact that it's not on the chart and the company doesn't "officially" support it. You can't display other content (such as apps, the browser, or e-mail) from your iPhone or iPod Touch on the big screen, and some older iPods won't output video.

The Panasonic lacks a few of the JVC's tricks, however: the capability to sync the iPod with your PC via USB, replace a TV show's audio with that of the iPod, or adjust audiobook playback speed. We did appreciate that the Panasonic's digital audio output fed iPod audio to external devices, allowing you to play iPod music via the TV through your home theater system, for example. Most video and audio settings, aside from aspect ratio, can also be applied to iPod content.

In addition to its role as an iPod dock, the Panasonic TC-LX1 series is also a fully functional HDTV. It lacks the 1080p native resolution found on many step-up models, but we don't consider that a big deal, especially at this screen size. The Panasonic can neither accept nor display 1080p signals, so make sure your HDMI gear is set to 1080i or 720p before you connect it to the TC-LX1.

Panasonic's TV menu offers only basic control over the picture.

Compared with a lot of other name-brand HDTV makers, Panasonic offers far fewer picture adjustments. Yes, the basics are there, including Contrast, which the company was calling Picture for years. We liked that all four of the global picture modes are adjustable and that the fifth, called Custom, is independent per input. The company's Game mode is basically just a picture mode; it doesn't eliminate video processing like some other makers' Game modes.

Beyond the basics there are three color temperature presets, of which Warm came closest to the D65 standard, although unfortunately no further provisions for tweaking the grayscale exist. An A.I. picture function dynamically adjusts the backlight according to program content; a Color mgmnt. control affects color decoding; a pair of On/Off settings reduce video noise; and another allows you to set black level (the Light option exposed the correct amount of shadow detail). That's about it--there's no gamma, detailed color management, or other more advanced settings.

You can choose from four ratio options with high-def sources and standard-def sources, including a Zoom mode that allows adjustment of horizontal size and vertical position. The TV lacks picture-in-picture and cannot freeze the image temporarily to catch a phone number, for example. It can, however, accept SD cards with digital photos into a slot on the left side, which allows it to play back the images on the big screen. We also liked the energy saver option, which reduced the TV's backlight control to cut down on power use.

Back-panel connectivity on the Panasonic includes two HDMI, one component video, and one PC, in addition to the iPod dock connector.

The side panel offers one HDMI, one AV input, and an SD card slot.

Connectivity on the TC-LX1 is adequate but not extensive, starting with three HDMI inputs: two on the back and a third on the side. Other back-panel connections include an analog PC input, a single component-video input, an AV input with composite video, and an RF input for cable or antenna. There's also an optical digital audio output that can, as mentioned above, pass audio from an iPod to a home audio system. We would have liked to see an iPod-compatible analog audio output, too, (the JVC has one) but that's not in the cards. In addition to the HDMI port and SD card slot, the side panel offers a second AV input with composite and S-Video.

Performance
iPod testing: Panasonic' dock worked as well as we expected. We tested it with an iPhone (3.0 software), iPod Touch, iPod Nano 3G, and an iPod Nano 4G and experienced no major issues. Sound quality via the TV speakers was pretty poor, but that's to be expected and not a problem if you connect an external audio system. The iPhone had to be put into airplane mode, as usual, to work well with the dock, and we did get a few onscreen messages warning of device incompatibility--but everything seemed to work fine regardless.

Not surprisingly, videos blown up to the full screen looked much worse than on the tiny 'Pod screen. We checked out a video of "Iron Man" ripped from the DVD and the quality looked significantly worse than DVD, with evident softness and compression artifacts. The same went for a rental of "Gran Torino" from the iTunes store, which looked basically the same (notwithstanding differences in panel performance; see below) on both the Panasonic and the JVC. All things considered, however, video was still watchable by nonvideophile standards, and we really appreciated having picture mode controls available.

Our biggest hang-up with video playback was the lack of aspect ratio control. Native wide-screen content like Hollywood movies and some rented TV shows looked fine, but with 4:3 content such as a rip of "Schoolhouse Rock," the image was zoomed and we couldn't get it to display properly (the words "Rufus Xavier Sasperella," for example, were cut off toward the top of the screen). We tried disabling wide-screen video output on our iPod Touch but that didn't work. In another instance, a 4:3 version of "The Office" on our iPod Nano 3G appeared stretched but not cropped, so everyone looked shorter and fatter. It was frustrating not to be able to resize the image to the correct proportions without cropping, which we had no problem doing on the JVC.

HDTV testing: Overall the Panasonic is a perfectly adequate HDTV in terms of picture quality, but it won't wow home theater fans seeking deep black levels--one reason, along with off-angle performance, why we consider the JVC a better performer. The Panasonic delivered slightly more accurate color, however.

There's not much you can do to adjust the TC-LX1's picture beyond the default settings. We began with the Cinema setting and increased its relatively dim light output from 25ftl to our standard 40, and that's about it for calibration. The set doesn't have custom color temperature settings, but we didn't miss them too much since the grayscale in Warm mode, the most accurate, came quite close to the standard (although it veered toward blue in midbright and darker areas). One note: the A.I. picture function, which is active by default in all of the picture modes, is more heavy-handed than most such modes at dynamically controlling the backlight, and its fluctuations were obvious and distracting in plenty of normal program material. We definitely recommend leaving it turned off for home theater viewing.

Our comparison for the TC-L32X1 involved the iPod-friendly JVC LT-46P300, as well as a couple other midrange LCDs, the Philips 42PFL6404D and the Sony KDL-52V5100. We also included our Pioneer PRO-111FD for reference. For this review we used the Blu-ray of "Marley and Me" for most of our image quality tests.

Black level: The Panasonic LCD did not deliver a very deep overall shade of black in our tests. In dark scenes such as when Luke Wilson turns the garage lights out on Marley, the shadows, the black edge of his box, and the letterbox bars above and below the image appeared lighter than on any of the other displays in our comparison aside from the Philips. The more washed-out blacks took a good deal of the pop an impact away from the image. We could make the black areas a bit darker by engaging A.I. picture, as noted above, but it didn't help much.

Color accuracy: The TC-L32X1 was decent in this category, showing good primary and secondary colors (better than the company's plasmas), and a relatively accurate grayscale. Color decoding also had some noticeable red push, however, so Caucasian skin tones, such as Jennifer Anniston's face on the wedding night, appeared less natural and overly sanguine compared with our reference. We reduced the color control, which helped quite a bit, but of course that negatively affected the punch and saturation of the image. The Panasonic also showed a characteristic blush cast in very dark and black areas, which was worse than the JVC and the Sony but not as bas as we saw on the Philips, for example.

Video processing: The Panasonic TC-L32X1 failed to correctly de-interlace film-based content, although it handled 1080i video-based content well. We didn't conduct any of our other tests on this non-1080p TV, as it doesn't have much processing to speak of. It's worth noting, as usual, that especially at this relatively small screen size we thought the image looked just as sharp as that of the 1080p displays in our comparison, and we didn't miss having the extra resolution at all.

Uniformity: We didn't notice any serious brighter spots on the TC-LX1's screen, although in very dark scenes we could detect a slightly brighter area along the top, and in white fields, like the white bathtub in the wedding hotel room, we could see that the right and left edges were a bit darker than the middle. Seen from off-angle the Panasonic looked second-worst to the Philips in the lineup, washing out dark areas and showing color shift worse than ether the JVC or the Sony LCDs.

Bright lighting: The matte screen of the TC-LX1 performed well in bright light. It didn't reflect as much ambient light as our glass-screened reference plasma display, and fared as well as the other matte LCDs in our lineup.

Standard-definition: Panasonic's LCD was a below-average standard-def performer. The set didn't resolve every line of the DVD format, coming up a bit short on the horizontal resolution axis, which led to some softness with SD sources, such as in the stone bridge and grass from our sample image. We noticed more jaggies along diagonal lines in a waving American flag, for example, than we did on the other displays. Noise reduction was decent, but it left more motes of moving snow than did the same circuit on many other sets. Finally, it successfully engaged 2:3 pull-down detection.

PC: Via the analog PC input the best-looking resolution we could get to display was 1,024x768, a disappointment given the sreen's native resolution of 1,366x768. That resolution, along with 1,280x768, did display but scaling was incorrect and edges showed a ghostly outline that was worse than the softer, yet much clearer image of 1,024x768. Via HDMI we still couldn't get a 1,366x768 image to display properly, although we suspect that with a different video card we might have more luck. Regardless, the TC-L32X1's PC performance was worse than we suspected from a flat-panel LCD, even a relatively low-resolution one.

Power consumption: As usual with Panasonic, the default light output was relatively dim and some viewers might want to turn it up, but it's much brighter than the company's plasma displays. We haven't tested the power use of any 2009 32-inch LCD TVs, so the comparison models below are all from last year and while the Panasonic is somewhat less-efficient, it still isn't a power hog by any means. If you're wondering, charging an iPod added a paltry 0.57 watt to the TV's standby consumption.

Juice box
Panasonic TC-L32X1	Picture settings
	Default	Calibrated	Power Save
Picture on (watts)	92.1	70.16	N/A
Picture on (watts/sq. inch)	0.21	0.16	N/A
Standby (watts)	0.64	0.64	N/A
Cost per year	$20.33	$15.61	N/A
Score (considering size)	Good
Score (overall)	Good

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