Electronics titan Panasonic hasn’t sold its TVs in the US for years, but you can mark 2024 down as the year that’s all changing. Its new trio of TVs, including the flagship Z95A OLED TV, end a decade-long absence from the US market in an effort to fight for the title of best TV stateside. In addition to its continued partnership with Hollywood bigwigs for superb picture quality and integration with Amazon’s Fire TV, Panasonic is also trying to expand expectations when it comes to the sound built into your pricey TV.
Why return now to a hypercompetitive landscape? Well, Panasonic says the timing’s just right. Internal structural changes have enabled it to pursue the American market once more, and Panasonic representatives at the private preview told me the company believes there is a “strong latent demand” for its TVs in the US. And don’t worry about authenticity. Panasonic hasn’t licensed out its brand, so these are the same high-quality sets they’ve been selling internationally for years.
To see if this return to the US is worth your consideration, I checked out the Panasonic Z95A OLED (which is listed as the Z95 on Amazon) for myself in a private demo earlier this summer. Let’s break down everything you need to know, as all three models are available for preorder now, with a Sept. 18 release date.
The Z95A is a 65-inch OLED TV that packs the company’s best display tech and its One Box audio design for better sound out of the gate.
The Z85A gives you Panasonic’s OLED tech and also packs the Amazon Alexa assistant. The 65-inch model is currently the only one up for preorder.
Panasonic’s also taking on the Mini-LED TV market with this set that promises more accurate color and brightness without a loss of detail.
To make a slightly complicated lineup a little easier to understand, Panasonic’s got three new TVs in varying sizes. That starts with the flagship 65-inch OLED Z95A and the OLED Z85A (made in 55 and 65 inches), which has less audio power. Then there’s the LED W95A that’s sold in 55-, 65-, 75- and 85-inch designs. As noted above, all these models are currently listed on Amazon without the A in their model name, as the Z95, Z85 and W95.
The differences are kind of simple, as they all share the same Mark II processor for their brains and the same Fire TV interface for your apps. That means each has the same color tuning, contrast and tone mapping tech under the hood, including Dolby Vision IQ. And then there’s AI-assisted super-resolution tech for clarity as well. These TVs also share much of the same gaming smarts for smooth visuals and a gaming-specific dashboard menu to switch settings for latency, refresh rate and various other features.
Panasonic also boasts that its TVs are tuned and used by Hollywood elites, and Panasonic’s representatives told me at the private briefing that “Panasonic has been embedded in Hollywood for 20 years.” The company also named Stefan Sonnenfeld (“300,” “Godzilla vs. Kong,” and “Deadpool & Wolverine”) of Company 3 as one of its collaborators. You can expect to have optimized picture-quality settings without lifting a finger, thanks to the AI tech inside these new TVs. I’m hoping that means nobody will ever have to turn motion smoothing off for movies and TV shows.
The Panasonic Z95A OLED Fire TV is the feature-heavy flagship
If and when folks talk about Panasonic’s return to the US, they will primarily talk about the 65-inch Z95A (or 65Z95A), the first-ever OLED Fire TV. The most interesting moment from the demo came from watching footage from the film “Allied”: Panasonic had set up the Z95A side by side with Sony’s 65-inch A95L Bravia 4K QD-OLED and a reference monitor used to show what filmmakers see in the editing bay. The well-reviewed Sony TV erred too far on brightness, washing out the color on a red dress. The Z95A also looked a bit brighter than the reference monitor, but that’s to be expected when household TVs aren’t in the same dark edit bays where the monitors can be found. The $3,200 Z95A is priced to compete with the Sony A95L, which has a $3,500 retail price (and is currently marked down to $3,300 at Best Buy).
A second comparison focused on footage of a snowy farm at varying degrees of brightness. At 1,000 nits, both OLED TVs did a fair job showing off the textures on the untouched grounds, but multiple points of the shot looked washed out on the Sony when we switched over to a brighter 2,000-nit version of the same footage.
The Z95A is also directed toward the people who don’t want a separate soundbar. Its One Box design builds more of a speaker into the “chin” of the TV, which goes hand in hand with the TV’s Sound Focus mode, an interesting tool that lets you specifically angle your TV’s audio at a certain part of the room.
The Z95A’s other standout feature is the fact that it doesn’t just offer a regular OLED panel but a layered system that Panasonic’s dubbed the “Master OLED Ultimate” panel. To increase the brightness, there’s a micro-lens array (a technology also seen in the LG OLED G3) in front of the OLED panel that redirects light that would normally go inward, pushing it out of the screen. And to make sure this all works properly, Panasonic has added a trio of heat-management layers.
Aesthetically, though, I have to take points off for the circular base stand, which looks more like something you’d get for a computer monitor than a high-end OLED TV. Of course, wall-mounting options are available.
Comparatively, the Panasonic Z85A OLED TV is practically a footnote, as it’s basically the Z95A without the stronger audio or the complex display panel. It also offers a click-to-activate version of Alexa, while the Z95A packs far-field mics for hands-free Alexa. Thankfully, these TVs also have remotes so, if you’re like me, you can just use your TV normally.
The Z85A may be the set that more folks flock to, though, as it starts at $1,600 for its 55-inch model.
Panasonic’s Mini-LED W95A also impressed
Mini-LED TVs don’t get the same reverence as OLED, due to how their black tones aren’t as strong and exact. Still, comparing the W95A to the Samsung QN85D on a clip from schlocky thriller “The Meg 2,” I observed how the sun above the ocean looked washed out on the Samsung but colorful and pleasant on the Panasonic.
The W95A also packs its own internal subwoofer for bass, the press-to-activate version of Alexa, and the same HCX Mark II AI chip and AMD FreeSync Premium found in the other TVs. With a starting price of $1,300 for the 55-inch W95A, Panasonic’s again pricing to undercut the competition, as the 55-inch QN85D retails for $1,400 (though it’s currently on sale for $1,200 at Amazon).
Yes, Panasonic and Amazon Fire TV are now besties
In a move that’s probably great for some, all these Panasonic TVs run the Amazon Fire TV software so you don’t need to plug in a streaming device. Amazon’s content-first interface is all about recommendations, surfacing live TV and connecting with the smart home. If you’ve used a Fire TV, you probably already have your own verdict about it, and mine is not positive. To me, this interface errs far more on advertised content that often feels spammy than anything else. I prefer an app-first smart TV interface, such as what Roku gives you, but Amazon’s popularity and deep hooks into the smart home world make the decision understandable.
On top of that, Amazon’s not really adding a whole lot that feels interesting. Its biggest recent feature is the Ambient Experiences screensaver functionality, which will let you have a variety of screensavers including original works of art, your own photos and widget-based info like the weather and reminders. It also features legit art from around the world, with licensed works from institutions such as the the National Gallery of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago and the National Galleries of Scotland.
But since this is 2024, there’s also the option to have generative AI-made images in the mix. An image that came from a prompt provided mid-demo showed dogs in the style of Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” and made me roll my eyes. Your mileage may vary, but this image (and all generative AI imagery) has a general flatness to it that feels inauthentic and hollow to me, to the point where I am trying to avoid calling it “art” as much as I can. Sorry to the folks out there excited for this, but I can’t bring myself to enjoy anything built off the backs of unpaid and uncredited artists. Amazon’s model, though, includes licensed and open source data, and the company told CNN Underscored that it’s taken steps to “protect copyright holders.”
The takeaway
While we’ll have to give the Z95A and its sister sets the full review treatment, my time with these TVs prepared my brain to consider Panasonic as a competitor to the likes of Sony, Samsung and even LG, whose C2 OLED sits in my living room. Of course, I wish the company had chosen to work with Roku for an interface that was cleaner and less cluttered, but I can see a financial reason to partner with Amazon, which will also be selling these sets.
All three of Panasonic’s new Fire TVs are available to preorder right now and due to release on Sept. 18. Panasonic pricing the Z95A so close to the Sony A95L isn’t exactly shocking, and undercutting that TV by hundreds is an interesting tactic to lure the US market back to the brand if folks aren’t as excited or familiar as the company might hope.
While the high-end TV market was already full of competition, I’m still happy to see Panasonic jump back into the fray over here and fight for the biggest screen in the living room.
