Panasonic Viera TX-P46Z11

After the V10 and the G15, it's now the turn of Panasonic's Z11 series to take a trip to our lab.  It's Panasonic's most impressive offering ahead of Christmas 2009--but also its most expensive.

Build Quality and Design

The high price has mostly been invested in a stylish design.  The ultra-thin Z11 is no more than an inch thick in this 46'' version, and is framed with aluminium trim.  There's a large, solid stand, but it's so bulky that it takes some of the shine off the rest of the Z11, and we think it would look better wall-mounted where you can really show it up.

As a result of this sleek design, all of the inputs and outputs have been moved to an external box that you'll need to store with other devices like your console or Blu-ray player.


The speakers are detachable and connect to either side of the screen; they're not attached in the photo above.  The screen is covered with an anti-glare layer that we still found a little too glossy;

In every other respect, we found everything we'd expect from a high-end TV, including four HDMI inputs, an Ethernet port for accessing online content on the VieraCast platform, and an SD card slot for playing DivX content.  Unfortunately, this last option only works in standard definition, not HD.  A second disappointment is the remote control, which really doesn't live up to the quality and price of the rest of the product.  We would have expected a classier finish and backlit buttons.

Image Quality

We weren't especially surprised to find a repeat of the excellent quality video produced by the V10 and G15 series models.  The screen is capable of an incredible amount of contrast, ranging from 5000:1 to 6000:1, depending on the scene on the content.  It also has very deep black levels, natural colours and ultra-wide viewing angles, an area where plasma screens still have an edge of LCDs.

You can, of course, adjust the display by modifying various settings, but there aren't as many choices as there usually are.  There are some pre-defined profiles (Cinema, THX and standard), which automatically account for the majority settings, including the IFC system for producing more fluid movements, which is, for instance, turned off in THX mode.  Once you switch back on, it's a little too strong, leaving visible artefacts.  Otherwise, it does its job well, producing perfectly fluid images, with sharp clear movements and no visible ghosting.  Overall, the quality of the image is close to perfection and an absolute treat for the eyes.

Audio Quality

The main strength of the two lateral speakers is that they point towards the viewers, which automatically leads to better quality sound than on most TVs--even expensive one--where the sound points to the back. 

Energy Consumption

This is what lets the Z11 down.  Using 0.55 W while on standby, it needs three to four times more electricity than average.  That might not represent a very big supplement to your electricity bill, but it isn't going to win any plaudits from environmentalists either.

When you switch it on, energy uses climbs to 237 W in Cinema mode--and 380 W using the default settings.  That's more than an LCD TV would use.