A reliable OLED TV for movie fans who value authenticity over flashy tricks
4K TV | £1999 (65in)| whf.cm/MZ1500B
Featuring a solid specification sheet and offering wonderfully subtle but accurate picture quality, the MZ1500 may be the best performance-per-pound model in Panasonic’s new OLED range. Available in 55in and 65in options, its price tag makes it much more expensive than the rival LG C3 and just below the Sony A80L. If you’re choosing between the MZ1500 and the step-up MZ2000, you are looking at a price gap of around £500 at 55in and a whopping £1000 at 65in.
The MZ1500 looks all but identical to the MZ2000 and older LZ2000. It is a fairly chunky unit that features a dedicated speaker bar mounted beneath the screen which makes placing a dedicated separate soundbar next to impossible. This is good news for those who absolutely refuse to add a dedicated sound system but bad news for those for whom a TV’s integrated sound system is not their first choice.
Extra fine-tuning
The MZ1500 comes with a Master OLED Pro panel, with a degree of extra fine-tuning and optimisations to try and boost picture quality in key metrics, such as max brightness and colour authenticity. However, processing, which is a key factor in TV picture quality, is handled by the same HCX Pro AI processor seen in the MZ2000, and cheaper MZ980 OLEDs.
This chip aims to improve a key area in which Panasonic already has a strong track record, by offering an even more realistic, “as the director intended” Film Maker mode picture, with the processor’s smarts adapting the picture settings to any ambient lighting in the room. Lights on or the sun blazing through the window, you should see the picture as intended.
HDR support includes both the Dolby Vision and HDR10+ ‘dynamic’ HDR standards as well as standard HDR10 and HLG. In fact, Panasonic has gone as far as to include support for the ‘IQ’ version of Dolby Vision and ‘Adaptive’ version of HDR10+, which essentially do the automatic picture adjustments described above for Filmmaker Mode but in line with these specific HDR formats.
The aforementioned processor also brings Panasonic’s advanced colour balance smarts to next-generation gaming, powering a new True Game Mode, which Panasonic claims will let the MZ1500 deliver “precisely” the right colour balance and contrast when gaming, and there is also source-orientated HDR to
