If you’re in the market for a 65(ish) inch Plasma television of this size, sadly, here in Europe, your choice is limited compared to what our friends in the US and Canada have: it’s between this and the Panasonic TX-P65VT30, which certainly warrants a comparison. In the past, Samsung Plasmas suffered from undefeatable noise reduction (which could smear fine details in Blu-ray sources), whereas Panasonic’s suffered from fluctuating brightness during dark scenes. Both manufacturers fixed their respective issues with firmware updates (which is heartening to say the least), meaning that the choice of Samsung vs Panasonic (we haven’t had the chance to see any of LG’s big-screen Plasmas this year) comes largely down to price, black level, and other more subtle image quality differences. Panasonic wins on black level, whereas Samsung’s video processing is slightly better in terms of deinterlacing and especially scaling, resulting in subtly better SD performance. Samsung excel with a full resolution 3D experience, whereas Panasonic’s slight loss of resolution is perhaps made up for by their far superior out-of-the-box 3D greyscale tracking, which results in a less tinted 3D image. Calibration mitigates the difference, but we need to remember just how niche 3D calibration is. Panasonic’s is slightly more responsive with video games, but not by far, while Samsung’s plasmas have demonstrated better screen uniformity (some Panasonic units exhibit greenish tints on the screen, something we confirmed during our first reviews of them).
Last, but by no means least, the Samsung PS64D8000′s best online price appears to be in the region of £2400, with the market pricing the Panasonic VT30 at £3600. It’s not a small amount of money, but the fact that Samsung are offering a display of this quality at this price is remarkable. Thanks to its value for money – and the fact that its image quality is excellent in its own right – Samsung’s PS64D8000 gets awarded with our “Highly Recommended” badge.
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