The Panasonic W95A is a Mini-LED television featuring local dimming technology. It is equipped with a variety of advanced functionalities, including HDMI 2.1 support for 4K at 144Hz pass-through, Variable Refresh Rate (VRR), Dolby Vision IQ, and HDR10+.
This model is powered by the Panasonic HCX Pro AI Processor MK II, which enhances picture quality by automatically optimizing contrast, color, clarity, and sound based on the content being viewed. It operates on Fire TV OS, includes a built-in 50-watt 2.1-channel audio system, and is compatible with Airplay and Alexa. In the review of the Panasonic TV-65W95A, we will explore the strengths and weaknesses of this new offering.
Design
The Panasonic TV-65W95A has a nice overall design with thin metal frames (0.9 cm) and sturdy aluminum feet that give it a premium look. Two feet keep the TV stable. They raise the TV about 7 cm above the table, so almost any soundbar will fit underneath without blocking the image.
The back of the TV is made of textured plastic. Touching the back leaves marks, but these can be easily wiped off with a cloth. All inputs, except for the optical audio output, are located on the right side of the TV when viewed from the front. They are easy to access if you have mounted the TV on the wall. Unfortunately, there is no way to run cables.
The TV is well built and there are no issues with control. The remote control is small and almost identical to those included with other Fire TVs. Depending on your region, the remote may also have number buttons. Some Fire TV remotes don’t have a dedicated input button, meaning you’ll have to press settings or pre-program a custom button.
The big blue Alexa button is at the top of the remote, making all search and navigation easy with your voice. There’s instant access to Prime Video, Disney Plus, Netflix, and Amazon Music. The selection is a bit limited, but it’s fine for most people. It’s powered by batteries, which get more expensive over time. That’s why Samsung’s eco-friendly solar-powered option is more appealing.
Image quality
The Panasonic 65W95A has an outstanding contrast ratio of 6,700:1. The VA panel’s native contrast is excellent, but with local dimming engaged, the TV produces deeper blacks, even with bright highlights on-screen. The TV shows good blur performance, although there’s noticeable blooming around bright objects on very dark backgrounds.
There are 192 zones of backlight adjustment here. Unfortunately, the leading edge of bright highlights is noticeably dimmed as they move quickly across the screen, and there is very noticeable halos. Enabling VRR disables the local dimming feature, and this has a significant impact on black levels during gaming, which is a shame.
The Panasonic W95A has a lot of brightness in HDR, with a peak of 1500 nits in a 10% window. Bright areas in dark scenes stand out well. Combined with the outstanding contrast, this TV delivers an impressive HDR viewing experience. The W95A gets a little brighter in Game mode, but that’s within the margin of error.
In SDR, brightness is also impressive at 1,350 nits in a 10% window, so glare is not visible on the screen in most brightly lit rooms. The Panasonic W95A has an excellent color gamut. It covers almost the entire range of colors in the DCI-P3 color space, although most colors are undersaturated and slightly off-color.
In the wider Rec.2020 colour space, coverage is also very good, but colours are also undersaturated and a little inaccurate, with greens and blues being the worst. Colour volume is excellent. The TV displays a wide range of colours at high brightness levels, and dark, saturated colours look good thanks to the high contrast ratio.
The TV’s SDR accuracy before calibration is below average. Reds are overdone in all shades of gray, making the color temperature of the image much warmer than the 6500K we usually aim for. Gamma is close to 2.2, but bright scenes are sometimes too bright. Color accuracy is generally good, but there are inaccuracies with whites and most light colors. All these issues are resolved with additional calibration.
Grayscale uniformity on the screen is decent. There is a noticeable dirty screen effect towards the center, the corners are darker than the center. On a very dark or almost black screen, the corners and sides are lighter than the center. Black uniformity is excellent, as with all VA panels, unlike IPS . However, the viewing angles can be called insufficient.
The 65W95A is therefore not suitable for wide seating arrangements. There is a significant gamma shift, loss of brightness, and increased black levels as you move away from the center of the screen. In addition, colors shift and appear increasingly washed out as you move away from the center of the screen. The glossy screen handles reflections satisfactorily.
The TV does a good job of upscaling low-resolution content, such as DVDs, standard-definition cable channels, and lower-resolution streaming TV. Details are well defined and fairly sharp, but very fine detail and small text can be difficult to discern. The BGR (blue-green-red) subpixel scheme used may be an issue for use as a PC monitor, as it affects the clarity of text, although not everyone will notice.
The TV uses quantum dots to achieve high color peaks with excellent separation between blue, green and red. This gives the picture great color purity with a very wide color gamut, which can be seen in the TV’s spectral power distribution (SPD) graph.
Movement and games
The W95A has an overall response time of 11ms. This is excellent, so there is only some blurring behind fast-moving objects. However, it is slower when exiting dark states, and there is some black bleeding when transitioning between dark scenes. PWM is used to adjust the backlight.
Fortunately, it does not flicker, the brightness is set in the range of 80-100 in all picture modes. With the brightness set in the range of 42-79, the screen flickers at a frequency of 480 Hz, and in the range of 0-41, it flickers at a very high frequency of 1920 Hz. There is a black frame insertion (BFI). It improves the display of motion by strobing the backlight, reducing blur.
There’s an optional 60fps interpolation feature to improve motion clarity. It does a good job of smoothing out slow-moving scenes, with only a few minor artifacts. It struggles to keep up with fast-moving scenes, resulting in noticeable artifacts.
The Panasonic W95A series supports FreeSync, HDMI Forum VRR and G-Sync , ensuring virtually tear-free gaming from any VRR-enabled source. The TV performs well across a wide range of refresh rates and supports Low Frame Rate Compensation (LFC) sources. Input lag is very low.
In True Game mode, it’s 6.5ms at 120Hz, which makes for a very responsive gaming experience. The Panasonic W95 is fully compatible with everything the Xbox Series X|S and PS5 have to offer, including 1440p 120Hz, 4K 120Hz, HDMI Forum VRR, FreeSync Premium Pro, and Dolby Vision Gaming. It also supports Auto Low Latency Mode, so you don’t have to worry about switching to Game Mode to get the lowest input lag. However, local dimming doesn’t work when VRR is enabled.
There’s no quick access to the game’s control panel. Instead, you’ll need to dig into the settings and find it under Display Features. From here, you can change the picture mode, turn on VRR, or increase visibility in the dark if you want to win in online shooters. You can also quickly select HDR tone mapping.
Smart TV
The W95A series runs on the Fire TV operating system , which is smooth and easy to use. Unfortunately, like almost all TVs, the smart interface is ad-supported and there is no way to turn them off. The TV has a large selection of apps, so it’s easy to find your favorite content. You can also stream content from your phone or play videos from a USB drive.
Sound
The Panasonic W95A has a mediocre frequency response. It barely produces bass, but the sound profile is well balanced at most listening levels, resulting in easy dialogue understanding. However, the sound is very unbalanced at maximum volume, which is a shame because you won’t want to crank up the volume.
The Dolby Atmos and Dolby TrueHD 7.1 codecs are supported, but DTS, commonly found on Blu-ray discs, is not supported in any form. Distortion handling is also mediocre. There is some audible distortion at moderate volume levels, and the degree of distortion increases as the volume increases.
Connections
There are 4 HDMI ports – two of them are version 2.1, and one supports eARC . Two USB ports have versions 2.0 and 3.0. There is a digital optical audio output and an analog 3.5 mm audio output. There is an Ethernet port and antenna jacks (the number is determined by the region). There are also built-in WiFi and Bluetooth adapters.
Conclusion
Many people are hesitant to buy anything with an Amazon name attached to it. But Fire TV is easy to use, and Panasonic’s implementation is straightforward for anyone with some smart TV experience. Overall, the TV looks great in a dark room thanks to its high contrast ratio, and it has the HDR brightness and color range needed to enjoy HDR content. It’s also a fully-featured gaming TV, although it’s held back by the fact that you can’t use local dimming and VRR at the same time. Unfortunately, it has a fairly narrow viewing angle, which limits its use for group viewing.