Panasonic TC-LE60 series review: Best Panasonic LCD in years a great value

Over the last couple of years Panasonic TVs have followed a pattern so simple, a caveman could remember it: Plasma good, LCD bad.

7.8

Panasonic TC-LE60 series

The Good

The affordable <b>Panasonic TC-LE60</b> series evinced commendable picture quality with deep black levels for an LED LCD, superb bright-room performance, solid video processing and color; true 120Hz processing; unobtrusive ultra-minimalist styling; extensive Smart TV content.

The Bad

Poor sound quality; worse off-angle viewing and picture uniformity than a plasma; Smart TV system is a bit clunky and includes pop-up banner ads by default.

The Bottom Line

Charging the right price for a very good picture, Panasonic's E60 LED LCD is one of the best values available among midrange TVs.

Not including one outlier, Panasonic plasmas have been uniformly excellent in our 2012 and 2013 reviews, the best on the market, averaging a score of 8.1. Its LED LCD TVs have been among the very worst according to our reviews, averaging a score of 5.3.

Now we've finally reviewed the Panasonic LCD outlier. The TC-LE60 is the only non-plasma Panasonic TV in two years to crack a 6 in our reviews, and it does so handily, with a combination of aggressive pricing and very good picture quality. It's not the equal of the company's like-priced S60 plasma, but it certainly trounces that TV in a very bright room.

Yes, the E60 also offers modern minimalist styling and a solid feature set, including non-fake 120Hz and the full Smart TV treatment. But this complete midrange LED LCD package distinguishes itself with its deep black levels, superb bright-room image and lack of other major picture quality flaws. Simply put, the E60 is one of the best LED LCD values of the year.

Series information: I performed a hands-on evaluation of the 50-inch Panasonic TC-L50E60, but this review also applies to the other screen sizes in the series. All sizes have identical specs and according to the manufacturer should provide very similar picture quality.

Design
Are you beginning to feel like all TVs look the same? Take it from someone who sees more than his fair share: they are. Panasonic's E60, with its ultrathin, glossy-black bezel and black pedestal stand, is no exception.

Put more charitably, the E60 is quite attractive in its minimalist simplicity, and will upstage neither the contents of its picture nor your room decor. In profile it's thinner than most TVs in its price range. Seen from the front, only accent is a strip of transparent plastic along the bottom edge that tends to catch whatever's behind the TV and distort it slightly. The stand doesn't swivel.

The nonilluminated remote is standard Panasonic fare. I like its logical layout, clear button differentiation, and dedicated keys for Netflix and eHelp, a comprehensive onscreen manual. Apps and Home, both part of the Smart TV suite, get too-prominent keys, while Menu is tiny. More than a few times I accidentally hit Home instead of the Up cursor.

The TV has two separate menu systems -- one for Smart TV and the other, accessible via that little Menu key, for more mundane TV settings like picture and network options. I thought the blue Settings icon from within the Smart TV system would take me to the TV's settings, but instead it took me to a configuration page for Smart TV itself. Once I found them, Panasonic's 2013 settings menus were a big improvement over last year's version, with easier navigation and sleeker design.

Features
Panasonic's entry-level Smart TV, the E60 still offers the higher-end edge-lit LED backlight, as opposed to the cheaper "direct" version employed by the entry-level lines of many TV makers this year. The thinner cabinet is the most obvious result; edge offers no picture quality benefits, and the E60 lacks any kind of local dimming.

Another picture-quality perk over typical entry-level models is a 120Hz refresh rate. While many TVs in its price range resort to refresh rate fakery, the E60 seems to legitimately be a 120Hz TV; see the Picture Quality section for more.

Unlike the more expensive ET60 series, the E60 is missing 3D compatibility. On the off chance you care.

The E60 lacks the level of smartphone/tablet communication synergy-- such as screen mirroring and NFC -- seen on some competitors, but Panasonic's Viera Remote 2 app still enables functions like basic control and "swipe and share" to display photos and videos, and play music, via the TV (the app's unique advanced calibration capabilities are reserved for the VT60 and ZT60 plasmas as well as the WT60 and DT60 LCDs).

I was more successful with the app this time around -- Panasonic has updated it a few times since my ST60 review published -- but it was still unimpressive. The controls that duplicate what the standard remote can do were occasionally unresponsive, especially cursor navigation, so they're really only useful if you misplace the main remote. Swipe and share worked, to an extent, but delays were pretty common and annoying, whether between slides on the photo slideshow or waiting for the app to try dealing with long lists of photos and music. I also found the "swipe" action more awkward and unreliable than simply, you know, hitting a dedicated button. The videos I tried, sourced from my Note 2's HD camcorder, suffered stutter and dropout in both video and audio. The app also crashed a couple times in my brief test, its built-in browser (ostensibly available so you can swipe pages to the TV too) 404'd even when my Chrome app worked fine, and the keyboard functionality didn't work in Netflix for searches.

Smart TV: I'll get to the new Smart features in a minute, but first let me describe a couple of dumb additions. When you first power on the set you're greeted not by whatever source you last chose -- typically your cable box -- but instead by the home page for the Smart TV suite. Panasonic tells us this is a conscious design decision, meant to make users more aware of the existence of the Smart features and encourage their use. I consider it an annoying intrusion.

In addition, Panasonic is still the only smart TV maker dumb enough to show an actual banner advertisement (above) when you first turn on the TV. The banner's presence, which lasts about 5 seconds and appears when you first power up the TV as well as when you adjust volume, is enabled by default.

After you've dedumbed it by disabling those defaults, Panasonic's new interface is mostly good -- although I like LG's and Samsung's better. There are multiple "pages" available, and all show the currently playing input in an inset window along with a grid of apps. You can place any app anywhere you want on the grid, a welcome change from interfaces like Samsung's that offer only partial customization. Panasonic ups the custom ante further by offering three different templates for new pages you can create, custom backgrounds (including your own pictures), and the ability to name pages -- for example, each member of a particularly tech-savvy family could set up his or her own page.

There's also some bad. For someone used to swiping left or right on a smartphone to access different pages of apps, Panasonic's method isn't intuitive; you have to press the Home key again to switch between pages, rather than simply navigating among them directly. And it's potentially confusing that one page is actually the "Full-Screen TV" page, and that hitting Exit from another page doesn't take you there (you have to actively select the window). Conversely, hitting the "Return" key from within an app often exits it completely, as opposed to navigating up a level. I was also annoyed that you can't delete or change the default Info and Lifestyle pages, although you can rename them.

Navigation was relatively snappy on the pages themselves, but bogged down inside the Viera Connect market and many apps.

All of the apps from 2012 are still available, and it's a very healthy selection. Not much worthwhile has been added this year, however. Hit the apps key and you'll be taken to a page with a bunch of thumbnails showing preinstalled apps, such as YouTube and Netflix and a product support app, as well as a few custom utilities like a calendar, a memo app, and an event timer. It would be nice if they could tap into common cloud apps like Google Calendar or Evernote, but no dice. It goes without saying that typing a note using the remote and virtual keyboard is hardly worth the effort.

Non-preinstalled apps can be accessed from the Viera Connect market, where the most useful names include Vudu, Pandora, TuneIn, Rhapsody, a free classical music portal, and full episodes and a Home Shopping Network app. You'll have to create a Viera Connect account to install them, unfortunately. The rest of the apps are much less useful. They include a smattering of kids' apps, and the requisite crappy games.

And yes, there's a Web browser, but as usual it's terrible compared with a phone or especially with a laptop browser. Navigation was sluggish and quite frustrating with the remote's cursor keys, especially with the lack of autofill. Scrolling was unresponsive and unlike with Samsung or LG, the browser failed this flash test. You should use it only when no other recourse is available. If you find yourself wanting to use the browser much, it's probably worth having your head examined attaching a USB keyboard with an integrated touch pad or trackball.

Picture settings: Panasonic is slowly approaching the levels of adjustability found on other high-end TVs. New for 2013, it has migrated some of the advanced picture controls down to models like the E60. These include a 10-point grayscale and 10-point gamma system as well as color management for the primary colors. The company has also added another picture mode, "Home Theater," atop its standard four, and a cool "copy adjustments" option that allows you to migrate your picture settings from one input or mode to others.

Other controls include three levels of dejudder, aka soap opera effect, an and unecessarily complex Eco adjustment suite that I nonetheless kinda love.

Connectivity: Three HDMI ports, an analog video input that can handle either composite or component connections, and a pair of USB ports are standard for this level of TV. The SD card slot is a nice -- and uncommon -- addition, however. In case you're counting, none of the HDMI ports is MHL-compatible, although one can handle ARC.

Picture settings:
Panasonic TC-L50E60

Picture quality
The E60 is among the best-performing LED LCDs we've tested this year for the price. It delivers deep black levels for an LED LCD without the issues associated with imprecise local dimming. Color and video processing are also solid, if not spectacular, while bright room performance and uniformity were very good. Its worst performance aspect is actually its sound quality.

It's also worth noting that even though I didn't include it in the comparison below, nor have I subjected it to a full review yet, I've tested our in-house TC-L55WT60 -- Panasonic's most expensive LED LCD for 2013 -- enough to report that it doesn't have better picture quality than the E60. We plan to publish the full WT60 review soon.

Click the image above to see the picture settings used in the review and to read more about how this TV’s picture controls worked during calibration.

Black level: The E60's biggest strength is the ability to show a relatively deep shade of black. The nighttime scenes from "Skyfall," such as the Shanghai cityscape or Bond's arrival at the bar in Macau, looked more realistic and powerful thanks to the E60's black level. In our lineup the only sets that eclipsed in this area, aside from the S60 plasma, were the two Vizios -- and both of those have local dimming circuits that introduce certain amount of blooming and crushing (see their reviews for details).

The skyline at 41:32 is a mix of dark sky and shadows among otherwise brightly illuminated towers, and the E60 handled it very well, showing darker letterbox bars than any other sets aside from the S60 and the Vizio E series. The highlights also looked brighter than on the M series with its aggressive dimming. Details in the shadows, like the faces of Bond and his silhouetted target in the high-rise stalking scene (Chapter 12), were well-detailed without being too bright.

Color accuracy: The E60's accurate measurements translated onto the screen very well. Skin tones, like the face of Bond and his antagonist as they meet in Chapter 17, looked natural and realistic, without the slightly ruddy tinge of the Vizio E or the greenish/yellowish cast of the Sharp and especially the Panasonic S60.

On the other hand, subjectively speaking the E60's saturation appeared somewhat less rich than most of the others, particularly the S60, the Samsung and the Vizio M, in brightly colored areas like the fruit stands in the opening chapter. It's not a huge issue, however, and would be tough to notice outside a side-by-side comparison

Another weakness was the E60's tendency to go bluish in dark areas, a problem shared by many LED LCDs but worse than usual in the E60's case. It even extended into somewhat brighter areas, like the background of the wall behind the villain at 1:16:02.

Video processing: The E60 delivered the performance I expect from a 120Hz television. Compared with many other so-called 120Hz TVs that more or less cheat at the refresh rate game, like the Vizio E series and the LG LA6200, that's a refreshing change.

Panasonic's Motion Picture setting controls the smoothing Soap Opera Effect. Leaving it off is the only way to preserve the correct cadence of 1080p/24 film sources, so we expect most video and film buffs will do just that.

The other three settings, Weak, Mid, and Strong, introduce progressively more smoothing. Weak is more aggressive than I've seen in some Panasonics, so the smoothing it introduces is still quite noticeable. The other two also showed haloing and breakup artifacts, although these issues aren't as visible as on the LG, for example.

There's little reason to use Weak anyway because unlike the other two, it fails to improve the E60's motion resolution numbers. Mid and Strong scored the 600-off lines expected of a 120Hz TV, while Off and Weak cut those roughly in half--although between the two, Weak fared a bit better. As usual I found it tough to discern blurring in actual program material, even when I left the setting off. Unlike Samsung, Panasonic offers no setting that preserves motion resolution without introducing smoothing.

Uniformity: The E60 performed extremely well in this area for a edge-lit LED LCD. Yes, on test patterns the edges and corners appeared just oh-so-slightly brighter than the middle, but on program material the backlight irregularities were next-to-impossible to discern.

From off-angle the E60 was about average among its LCD peers, washing out dark areas worse than the Sharp or the E series and about as much as the Samsung, but outdoing the M series and the LG. In brighter scenes the latter two maintained color fidelity better, however; the E60 tended to more quickly become bluish/reddish from off-angle.

Bright lighting: The E60 excels under the lights. Its matte screen attenuates reflections better than any of the other sets aside from the Sharp (the best by a nose) and the Vizio E series, both of which also have a matte finish. Bright objects reflected therein, like my checked shirt under overhead lights, looked duller and less distracting.

The E60 also delivered on a second bright-room characteristic, the ability to preserve black levels from washing out. As a result the image maintained good "pop" and contrast, outdoing laggards like the LG and the S60 in this area while keeping pace with the others aside from the group-leading Samsung.

Sound quality: If you value sound quality in a TV, skip the E60. Its audio was the worst in our lineup, losing to the also-awful LA6200 by a wheezing nose. Listening to "Red Right Hand," Nick Cave's voice faded into obscurity while the instruments -- full-sounding on the 6400 and the S60 by comparison -- reminded me of a cell phone fallen down a well: thin, distant, and muddled together. The explosions, shattering glass, and panicky horns from the bridge scene in "Mission: Impossible 3" were similarly denuded of impact on the E60, rendered lifeless and much less exciting than on the better TVs.

Panasonic TC-L50E60 CNET review calibration results