Panasonic TX-55AX630 55 inch 4K UHD TV consumer overview
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| Panasonic TX-55AX630 |
In today’s article, we will review one of Panasonic’s 4K TVs currently available on the market. The TX 55AX630 is a good value for money 4K specimen with excellent smart features and great picture quality. It’s a great bargain – you can get the 55-inch version for $1500 and you will not be disappointed. One of the very few weak points of this TV is the motion blur – this is where it does not perform well, but overall the TV is worth taking a look into.
Key Features
· 55-inch LCD TV with edge LED lighting
· 4K/UHD resolution
· Active 3D playback (no glasses included)
· Built-in Freetime catch-up TV system
· Multimedia playback via DLNA, USB and SD card
· Manufacturer: Panasonic
Design and Features
The 55AX630 is easy on the eye, with shiny metallic top and bottom edges and gloss-black sides. The only signs that this TV is cheaper than most of the top sellers is that it’s chunkier around the back than the premium TV sets.
Communication-wise, the Panasonic provides everything you need – you get 3 HDMI v 2.0 ports, built-in Wi-Fi and LAN, SD card, 2 x USB.
The 4K / UHD resolution is 3840 x 2160 and the panel used is not IPS. You can notice that by the use of active 3D system rather than the passive one used by IPS TVs. Unfortunately, you don’t get the 3D glasses included in the TV package.
The 55AX630 has a dual-core processor and the smart features are impressive and flexible; the Freetime 7-day-back Electronic Programme Guide catch-up system and Panasonic’s friendly, customisable My Home Screen interface adds up to one of the best smart TV systems around.
The 55AX630 is exceptionally easy to install, thanks to well-explained and well-structured onscreen guidance and even voice tutorials for some of the more sophisticated features such as setting up your own customised home screens.
Picture Quality
There are, of course, areas where the TV fails short compared to other Panasonic models, but overall you get a very accomplished picture for a lower-price 4K TV.
The image when watching native 4K content looks detailed, denser, deeper and devoid of visible pixel structure than ‘mere’ HD. Even the well trained eye will be impressed with the realistic 4K you get here - it does live up to the expectations for 4K.
Colors look reasonably crisp and natural, too, and benefit from the sort of subtlety only possible when you’ve got a 4 x HD pixel count to play with.
The 55AX630 performs very well in terms of dark UHD content. The gray wash on the blacks is minimal and there is no sign of backlight inconsistency or clouding at all, even in the corners. You can give black levels a noticeable boost via the dynamic contrast system without causing the sort of over-aggressive and distracting light ‘jumps’ often witnessed with TVs that have a less adequate native contrast performance than the 55AX630.
The Panasonic manages to deliver its very respectable black levels without crushing out much shadow detail, ensuring you don’t experience that hollowness in dark areas witnessed with rather too many LCD TVs.
The Panasonic manages to deliver its very respectable black levels without crushing out much shadow detail, ensuring you don’t experience that hollowness in dark areas witnessed with rather too many LCD TVs.
The cleanliness of the picture reproduction is also noticeable – there is no graininess in the picture, no sharp objects edges, etc. The images look balanced – a pleasure to the eye.
The color palette, however, leaves something to be desired. It’s not that the colours don’t look well – they do, but there are much better performers in Panasonic’s class with wider colour gamut panel designs. Another area that needs improvement is image sharpness and motion blur.
3D Picture Quality
The 55AX630 is a mostly good 3D performer let down by a single flaw: crosstalk. You can often see crosstalk’s double ghosting over a bright background or mid-field objects, and its appearance is regular and obvious enough to have to class it as quite a distraction at times. Especially as its defocusing impact is slightly exaggerated by the otherwise very impressive levels of detail and sharpness in the upscaled-to-UHD active 3D images.
Panasonic TX-55AX630 TV interface
Sound Quality
The 55AX630 is a fairly average audio performer by the much-improved overall standards of this year’s flat TVs. It sounds fine with relatively simple, dialogue-heavy sources, leaving voices sounding well rounded and believable, with no hint of crowding in the mid-range.
Miscellaneous
The 55AX630 is shipped with two remote controls: a standard and a smart one with fewer buttons.
For gamers, the TV is a passable option but not ideal – the contrast-rich picture is suitable for dark gaming scenes but the input lag of 66 ms is a turn-off.
Overall, the TV provides great picture with few remarks, good but not perfect sound and good 3D features. The smart TV is perfect but the 4K streaming services leave more to be desired (which can be solved if external UHD streaming boxes are available on the market soon).
For a budget of $1500 - $1600, this TV performs amiably and it can seriously be considered for the needs of all.
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