Loopthrough
Prominent Member
If you can find the 8008 still I would recommend it. Beautiful TV, nice build quality, Ambilight 3 sided (hard to find in 2014 as they've cost cut on that front!), typical Philips PQ... but also sluggish (to some) software and poor smart interface. IMO it doesn't matter and it's not THAT slow anyway as the PQ is stunning as usual.Took a quite extensive look at the Panasonic TX-55AS640E at a shop here in Norway.
Tweeked the heck out of it, but after playing around for about half an hour, I still wasn’t able to get a good result.
The black levels truly were impressive, but in my opinion the white levels suffered for it. What should be bright whites looked far more ivory-ish.
As mentioned by others here - details and sharpness were not up to par with the best of them. In my experience Philips is - or used to be - the go to-brand for superb levels of detail. My old Philips 46PFL9705 from 2010 still outshines the Panasonic in this department.
Now to the worst: The motion handling was really rather terrible. Football in HD was pretty much unwatchable compared to the mid range Samsung, Sony and even LG I compared it to!
Tried all kinds of different settings, but none of them made the motions look anywhere near as good as a set at this price should.
Think I’ll be going for a Philips 55PFL8008S from 2013 rather than jumping on the 2014 bandwagon. They’re currently similarly priced here, and from what I can see I’ll be getting a whole lot more for my money with the Philips.
Can live with the somewhat poor smart-features, software issues and slow menus as long as I know I’ll be getting a TV that runs rings around the Panny in terms of picture and sound quality.
Sony I would say are on par with Philips detail wise since X-Reality PRO was changed in 2013 (the W9 TV or even this year's 50" W8).