Panasonic Z95A review: A sublime OLED TV with best-in-class sound

Telegraph

24-02-2025

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Price: £2,799 for 65-inch at Panasonic
Alternative seller: £2,799 for 65-inch at John Lewis
Also available in: 55-inch, £1,999
Our rating: 10/10
We like:
Stunning picture quality
Impressive sound
Swivel stand
We don't like:
Built-in soundbar may limit appeal
Bulky design
Fire TV adverts
What is the Panasonic Z95A?
The Z95A is a flagship-tier television from Panasonic, their top dog TV for 2024. It follows a line of high-quality OLED TVs from the company, marking itself out from its rivals by including a Technics-tuned soundbar and looking to be a high-end one-box solution for all your home entertainment needs.
The Panasonic Z95A uses the same OLED technology as the LG G4. As such, it has a Micro Lens Array (MLA) panel which helps boost the brightness of the pixels to deliver more dramatic high-dynamic range (HDR) visuals and better visibility in brighter rooms.
The Z95A runs on the Fire TV platform – which sits on some of the best TVs under £500 – so it's Alexa-compatible, offering hands-free voice control, while also supporting Freely, the TV service that streams terrestrial programming over your home Wi-Fi. As such, it's a highly connected television, offering a full range of technologies and it carries a flagship price to match.
Before we get started on this Panasonic OLED TV review, it's worth noting that this is also the TV that Panasonic used to lead the charge back into the US market, after leaving abruptly in 2016. Having been watching this TV for the past couple of weeks, it's easy to understand why, because it's undeniably one of the best OLED TVs around.
How we test televisions
Every TV is tested at home for a minimum of two weeks. We play a variety of content in standard, high and ultra-high definition, from movies to nature programmes, sport and daytime viewing. We evaluate the picture and sound and see how easy the TV is to set up and operate, while checking how well it performs with gaming consoles and other peripherals. We're looking for everyday usability as well as the wow factor.
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Design and technology: 8/10
The Panasonic Z95A is rare in that it has a built-in sound system. While all high-end TVs will talk about supporting Dolby Atmos, promising immersive audio, few have the speakers to produce it. Sony opts for its Acoustic Surface tech in the Bravia 8 which puts speakers behind the screen, while this Panasonic has a built-in soundbar and subwoofer.
I mention all of this in the design section because that decision dominates the design: this TV is bulkier than its rivals with much of the formwork on the rear of the TV being plastic and housing the speakers. That the panel itself is only 5mm thick – like the LG C4 I recently reviewed – doesn't really matter, because most of the TV is 60mm thick. The additional thickness also houses the cooling system that Panasonic has for the display, to ensure better long-term performance at high brightness, so there is a benefit to this thicker design as well.
From the front and the side, then, the Panasonic Z95A looks the part, but from the rear, it's not quite as pretty. Sure, most people will set this TV against a wall rather than in the middle of the room, but if you do have some space around it, then the swivel stand is a real asset. Most TVs have a fixed stand but I love having the freedom to change the angle of the screen with a touch.
Panasonic loves to talk about the hardware in its televisions. I believe this is to emphasise the company's own input and shift the focus away from the fact that it's using LG's OLED panel, and handing its supplier the credit. As such, we have the HCX Pro AI Processor MK II driving the Master OLED Ultimate panel, with a 4K Remaster Engine to handle the upscaling. That 'AI' mention in the processor name also makes it clear that Panasonic is using AI to boost the picture quality – and there's an Auto AI picture mode you can select to put this to work.
Picture quality: 10/10
As Panasonic's flagship TV, it's no surprise that the Z95A offers outstanding picture quality and is one of the best 4K TVs on the market right now. The first thing that's apparent after completing setup is the boosted brightness it offers over TVs that don't have this sort of tech. It's brighter than the Panasonic Z85A that sits a peg lower in Panasonic's range and it's more impactful than the popular LG C4, thanks to that MLA layer I mentioned previously.
High peak brightness means that the Panasonic Z95A copes with a bright room with ease. It utilises both a light sensor and a colour temperature sensor, which helps fuel systems like Dolby Vision IQ – an HDR standard which aims to adjust the picture to the room's lighting conditions.
You might want to turn off the ambient light sensor, however, as I found this could sometimes lead to brightness changes on the TV when switching scenes. In a shot with two people talking with one in darkness and one in light, as the camera switched between them, this brightness change made it look like the screen was flashing.
The other thing that's apparent from the Panasonic Z95A is how rich the colours are and how deep the black level is. This is an inherent property of OLED panels, so not unique here, but this is where OLED still has an advantage over LED technologies. The content on the Z95A looks sumptuous. I watched some of Netflix's new drama The Night Agent and found that dark scenes were expertly presented, with accurate skin tones dripping in detail.
The TV offers the latest standards: there's a Netflix Calibrated Mode, as well as a Filmmaker mode, which is often deemed as the 'most accurate' picture on TVs like this. I find Filmmaker mode a little too yellow for my tastes – especially for daytime viewing – but it's easy to turn off.
There's support for HDR10+, too, which is something you don't typically get from LG OLED TVs and this is a format that's now widely used on Prime Video. There's also support for HLG, which is how BBC iPlayer delivers its HDR content, including the occasional sports match.
Panasonic offers quick access to picture modes, either through the Picture button on the remote or via the menu button, which will open up a simple menu to make settings changes on the fly. This is great if you're a tinkerer like me, and I like that you can select information to show you the format you're watching: if you're wondering if you're actually viewing 4K Dolby Vision footage at 24Hz, the TV will tell you.
Watching Marvel's Black Widow, the impact of the snow scenes demonstrated the sheer level of brightness that this TV offers, with wonderfully immersive visuals. Flip to something lower quality, like Countdown, and the content is upscaled nicely, making it watchable even at 65 inches. A quick blast through the universe of Ready Player One cements my opinion that the Panasonic Z95A is a great TV if you want that big cinematic experience.
The viewing angles on this screen are great, too, meaning that if you're not sat in the sweet spot, you still get the rich, vibrant colours when watching from an angle.
Sound: 9/10
The Panasonic Z95A has a built-in soundbar, so it offers a little more out of the box than other televisions. This setup is more unique and the immediate criticism is that this arrangement might deter some users. If you're a home cinema fan looking for a great screen to connect to an existing sound system, then effectively you're wasting the Panasonic's audio skills and you might be better off shopping elsewhere, like the LG G4.
However, if it's the best performance out of a single box then that's what the Panasonic Z95A offers. There's no messing around with cables or mounting a soundbar, you just plug in the TV and everything works. On first startup, there's a tuning process to adapt the sound output to the room, taking into account where you've placed the TV and focussing the sound properly.
The sound system comprises 5.1.2 channels, with 160W output. This results in speakers firing towards you from the soundbar, side speakers and top speakers of the TV to give the sound stage more width and height, which is important to add immersion. This setup is designed to deliver Dolby Atmos and the results are good. Of course, it's not the same as a dedicated system with separate speakers, but there's no shortage of volume, respectable bass and better performance than most other TVs
There are also sound modes you can select on the TV, including an Auto AI mode which can boost the sound quality from some lower quality sources, but when playing Dune from an Ultra HD Blu-ray in Dolby Atmos, there was no perceptible difference whether the AI mode was on or off.
Operating system and usability: 8/10
The Panasonic Z95A incorporates Fire OS, the same operating system used by Amazon's TVs, like the Fire TV Omni Mini-LED and the Fire TV Stick streaming devices. This gives access to a full range of streaming services, with great performance from each of those apps. The advantage of a system like this is that apps are kept up to date and it hooks into Amazon's Alexa ecosystem to make this TV smarter.
This TV also offers hands-free Alexa voice control, in addition to the Alexa button on the remote. Alexa can be used for content searching or to access other services through Alexa and the performance is great. That also means you can use it to control smart home devices that you've set up with Alexa, such as heating and lighting.
Fire OS divides opinion, however, as some don't like that Amazon's content gets a high billing, with both adverts and sponsored content on the home page. You can turn off the auto-play of adverts, which does help lessen their impact on your daily use, but you will occasionally run into an advert for toothpaste or a car.
The remote is fairly large and littered with buttons which it seems to have rolled over from Panasonic's previous TV range. That means that some buttons might not function at times – the menu button, for example, doesn't open the menu in Fire OS, it just makes a clicking noise. I also wish that it had button backlighting to make it feel a little more premium.
This TV also comes equipped with Freely. This is a recent service that offers access to the UK's broadcast TV channels without an aerial. This service is still in its infancy and means you can position the TV wherever you like, as long as there's Wi-Fi access to stream your TV content. Freely is slow, however, with navigation taking longer than you might expect. I tested this alongside the Amazon Fire TV Omni Mini-LED and found that the Panasonic was a couple of seconds slower to change channels, which is unusual for a premium TV. This may be fixed with a future software update.
Gaming and peripherals: 9/10
The gaming experience on the Panasonic Z95A is great. I connected it to the Xbox Series X to play Forza Horizon and both the sound and Dolby Vision visuals added to a fun experience. There's 120Hz support for console gamers, as well as 144Hz for PC, along with VRR (Variable Refresh Rate) and ALLM (Auto Low Latency Mode), AMD Freesync Premium and Nvidia G-Sync.
To get the best out of your gaming session, there's a True Game mode to optimise various settings for your TV. This reduces input lag and focuses on delivering stutter-free gameplay. There's a useful Game Bar (which I assigned to the shortcut on the remote), which lets you glance at the main settings, allowing you to quickly tweak to optimise your experience.
There are two HDMI 2.1 ports to support these advanced features, one of which also carries the eARC, should you consider connecting to another sound system. There are two further HDMI 2.0 ports, which is a bit of an oddity considering some TVs at this level are all HDMI 2.1.
Technical specifications
I've mentioned a couple of times that the Panasonic Z95A uses the same panel as the LG G4 and both are top-end OLED televisions. They're natural rivals, too (along with the Philips OLED909 or OLED959). So let's look at how the Panasonic Z95A compares to the LG G4 on the spec sheet.
Telegraph verdict: 10/10
The Panasonic Z95A is an exceptional television, offering a premium viewing and sound experience, making it one of the best all-in-one solutions. The picture performance is especially impressive, providing a near-unbeatable level of immersion, with upscaling of lower-quality content so everything you watch looks great.
The built-in sound system delivers performance that's a step above most rival televisions at this level and while it offers great quality audio, it might be a barrier for those who want to use this TV as part of an existing home cinema system. The Fire OS gives a smooth connected experience, but can occasionally serve adverts and gives Amazon a high billing, which might turn some buyers off. Overall, however, it's a terrific television.
FAQs
What are the main Panasonic Z95A features?
The Panasonic Z95A features an advanced OLED display, offering 4K HDR and a built-in soundbar with Dolby Atmos. The TV uses the Fire TV platform, so is well-connected with apps and offers Alexa support.
What sizes are available for the Panasonic Z95A OLED TV?
The Z95A is only available in 55- and 65-inch sizes. There is a 77-inch model, but it's known as the Z93A.
Does the Panasonic Z95A support Dolby Vision and HDR10+?
The Panasonic Z95A supports all the latest formats for HDR, including Dolby Vision and HDR10+. It also supports HDR10 and HLG formats.
Is the Panasonic Z95A OLED TV suitable for gaming?
The Panasonic Z95A is a solid choice for gamers, with refresh rates up to 144Hz, a dedicated Game Mode, low input lag, VRR and ALLM, as well as Nvidia G-Sync and AMD Freesync Premium support.
What is the audio quality of the Panasonic Z95A OLED?
The Panasonic Z95A offers excellent sound quality thanks to the 5.1.2 sound system, which features a built-in soundbar, with height and width speakers built into the TV to make the audio more immersive. It also supports Dolby Atmos out of the box.