Panasonic Z85A OLED TV Review

The Panasonic Z85A has a premium design that looks fantastic in any room. Its thin bezels give the TV a sleek look when viewed from the front.

The stand is made of metal and is surrounded by a plastic enclosure. It holds the TV well and lifts the screen about three inches above the table, so most soundbars fit underneath without blocking the screen.

Footprint of the 65-inch stand: 15.7" x 11.8"

The back section that houses the inputs is quite thick and made of plastic. When facing the front, the inputs are located on the left side of the TV, but they're easily accessible even when the TV is wall-mounted. There are clips on the back to help with cable management.

The Panasonic Z85A has outstanding build quality. With the exception of the back section that houses the inputs, the TV is made entirely of aluminum, which gives it a premium feel. There's some minor flexing near the VESA mounting points, but this is typical and doesn't cause any issues. There are no issues with build quality, but the TV emits a slight buzzing noise.

The Panasonic Z85A has remarkable contrast and a nearly infinite contrast ratio. Due to OLED's self-lit pixels, the TV displays bright highlights next to perfect inky blacks, making it very impressive in a dark room.

Since OLEDs don't use local dimming and instead have individual pixels that can be lit up to their maximum brightness next to pixels that are turned off, there's no blooming when bright elements are surrounded by deep blacks.

The TV is an OLED and has no backlight, so its self-lit pixels give it the same performance as a TV with perfect local dimming and no zone transitions. We still film the zone transition video on the TV, so you can see how it compares to a TV with local dimming.

There's no difference in dark scene behavior between the calibrated picture modes and when the TV is set in Game Mode.

The Panasonic Z85A has good HDR brightness, making highlights stand out during darker scenes. Combined with its remarkable contrast, this TV provides an impactful HDR viewing experience. Unfortunately, due to its aggressive Automatic Brightness Limiter (ABL), large bright scenes are significantly dimmer than smaller, specular highlights.

These measurements are after calibrating the HDR white point with the following settings:

• HDR Picture Mode: Professional 1
• Ambient Sensor: Off
• Luminance Level: 100
• Contrast: 100
• Peak Luminance: High
• Gamma: 2.2
• EOTF Type: Auto
• HDR Tone Map: Normal
• Color Temperature: Warm 2

There's no noticeable difference with HDR brightness when the TV is set into Game Mode.

These measurements are after calibrating the HDR white point with the following settings:

• HDR Picture Mode: True Game
• Ambient Sensor: Off
• Luminance Level: 100
• Contrast: 100
• Peak Luminance: High
• Gamma: 2.2
• EOTF Type: Auto
• HDR Tone Map: Clipping
• Clipping Threshold: 2000
• Color Temperature: Warm 2

The TV has exceptional PQ EOTF tracking. It follows the curve almost perfectly until it approaches the TV's maximum brightness. With content mastered at 600 or 1000 nits, there is a gradual roll-off near the TV's peak brightness to maintain some detail in bright highlights. With content mastered at 4000 nits, the roll-off happens much sooner to preserve detail in very bright highlights.

The Panasonic Z85A has decent SDR brightness and overcomes glare in a moderately lit room. Unfortunately, it's not bright enough to overcome glare in a well-lit room. 

These measurements are after calibration with the following settings:

• Picture Mode: Professional 1
• Ambient Sensor: Off
• Luminance Level: 100
• Contrast: 90
• Peak Luminance: High
• Gamma: 2.2
• Color Temperature: Warm 2

The TV has an excellent color gamut. It covers nearly the entire range of colors in the DCI-P3 color space, but most colors are a bit undersaturated and off the mark. Its coverage of the Rec.2020 color space used mostly in some nature documentaries and animated films is good, but all colors are undersaturated and inaccurate, with greens and cyans faring the worst.

The TV has very good color volume. It displays dark, saturated colors very well, and its ability to display bright whites is outstanding. Unfortunately, as with all WOLED panels, bright colors are a bit washed out, as the TV relies on the bright white subpixel to achieve the brightest highlights, which dilutes color purity.

This color washout is very noticeable in the SDR gamut rings in the CIELAB color space. The ring at the highest lightness level shows a very large decrease in coverage. These gamut ring results are an early sneak preview of something we're working on for our next test methodology update. Stay tuned for more!

DCI-P3:

• Gamut Rings
• Results

BT.2020

• Gamut Rings
• Results

The TV has remarkable pre-calibration SDR accuracy. Its white balance and color accuracy are nearly perfect, with very minor errors that aren't visible with real content. Its color temperature is a bit warmer than the target of 6500K, but it's barely noticeable. Gamma is close to 2.2, but some bright scenes are a bit too bright.

The TV has exceptional accuracy after calibration. Any minor errors in white balance, color temperature, and gamma are gone, and colors are even more accurate than before.

See our full calibration settings.

The Panasonic Z85A has excellent gray uniformity. If you look closely, there are some very faint vertical lines on the panel, but these aren't noticeable from a normal viewing distance.

Because OLEDs can turn off individual pixels, the TV has incredible black uniformity with no blooming or halo effect around bright objects.

The TV has an incredibly wide viewing angle that remains mostly consistent from almost any angle, but there is some color shifting and a very slight green tint at more aggressive angles. Still, it's a fantastic choice for watching TV in a group setting.

The TV has incredible reflection handling. Its glossy screen finish significantly reduces the intensity of indirect reflections, like when you have glare from a ceiling light that isn't directly facing the screen. It also does an excellent job of reducing the intensity of direct reflections, like a lamp positioned in front of the screen.

The TV has good HDR native gradient handling. There's some noticeable banding in grays and bright greens, but all other colors have minimal banding or no banding at all.

The Panasonic Z85A has good low-quality content smoothing. It does an excellent job at preserving details, but it's only decent at actually smoothing out the image, so there is still some noticeable macro-blocking in dark scenes.

The TV uses a WOLED panel with a WRGB pixel structure where all four pixels are never lit at the same time. Due to its subpixel layout, it has minor issues with displaying text on Windows since ClearType isn't well optimized to non-RGB subpixel layouts, but most users won't be bothered by this.

The white subpixel does an excellent job helping the TV display bright whites, but it dilutes the color purity of greens and reds, as seen on the TV's spectral power distribution (SPD).

The Panasonic Z85A has a nearly instantaneous response time, resulting in incredibly clear motion with almost no blur behind fast-moving objects. Due to the sample-and-hold nature of OLED technology, there's still some persistence blur when gaming at 60Hz, but it's not noticeable at higher refresh rates.

This TV doesn't have a traditional backlight and doesn't use pulse-width modulation (PWM) to dim each pixel, but it's not completely flicker-free. There's a slight dip in brightness that corresponds to the TV's refresh rate. This differs from the PWM flicker on TVs with LED backlights and occurs on every OLED we've tested. It's not noticeable, and most people won't be bothered by this, but it can still bother people who are extra sensitive to flicker.

It does exhibit flicker-like behavior in low-luminance sections of the screen that resembles pulse amplitude modulation (PAM). This means that bright sections of the screen are flicker-free, but darker sections have very minor flicker present. Fortunately, this isn't noticeable with real content.

The Panasonic Z85A has an optional black frame insertion (BFI) feature that reduces the appearance of persistence blur caused by the TV's nearly instantaneous response time. However, it can only insert black frames at a 60Hz refresh rate, and it doesn't work very well, so the image is blurry, and there's some ghosting present.

This TV has an optional motion interpolation feature to improve the clarity of motion. It does a good job at smoothing out slower scenes, with only some minor artifacts present. In faster-moving scenes, it can't keep up, and there are distracting artifacts, image duplication, and haloing.

Unfortunately, due to the TV's nearly instantaneous pixel response time, there's stutter with low frame rate content, which is most noticeable during slow panning shots.

The Panasonic Z85 TV automatically removes judder from 24Hz sources and the internal apps. To remove judder from 60p and 60i sources, like a cable box, you must enable the Accurate IFC setting. Unfortunately, movies and TV shows aren't judder-free when BFI is enabled because the BFI feature only flickers at 60Hz.

The Panasonic Z85 supports FreeSync, HDMI Forum VRR, and G-SYNC, ensuring a nearly tear-free gaming experience from any VRR-enabled source. It works well across a wide refresh rate range and supports sources with Low-Frame-Compensation (LFC), which ensures your games remain nearly tear-free even when your frame rate drops very low.

This TV has incredibly low input lag when set into True Game, which ensures a very responsive gaming experience with very little delay between your actions with your controller or mouse and the action on-screen.

The Panasonic Z85 supports all common resolutions up to 4k @ 120Hz on two of its four HDMI ports. Chroma 4:4:4 signals are displayed properly with most supported resolutions when the TV's 'HDMI Setting' is set to Pure Direct, which is important for text clarity. Unfortunately, the TV doesn't support 1440p @ 120Hz with chroma 4:4:4.

The Panasonic Z85 is fully compatible with everything the PS5 offers, like 1440p @ 120Hz and 4k @ 120Hz, as well as HDMI Forum VRR. 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.

The Panasonic Z85 is fully compatible with everything the Xbox Series X|S offers, 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.

The Panasonic Z85A has HDMI 2.1 bandwidth on HDMI ports 1 and 2, with both supporting up to 4k @ 120Hz. Unfortunately, the HDMI 2 port is also the eARC port, so you lose a high bandwidth port when you plug a soundbar into the TV. The TV supports Dolby Vision and HDR10+, but it only has an ATSC 1.0 tuner, so you can't watch 4k content over the air.

The TV supports eARC, which lets you pass high-quality, uncompressed audio to a compatible receiver or soundbar through an HDMI cable. Unfortunately, it doesn't support DTS audio formats commonly used on Blu-rays.

The Panasonic Z85 has a mediocre frequency response. Like most TVs, it barely produces any bass, but the speakers do get quite loud. The sound is well-balanced at moderate volume levels, making dialogue easy to understand. Unfortunately, the sound becomes unbalanced near and at maximum volume.

The TV's distortion handling is decent. There's no audible distortion at moderate listening levels, but there's audible distortion near and at max volume.

The TV runs the Fire TV OS, which is smooth and easy to use. Unfortunately, a bug prevents certain settings, like motion interpolation, from working despite being turned on. To fix this, you must enter the 'Home' menu and then return to the input or internal app you're using.

Unfortunately, like almost all TVs on the market, the smart interface contains ads, and you can't disable them.

The TV has a great selection of apps, so it's easy to find your favorite content. You can also cast content from your phone or play videos from a USB stick.

The remote is almost identical to the ones included with other TVs that use the Fire TV OS, with quick access buttons for the most popular streaming services. You can use the built-in microphone to switch inputs, change apps, search within apps, and ask for the weather and time. Unfortunately, you can't use voice commands to change settings.

There's a single button on the bottom of the TV that can be used to switch inputs, adjust the volume, change channels, and power the TV on/off.

• Setup guide
• Remote (with 2x AAA batteries)
• Zip tie for cable management