Why Panasonic is my go-to TV brand

• Listen to Oliver Trebilcock read this article.

It’s no secret TV picture quality is plateauing: choose a higher-end TV from a top brand and it’s highly likely you’ll think it looks good. But there are irritating trends too, from TVs assuming you’ll buy a separate soundbar, to menu ads so intrusive you feel conned having bought a premium TV. That's just one of the reasons why I’ve stuck with Panasonic for my latest TV.

Samsung and LG have been dominating the UK TV market for years, after taking a lead over former leader Sony as well as Panasonic in the 2000s. While these household TV names are still around, they’ve been increasingly struggling to compete, particularly on price.

Even so, I’ve yet to be convinced to switch to Samsung or LG – despite having a front seat seeing them top Which? testing for the past decade. When deciding on my latest TV set, I chose to stick with Panasonic – here I’ll explain why.

Best TVs for 2026 – whatever your TV preferences, reading our Which? expert advice tells on which brands and models offer the best performance and experience for your money is a great place to start.

What I look for in a TV

From working at Which?, I know that Samsung, LG, Sony and Panasonic can all make great TVs – it’s the specific model you choose that matters.

It also means I’m aware of the three TV trends that for me are going in the wrong direction.

The worst of these for me is advertising. Banner ads are common on the TV manufacturer menus these days. There have been times when these have taken up half the main menu screen on Samsung and LG TVs, and can also be found on TV screensavers – they’re invading your living room. Sometimes tweaks can be made by adjusting settings, but it’s an experience-damaging trend. Our outgoing Panasonic TV had a single ignorable small ad on the main menu screen, which in latter years always showed the same Panasonic shaver.

I understand that TV menus require ongoing support so some ads are needed when you keep a TV for years, but I don't like how aggressive some TV brands are getting with bombarding you with ads on the main menu. This for me is more important to the overall experience than potentially fractionally better performance from a rival TV brand.

Panasonic used to be one of the best in minimising ads on the menus of its TVs, but sadly not any more with Panasonic now using Fire TV. Unfortunately, all brands are pretty bad in this area these days. It's important to know what you're going to have to deal with here, to find your personal preference for the least-bad option for you.

A second concern is sound quality. While TVs have been looking better and better, they’ve also been getting thinner – and there’s no getting around physics: sound quality has been suffering. I’d rather have a TV a few cm thicker for better sound – there should be no need to get a soundbar unless you’re a true movie buff. Sound quality can vary wildly from model to model, but taking the average of all models we've currently reviewed, Panasonic gets pretty much an identical score in our testing compared to heavyweights Samsung and LG, as well as Sony, when it comes to sound quality. So Samsung and LG don't really have an edge in this area.

My third issue is TV remotes. Both Samsung and (to my disappointment) Sony's TV remote controls are now very minimal: they’re just like TV streaming stick remotes from Amazon or Roku. Sure, they’re cleaner and simpler, but they’re not as efficient to use as a more traditional Panasonic one or the acclaimed LG Magic Remote: they require more clicks to get to what you want. Sure, you can connect up a third-party remote, but that’s far from ideal.

With Panasonic, you get exactly the tried-and-tested remote that's proven effective for decades: channel buttons from 1-9, play/pause/rewind, change source or settings, and handy direct-access buttons to popular services: Amazon Video, Disney+, Netflix, YouTube, Freely and the full apps list.

TVs also continue to get ever larger: premium TV ranges now start from around 55 inches, which for me is pretty huge: my 50” old TV is reaching the limit of what I would be happy having in my living room, without it dominating the space.

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Why Panasonic is still a brand I look out for

I grew up with Panasonic and Sony tech, and continue to be fans of the brands, which for me have always delivered premium build quality – which I’m willing to pay a little more for, since I want my tech to last. 

My previous Panasonic TV from 2015 was fantastic until it finally gave up the ghost after a decade of intense service – its picture quality and sound quality was pretty much all I’d ever need from a TV. So naturally I’d prefer to stick with Panasonic, or at least Sony, unless I have a good reason not to.

In January, Sony announced it’s partnering with TCL, a Chinese giant soon expected to topple Samsung’s 20-year crown as the world’s leading TV manufacturer. This joint venture, launching in 2027 using the Sony Bravia name but with TCL having the controlling 51% stake, should be a renewed boost for Sony TVs. How much this will affect the experience for longstanding Sony TV buyers remains to be seen.

Panasonic, like Sony, also now has partnerships with TCL. TCL has been responsible for much of Panasonic’s TV production in recent years, as well as Turkey’s Vestel for its budget and mid-range sets (the local TV repair guy we had take a look at our old TV wasn’t too complimentary from his experience with the reliability of Turkish-made Panasonic TVs). As of early 2025, Panasonic's CEO said it is trying to reform itself to be as efficient as Chinese rivals.

That said, Panasonic has had to make compromises. When we finally ditched our outgoing Panasonic TV in 2025, the only app we used that still worked was YouTube (even BBC stopped supporting iPlayer on it) – meaning we were increasingly reliant our Roku streaming stick. Having gone through various iterations, Panasonic has struggled to maintain its in-house onboard menus, and in 2024 it decided to switch to Amazon’s Fire TV menu system for its flagship models. This is the one concern I had sticking with Panasonic for my next TV.

What sold me on Panasonic's 55-inch set

To begin my TV research, I first filtered by Panasonic on which.co.uk, and then zoned in on models 48-60 inches. Our existing 50” TV was already pretty close to the limit of what we could fit between the fireplace and bay window in our 1930s Surrey home, and I knew 55” is what some higher-end TVs start from (although it’s still big in my eyes), so that’s what I was after.

Interestingly, even the top-end Which?-reviewed Panasonics were cheaper than what we spent on our non-flagship Panasonic TV in 2015, before adjusting for inflation as well: TV prices have clearly come down a lot since then. I hope to only buy a TV once a decade or so, so I’m willing to spend more. I was pleased to see that unlike Sony and Samsung, Panasonic is still offering the traditional-style remote with channel numbers, play/pause button and many other features available with a single touch of a button.

The 55” Panasonic TV-55Z85AEB (Z85) from its 2024 range caught my eye from Which? reviews – and I found the 55” Panasonic TV-55Z95AEB (Z95), which is a 2024 Panasonic flagship just above the Z85 in its range. Of course working at Which?, I know you get much better value for money if you buy the previous year’s TV range in spring-summer while they’re still available after the latest models have launched: this means you can get a high-end model for far less than it cost at launch.

We bought our 2015 TV from John Lewis, taking advantage of John Lewis offering to unpack and install it for us. This time, we found the Z85 and Z95 were available from Richer Sounds, for a heavily discounted £999 and £1,599 respectively as they were reaching end of life. While Richer Sounds didn’t offer to install the TV, they did offer to extend the warranty to six years, a year longer than the five offered by Panasonic.

The Z95 had a key advantage: it has a built-in soundbar below the display, and strongly advertises its sound credentials. This greatly appealed, since I wanted to avoid buying a separate soundbar and knew TV sound was going in the wrong direction. Unlike many TVs, this isn’t a super-thin TV focussed on wall-mounting (although you can wall-mount it): an ultra-thin TV isn’t something I personally needed, and having some thickness means the sound can be better.

My research also helped uncover the final clincher for me to buying this Z95 TV. While it uses the Amazon Fire TV menu system (which I’m not a particular fan of – I prefer the less busy Roku), the TV has a setting you can enable which means the TV always powers on to the last source you used. So, if you switch the TV to the Roku menu before you turn it off (since I'm also using it with a Roku streaming stick), you hardly ever need to see the Fire TV menu. It quickly becomes second nature.

Many of the most useful TV apps, including Netflix, Disney+ and YouTube, also have direct-access buttons on the remote control, so you don’t need to use the Fire TV menu to reach these either. The number of TV functions accessible via buttons on the remote control means I rarely find I ever need to visit the Fire TV menu, and can live with it the few times that I do.

The Fire TV menu has the classic poor interface common on many TV menus, where there’s a small bar of icons that you’re actually after, and most of the space is reserved for a mix of ads and featured/recommended content, which are also effectively ads.

However, one key silver lining for me here is I’m much more confident that this Fire TV interface will remain functional into the long term, unlike my previous TV’s apps.

My experience of using my new Panasonic TV

For me, it’s near-perfect in every way. The picture quality and sound quality aren’t actually that much better than my previous Panasonic (and it’s not an all-metal build like my previous Panasonic), but since my old model was more expensive and was already exceptional, this was expected – I'm glad I choise the flagship model with the integrated soundbar, as it meant the sound quality held up. I was also pleased to find out it’s made in Vietnam, unlike some of the cheaper Turkish-made Panasonic models.

The one time I spotted an issue with my old Panasonic’s picture quality was in How to Train Your Dragon 2, when Toothless zipped in the air across the screen: his ghost stuck on the screen longer than intended. This was fixed with the Z95.

The Z95 also fixed the only other quibble I had with my old TV: in 2021’s Dune, there’s a scene near the beginning where the protagonist Paul is whispering with his mother over breakfast, where I would struggle to hear what was being said. Not so with the Z95 I was pleased to discover: it’s still quiet but voices are clear even on default settings.

There are only two minor oddities with the Z95 for me. First, it’s surprisingly slow to turn on: there’s a good 10 seconds or so for it to start up fully; it makes no response intitially and you wonder if it’s actually registered your input – then it finally responds. It’s just enough time to get comfortable on the sofa.

Secondly, I’m not a fan of Freely, which is the default service it uses to access traditional TV channels (it’s my first TV I’ve owned that defaults to the TV menu rather than BBC One). I’m used to Freeview, and Freely feels very slow to load on the TV even though we have a relatively fast internet connection: it’s certainly not suitable for old-fashioned channel hopping.

The Freely channel list on the TV also doesn’t show what’s playing on the current channel in the top-right hand corner like it does on Freeview, so you can’t preview the show as you browse the list. I’ll probably sort this in the future buy connecting up a separate Freeview box or by connecting an aerial to use Panasonic's (rather than Freely's) electronic programme guide, which does have a picture-in-picture display.

This would have been a bigger issue for me a decade ago, but I mainly watch content through apps these days rather than live TV. Do note that Freely is an optional way to watch TV through wi-fi, and Which? doesn't test it yet: we think the EPG you see when using an aerial is excellent on Panasonic TVs – so I just need to get round to doing that.

One other personal issue I had to fix was connecting up legacy TV tech I have: an original-generation TiVo box for recording live TV (which is still supported via enthusiasts – still handy for skipping ads) and a VHS player, as the TV doesn’t have analogue sockets on the back. I fixed this by purchasing an ADC (Scart to HDMI): I originally bought a cheap one (£13) and the picture was extremely dark and not fixable by tweaking picture settings, so I bought a better one for £35 which was good enough once I’d tweaked the picture settings to brighten up the blacks. The TV lets you tweak picture settings for different sources independently, so this didn’t affect the picture quality elsewhere.

Overall, I’m 100% satisfied I stuck with the Panasonic Z95. It’s sleek with stunning picture quality, superb sound (without the horrible grumble I dislike with soundbars) and I particularly love the Panasonic remote control – including its convenient dedicated play/pause button, which has been dropped from most rival remote controls.

The best 55-inch TVs: top picks from Which? experts

My tips when searching for a perfect TV

It’s easy to know what TVs offer the best picture and sound quality: simply check our Which? reviews, where you can use the filters to narrow down your choice by test scores and things like screen size and the features you’re after. Don’t worry too much about the screen technology: if it’s got a high Which? rating, then the picture’s great no matter if it’s an OLED, QLED or LCD.

That said, the Which? reviews show that while there are lots of TVs best avoided, there are plenty of good ones too. And so like me, you have the luxury to be picky on what best suits you.

Think about how you actually use your TV on a day-to-day basis, and make sure to prioritise TVs that are great at that. So if you’re like me and don’t want to buy a soundbar, make sure the TV is particularly praised for its sound. And if you also dislike on-menu ads, look for TVs where the menu ads are less intrusive.

Plus remember the remote control is a big part of the user experience with a TV – unless of course you always connect up a TV streaming service like Roku with its own remote. If you do use the TV remote, then LG’s Magic Remote and Panasonic’s traditional remote offer a very different experience to Samsung and Sony’s minimalist remote controls, and this can have far more influence on your experience with your TV than minor differences in picture quality.

Most importantly though, whatever TV you look for, I’d strongly recommend buying the previous year’s models in spring or summer, after the latest models have launched. You’ll save a fortune by doing this, particularly with higher end models. The easiest way to find the best deals is to head over to our dedicated TV deals page, which we constantly update throughout the year.