Panasonic Viera TX-L32DT30B review

Colour become less vibrant and dimmer when wearing the glasses, as for all 3D TVs, but the panel keeps contrast balanced and retains detail in dark scenes. We found the 3D glasses fairly comfortable to wear; however, with prescription glasses on they’re less comfortable and their thin design means that they’re not for everyone.

It’s also a shame that the glasses have to be bought separately, as not even a single pair is included with this TV. At around £130 a set, that means you’re going to have to add at least £260 on to the cost of this TV to kit out a two-person household. Really, if a 3D is going to be sold, it should include at least one set of glasses.

As consumers seem to call out for it, the TX-L32DT30B has a 2D-to-3D conversion mode built in. As usual, it’s not particularly good and our advice is to steer clear of it and watch 2D footage in 2D and 3D footage in 3D.

Then there’s the matter of the screen size: 3D works best when it fills your entire peripheral vision helping fool your brain into creating a realistic 3D image. On a 32in set, this just isn’t the case and it tends to mean that the 3D effect is less pronounced. We tend to think that if you want a 3D set for a living room, a larger screen of 37in plus (42in or higher is preferred) is preferable.

It stands to reason that the vast majority of footage that you’ll be watching will be 2D and this TV is equally as adept at that. Although the TV is an LED edge lit system, it has a local dimming mode (not available in Cinema or True Cinema modes) that boosts contrast. It does a pretty good job, but where’s there’s really high contrast, such as white text on a black background, white tends to err towards grey. Even without this mode, contrast is excellent for an edge-lit set, with deep blacks and decent whites. Our one minor complaint, is that there was a bit of backlight bleed at the centre-bottom of the screen, until we turned down the set’s brightness.

Colours are fantastic, with the opening parkour scene of Casino Royale, looking stunning with the contrast between the bright vegetation, sandy floor and multi-coloured garments of the crowd. As we found with the TX-L32E30B, you can adjust the set and have realistic colours, or pump the settings up and have super-vibrant scenes.

If the thought of unrealistic colours really bothers you, there’s an ISFccc calibration menu that gives you control over individual colour channels and means that you can have this set professional set up to produce realistic colours.