OPINION: Another week in the world of TV and another peek at what’s coming later in 2025 – this time it was Panasonic’s range of 4K OLEDs, Mini LED and LCD TVs.
The event was held at its European HQ in Wiesbaden (which seems to be a very pleasant town), and there I had more of a look at its 4K OLEDs, it’s new Mini LED and it’s less expensive range of models for the more budget conscious.
Don’t ask about how much they’ll cost because that wasn’t announced. Don’t ask about when they’ll be on the market because that wasn’t confirmed.
But more than likely they’ll arrive later in summer 2025 onwards, and because of that tardiness, they’ll be more expensive than their rivals who will have been on the market for a few months.
2025 TVs are a go
It’s an issue I alluded to in my thoughts ahead of the trip, in that 2025 could be a make or break year for the Panasonic TV department. The chatter among Panasonic higher-ups seemed positive, but a couple days after the event Panasonic announced that they’ll be cutting 10,000 jobs across its global workforce, and the positivity and smiles of the event could be viewed in a slightly different way.
But let’s stick with the TVs. At first blush the range looks to have been slimmed down from previous years when it seemed as if Panasonic was launching an all-out assault on the TV market with as many models as possible.
For one, there are no Google TV models this year; the range split between Amazon’s Fire TV, TiVo and a TV with no smarts in the W30A.
There are new models, of course, there are continuations from 2024 – if memory serves, anything that ends in an ‘A’ rolls over from the previous year while the models ending in ‘B’ are brand new. Most models are heading to the UK and the ones that are Europe-specific will get a silver pedestal stand. We do like our silver stands in the UK, Panasonic. Just sayin’.
More of the same?
There’s a familiarity about Panasonic’s 2025 TV line-up, which is a finger that could be pointed at every TV manufacturer but I could point more fingers at Panasonic than others in that it – along with Sony and a couple of others – are playing catch up with the Korean and Chinese brands. My first impressions are that it all looked good – assured even – but it didn’t quite blow my socks off.
I think the one thing that you can’t ding Samsung or LG for is that they’re always trying to innovate each year. When I saw a preview of Samsung’s TVs in Korea last year, it was genuinely forward-thinking in terms of moving the viewing experience ahead. Although I’m not necessarily onboard with how AI dominates the conversation, some of what Samsung showed was impressive.
There was less AI chat in the Panasonic presentation – arguably it wasn’t even a focal point of discussion – and while the Panasonic Z95B looked and sounded great in its new form, better than the Z95A did, but it feel as if while the form had changed it was more of the same. Better, but still familiar.
And while that ‘same’ is of a high quality – higher than some other TV brands that I shan’t name – I do wonder whether it is enough to grab the attention of a customer when faced with ten similar-looking TVs in a retail store or Amazon and Currys spitting TVs out on their homepage and search seemingly at random.
Panasonic needs to come out swinging
I still feel that Panasonic needs a USP that it can hang its TV division on. The way Samsung talks about QLED, you would have thought they created it (they didn’t but it is synonymous with them) and, of course, they sell the most TVs.
Panasonic has (or had) its ‘Hollywood to the Home’ branding a few years back but both LG and Sony have planted their flags in that territory, and Panasonic has slightly cooled its jets on that messaging.
There’s no brand (not even Samsung) that pushes Mini LED as much as TCL, while both it, Hisense, and Samsung and playing Rock-Em, Sock-Em robots in the large screen TV market. Where does this leave Panasonic? In a similar way to Philips, I’m not sure.
Panasonic, along with Sony, are the master craftsmen of the TV market. They take their time – arguably a little too long – and their TVs aren’t always the most affordable – arguably a little too expensive, but the quality is there.
I don’t think there’s another TV brand that does picture quality in quite as natural and authentic a way as Panasonic and Sony. I also don’t think anyone else makes TVs that sound as good as they do either.
The question of the last few years has been whether Panasonic can get enough visibility – and not only that, to wait for those TVs as they’re bound to come in later than LG, Samsung, Hisense, TCL and Sony. That is a big queue to be stuck in.
Are Panasonic’s 2025 TVs ‘enough’ to make a mark? Here’s hoping they are, and if they do succeed, I don’t think it’ll be down to the quality of the TVs – they’ve always been good – it’ll be down to how well it convince consumers that a TV with the Panasonic badge is worth as much if not more than one with a Samsung or Hisense on it.
