Panasonic Viera TX-42AS740B review

Unfortunately, the TV’s passive 3D capabilities are just as bad as the AS650B’s, and we saw a lot of crosstalk regardless of where we were sitting. We also found that only the middle of the screen was in focus. Avatar’s Na’vi subtitles were particularly bad, as we could barely read them unless we were sitting at a very specific angle. This isn’t the TV to buy if you want to watch 3D films.

Thankfully, the AS740B’s excellent range of catch-up TV services go a long way to make up for its poor 3D. Every 2014 Panasonic TV comes with Freeview HD and Freesat’s Freetime feature built in, giving you access to BBC iPlayer, ITV Player, 4oD and Demand 5 as well as a week’s worth of TV catch-up TV. There are also Netflix and Wuaki.tv apps, as well as BBC Sport, BBC News, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook. 

The AS740B has plenty of connection ports, including three HDMI ports, one of which is audio return channel (ARC) compatible, which means you can use it to send audio from your TV back to a compatible speaker system. There’s also a SCART port, component and composite inputs, a Common Interface slot, an Ethernet port, an SDXC card reader, three USB ports (one of which is USB3), a 3.5mm headphone jack and an optical S/PDIF output. It’s unlikely you’ll need the Ethernet port, though, as the TV has built-in Wi-Fi.

The Panasonic Viera TX-AS740B is a decent TV with good picture quality, but ultimately we feel that its cheaper cousin, the AS640B, is the better value set if you want a TV with Freetime. Otherwise, we’d recommend the 42in version of the award-winning LG LB730V, which at time of writing costs much less.