Panasonic Viera TX-58DX902B review – truly stunning Ultra HD image quality

Speakers, Connections and Remote Controls

It’s worth noting the audio quality of the DX902. It’s one of the better sounding televisions I’ve seen in recent times. Here the added thickness has helped the speakers deliver a better-rounded, fuller sound compared to the thin, tinny noise produced by most modern televisions. Dialogue was nice and clear when watching television shows and there was even a little bass impact during films. For once I didn’t immediately want to connect external speakers or a soundbar.

There’s a good assortment of inputs including four HDMI 2.0 ports that support HDCP 2.2. HDMI 2 also supports ARC if you need to send audio back to an AV receiver or soundbar. There’s also one USB3 and two USB2 ports and an SD card slot. Audio outputs include RCA phono and an optical and headphone output. Wi-Fi is also built-in, in addition to an Ethernet port.

Two different remotes are included. The larger standard remote has all of the controls you would expect including shortcuts to Netflix and apps. A secondary, smaller touch-based remote control is also included. Swiping the leather-like touchpad isn’t very responsive, however, so more often than not I found myself preferring the tactility of the direction buttons below instead.

There’s also a microphone built into the smaller remote and the television will recognise basic voice prompts and can do searches of certain apps such as YouTube. I never found it particularly useful, especially as it wouldn’t recognise voice prompts to change to a certain channel by name, although the channel number would at least work. The results of YouTube searches sometimes didn’t find the content I wanted even when a text-based search managed it just fine. In truth, I mainly stuck to the standard full-size remote control.

Firefox OS

The Firefox OS-based ‘my Home Screen 2.0’ software is again used, much like with Panasonic’s Viera TX-40DX700 I reviewed recently. There’s nothing drastically different here and it looks identical. You’re able to pin content to the home screen for easy access and live television is presented via the Freeview Play interface, which lets you navigate back in the EPG to directly access on-demand content from the terrestrial channels. It works as slickly here as it did on the DX700.

There’s also a dual tuner so you’re able to record one channel while watching another. In order to record, you’ll need to connect external storage via one of the USB ports. The usual array of apps are available, too, meaning Netflix and Amazon Instant Video are present, both of which stream Ultra HD HDR content to make the most of the TV’s specification, though support for HDR is very limited at present.

Conclusion

The Panasonic Viera TX-58DX902B is simply a stunning television that excels in terms of picture quality. It’s able to handle both Ultra HD and HD content wonderfully, producing engaging and beautiful image quality regardless of the source. Of course, it does best with Ultra HD and HDR content but it’s the all-round quality that really impresses and will be key over the next few years of gradual transition. Even sound quality was a genuinely pleasant surprise.

Overall, the Viera TX-58DX902B is rightfully Panasonic’s flagship television and a benchmark for this year’s other flagship televisions. It certainly doesn’t come cheap but you won’t be disappointed. It’s now left to see what the likes of LG, Samsung and Sony produce for their flagship models but this is the one to beat. Buy the Panasonic Viera TX-58DX920B now from John Lewis