Samsung’s PN64F8500 plasma and Panasonic’s ZT60 plasma scored the top honors at the 9th annual Flat Panel Shootout Evaluation conducted by integrator Value Electronics in Scarsdale, N.Y.
The final results based on the votes of the attendees and a panel of experts, including Dr. Larry Weber, inventor of the modern plasma display, revealed overwhelmingly that plasma TV performs better than LCD LEDs when analyzing black level, contrast ratio, color accuracy, moving resolution/sharpness, day mode (high ambient light) and general content/video quality
Both among consumers and the judges, the plasma TVs scored two to almost three points higher on average in nearly every category, on a scale of 1 to 10 (see scorecard below).
“The results came out so close that it is difficult to award one winner,” says Robert Zohn, owner of Value Electronics, speaking of the close scores given to the plasma TVs. “The Panasonic ZT60 won the popular vote in important categories, black and overall picture quality, but the Samsung F8500 has the highest scores overall and also won in important categories, like contrast ratio and day modes.
“In the past nine years, it has always been very clear who won our Flat Panel Shootout event. The attendees liked the higher light output of the F8500, so when tabulating the ballots the F8500 is the winner. They saw the F8500 as even sharper, which I would assume is also because of the brighter image in low and high ambient light conditions. Many participants told me the F8500 whites looked cleaner, brighter and in their opinion, whiter,” he notes.
“So the public has spoken and we therefore crown Samsung’s F8500 series PDP the new “King of HDTV” for 2013,” concludes Zohn.
Zohn congratulated Samsung’s development engineers for making the most significant advancement in PDP technology this year.
Panasonic Tops Among Experts
Among the panel of experts, the Panasonic VT60/ZT60 plasmas were selected as their personal choice, but only slightly.
One judge noted, “To me, and just for example, the Panasonic VT60 is a 10 and the Samsung F8500 is a 9, [but] I don’t care about panel brightness above 30fL.”
Zohn notes that all of the 2013 displays in the event were “exceptional and have made significant advancements in picture quality, build quality and design. So my sincerest congratulations to Sony, Panasonic and Samsung for stepping up the game on PDP and LED display technology advancements.”
Note: Electronic House has several of these same models in for review now.
The final scores show how each TV stacks up.
Read: What Pros Look for in an HDTV
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