gdgt

The ST50 handily outperforms its predecessor, with deeper blacks, more accurate color, and an improved bright-room image. The picture is so good, in fact, that it scored the same as the flagship VT30 I lauded last year, and in person it's tough to tell the two apart.

Panasonic’s TC-P55ST50 makes a solid case for giving a plasma a shot at the living room, especially for viewers who like their black levels inky and their colors resplendent.

Should You Buy It? If you want this size and you're sold on plasma, then yeah. The ST50 is a solid television, and it's a good value for the money. The picture quality is noticeably better than similarly priced sets, both plasma and LED.

The Panasonic P50ST50's in many ways outstanding pictures deliver a salutary reminder in these LED-dominated times of why plasma was first invented. It also reminds us why, for us, a top-notch plasma TV continues to produce the most natural and certainly most cinematic pictures the TV world has to...

It’s a rare case of an HDTV which we’d recommend to just about anyone.

...an absolutely fantastic mid-range plasma, offering an impressive level of image accuracy and some of the best blacks we have seen, especially at such a competitive price point.

If you’re a serious movie fan, the Panasonic TX-P42ST50 is a quite brilliant TV for its money. Dim the lights and you’ll get HD pictures to die for, with stunning contrast, rich and natural colours, bags of detail and superb motion clarity.

Based on picture performance alone, this could just as well be Panasonic’s flagship model.