Review of Panasonic's VX300 studio reference monitor

[Robert Zohn]

Here's our initial comments on the VX300 after Ed Johnson just spent many hours calibrating and evaluating with Wendy and myself. We compared the VX300 against the VT30, PN59D8000 and Elite 60"

First, I want everyone to know that everything was good, nothing bad to report at this time. Tomorrow Kevin Miller is stopping by and Saturday evening D-Nice is flying in to do his evaluation and I may have him calibrate and save his calibration in a separate memory. So stay tuned for more professional comments.

The monitor calibrated beautifully gamma set at 2.35 perfectly flat from 10 to 60 IRE with very small bumps above 70 IRE, but the Delta E was below 1.5 and the gray scale was also excellent with a Delta E of less than 1.5. Kelvin was easily set to 6520 K

The image quality was simply stunning and in comparison to the very best TVs on the shoot-out wall the VX300 looked the best. It has a more natural look, closer to reality, better color accuracy than even Samsung's PN59D8000, which BTW won for the best color accuracy in our recent shoot-out. Skin tones for black, Asian and Caucasians was dead on perfect. They have a pure life like accuracy.

The image is more finely detailed that makes the picture look life like and for lack of a better term it actually looks sharper, but with no noise whatsoever. Which brings me to the built-in processing, which must be one of the factors in delivering the exceptional reference quality picture.

The MLL is .004 with a 1% pattern. We could not measure the IRE with a zero IRE signal as the panel shuts off like the LED TVs do. With a zero signal feed the VX300 measures .000

This display has a lot of possibilities as you can see from our early evaluation, plus the endless special settings that only a studio reference monitor would have. For example in the "Advanced Setting" you can select the following color spaces:

1. Rec 709, (which of course, we calibrated to)

2. Digital Cinema, (I think Hollywood authors to Digital Cinema)

3. EBU, (European Broadcast Union)

4. SMPTE C, (For SD material Rec 601)

5. And finally Custom (so you can invent your own color space)

3D is awesome and we did not have time to calibrate the 3D mode tonight, but I did pop in Avatar. The depth, color, and what looked like zero cross talk made this epic stereoscopic experience fun to watch again.

All in all a beautiful display for the most discerning enthusiasts.

More to come over the next few days.

-Robert