Panasonic W70B  TV Review

Unfortunately, the Panasonic W70 has poor brightness in HDR. It's not bright enough to bring out specular highlights in any scene, and even bright outdoor scenes don't stand out at all. It also lacks any optional advanced picture processing settings like dynamic tone mapping to boost brightness in certain scenes. It's not as bright as the otherwise comparable Hisense QD6QF.

Switching to Game Mode increases brightness on test slides by almost 20%. This doesn't translate to most real content, though, and there's no noticeable difference. It's still not bright enough to bring out bright highlights, and games in HDR are still flat and dull overall.

The peak brightness in SDR is sub-par. It's bright enough to overcome some indirect glare in a bright room, but it's not a good choice for direct light or rooms with a lot of windows.

This TV has poor contrast. The native contrast of the panel is decent, but it's worse than similar entry-level models like the Samsung Q7F 2025. It lacks a local dimming feature, so blacks are raised and look washed out in scenes with any bright areas.

The TV doesn't have a local dimming feature, so there are no lighting zones. This means there's no halo effect around bright elements against a dark background, but the entire image looks gray and washed out.

This TV doesn't have a local dimming feature, so it can't adjust the backlight of individual zones to brighten up highlights without impacting the rest of the image. This means that there are no distracting flickers or brightness changes as bright highlights move between dimming zones.

Switching to Game Mode doesn't result in any noticeable difference in dark scene performance.

The black uniformity of this TV is just decent. There are cloudy spots throughout the screen, and they're noticeable in dark scenes in real content. There's no local dimming feature to reduce the backlight intensity behind dark areas of the screen.

This TV has disappointing color volume. It can't even really display the full range of colors used in the BT.709 color space for SDR content, and colors are dull and lifeless. Overall, it simply can't deliver a very lifelike experience. There's also a significant decrease in color saturation in very light scenes, similar to the Samsung Q7F 2025.

This TV has poor color volume in HDR. Dark tones lack depth due to its lack of local dimming and low contrast. It's not very bright, either, so both bright colors and pure whites simply aren't bright enough to stand out.

The Panasonic W70B is surprisingly accurate out of the box in SDR. The factory calibration is nearly perfect, with no noticeable issues with the white balance or color accuracy. The color temperature is also nearly perfect, and gamma closely tracks the 2.2 target.

Unfortunately, this TV only offers a basic 1-point white balance calibration, and any changes to it made the accuracy worse on our unit.

Ssee our full calibration settings.

The accuracy in HDR is okay overall. The white balance is very good, with just a bit too much blue in brighter shades. The color accuracy is a bit worse, and the overall color temperature is on the cool side.

The 1-point white balance calibration on this TV is slightly effective at improving HDR accuracy, but it's really limited. It looks a bit better after calibration, but the issues with white balance and color accuracy are still there. The color temperature is a bit closer to the target, though.

The PQ EOTF tracking on this TV is decent overall. Very dark details are raised due to the TV's low contrast ratio and lack of local dimming, but midtones are displayed accurately. There's a slight roll off near the TV's peak brightness, which helps preserve some gradation but not much.

There are a few optional settings in the Advanced Settings menu that should work to reduce noise in low-quality content, but they don't appear to do anything. There's no loss of fine details, but there's also no reduction in macro blocking or posterization.

This TV has decent sharpness processing when upscaling low quality content. Fine details and text is a bit jagged, but it's not over sharpened and looks decent overall.

The HDR gradient handling on this TV is good overall, but there are a few issues. There's noticeable banding in dark greens, and reds are limited by the TV's color gamut. The 50%-100% row is almost the same shade of red the entire length of the band.

This TV has low input lag at 60Hz when set to Game Mode. It doesn't support 120Hz and above at any resolution, so you don't get the benefits of the lower input lag you get when gaming at higher refresh rates. The input lag is considerably higher when outside of Game Mode, so navigating menus on external players feels sluggish.

This TV supports all common resolutions up to 4k @ 60Hz. Chroma 4:4:4 is displayed properly in both PC and Game modes, resulting in clear text from a PC.

This TV doesn't support VRR to reduce screen tearing.

This TV has poor pixel transitions at its maximum refresh rate of 60Hz. Fast motion in games is noticeably blurry, and transition times aren't consistent, so the level of blur varies across the scene.

This TV doesn't support a 120Hz refresh rate.

This TV only supports a 60Hz refresh rate, so these results are the same as the CAD In Game Mode @ Max Refresh Rate section.

This is a 60Hz TV with no advanced gaming features, so it can't take full advantage of the PS5. It has Auto Low Latency Mode (ALLM), so it'll automatically switch to Game Mode when the TV detects a game console as its input device, which gives you the lowest possible input lag for games.

This is a basic 60Hz TV with no support for advanced gaming features like VRR, so it can't take full advantage of the Xbox Series X. It has Auto Low Latency Mode (ALLM), so it'll automatically switch to Game Mode when the TV detects a game console as its input device, which gives you the lowest possible input lag for games.

Thanks to the TV's relatively slow response time, there's just a bit of stutter in low frame rate content.

The motion interpolation feature on this TV is ineffective at reducing stutter. It reduces stutter a bit when bringing 24fps content up to 30fps, but the feature is incredibly inconsistent, leading to an uneven frame cadence and choppy motion overall.

Unfortunately, this TV can't remove 24p judder from any source, including the native apps. This results in an uneven frame cadence when watching 24p content like most movies and shows.

Oddly, 25p content is judder-free when played through the native apps or an external player that can match the frame rate. It can't remove 25p judder from sources that send a 60Hz signal, though.

It's extremely uncommon for modern TVs to be unable to remove judder, but this doesn't seem to be a bug. The Natural Cinema setting that enables judder removal on other TVs powered by Fire TV is completely missing from the menu on this TV.

There's no micro judder on this TV.

The cinematic response time on this TV is okay. There's noticeable blur in all content, but it's not as bad in brighter parts of the scene.

This TV has just decent transitions. There are noticeable edge artifacts, as edges of fast-moving objects aren't clear. There are also minor color artifacts, including a slightly red tint on light skin tones.

This TV uses pulse-width modulation to control the backlight, so there's noticeable flicker at any Backlight setting below max. It flickers at a low frequency that isn't a multiple of 60, so it's noticeable and contributes to the TV's uneven frame cadence.

There's no optional backlight strobing feature, commonly known as BFI, on this TV. It always flickers at the same frequency.

The direct reflection handling on this TV is poor. The glossy coating does very little to reduce the intensity of direct, mirror-like reflections.

The TV does a fantastic job retaining its black levels in a bright room. Adding light to your room does almost nothing to the black levels.

The amount of total reflected light is bad. Windows and lights are extremely distracting, and since the TV isn't bright, this TV should only be used in a light controlled room. There's also a slight waviness to the panel which causes a noticeable diffraction effect on the screen.

Ambient light has very little effect on the overall color saturation on this TV. Colors aren't saturated in any lighting condition, though, due to this TV's poor color volume.

The Panasonic W70 Series has an okay viewing angle. The biggest issue is it's black level raise and gamma shift, which causes the screen to darken at a very moderate angle. Colors are a lot better, and there's very little color shift even at a very wide angle. Overall, it's better than average for TVs with a VA panel, but it's still not a good choice for a wide seating arrangement.

The uniformity on this TV is mediocre. It's very patchy, with bright chunks spread across the screen, and the corners are noticeably darker. This patchiness is even more noticeable in near-black scenes.

The TV uses a BGR (Blue-Green-Red) subpixel layout instead of the traditional RGB layout. For video or gaming content, this doesn't cause any issues, but for PC monitor use, it can be a problem as it impacts the text clarity, although not everyone will notice this.

The spectral power distribution on this TV shows poor color separation between green and red, which explains its sub-par color performance.

This TV is limited to HDMI 2.0 bandwidth on all four inputs.

The Panasonic W70 doesn't support any DTS audio formats, which is disappointing as many Blu-rays use DTS for their lossless audio tracks.

The Panasonic W70 doesn't support Dolby Vision and can only decode HDR10+. This means that it'll play HDR10+ content and show that it's in HDR10+ mode, but it's not following the dynamic metadata.

The Panasonic W70B looks okay from the front, with thin bezels on three sides and a slightly thicker bottom bezel. There's a bit more dead space between the outer bezel and the actual screen than more premium models.

The stand consists of two V-shaped feet installed near the ends of the TV. There's no alternate position.

Footprint of the 65-inch stand: 47.6" x 11.3" x 3"

The inputs face to the side of the TV, which is nice, but they're near the center which makes them hard to access if you wall mount it. There's no cable management.

The Panasonic W70 Series has okay build quality. The body is made of high-quality plastic and seems to be fairly well-built with no obvious flex or other issues.

The Panasonic W70 runs the Fire TV smart OS. It has a wide selection of apps and offers some customization. Overall, the interface is smooth and runs without issue.

Like most TVs, there are ads and sponsored content throughout the interface. There are even full screen ads with sound that play on the home screen.

The remote is very basic, with a few sponsored buttons and a built-in mic.

• Remote control
• Batteries
• Power cable
• User guides

The Panasonic W70 has a poor frequency response. It gets pretty loud, but the sound profile isn't well balanced. There's no deep bass or rumble, and dialogue is a bit muddied.