The Panasonic W95A is one of three TVs released by Panasonic in the United States in 2024, alongside the Panasonic Z85A OLED and the Panasonic Z95A OLED. Unlike those TVs, the W95A is a Mini LED model with local dimming. It also has numerous features like HDMI 2.1 bandwidth, 4k @ 144Hz, VRR, Dolby Vision IQ, and HDR10+. The TV uses Panasonic's HCX Pro AI Processor MK II, which is designed to provide better overall picture quality and can make automatic adjustments to contrast, colors, clarity, and sound based on the content type it detects. It runs the Fire TV OS, has a built-in 50W 2.1 channel speaker system, and supports Apple AirPlay and Alexa. We bought and tested the 65-inch model, but it's also available in 55, 75, and 85-inch sizes.
Our Verdict
The Panasonic W95A is good for mixed usage. It's a solid option for a bright room since blacks stay deep, and colors stay vibrant in a room with ambient lighting. You also aren't distracted by glare from indirect light sources since it has excellent SDR brightness, but it doesn't do a good job handling direct reflections, which is distracting. It's a good option for a home theater too, with good image processing, deep enough blacks, vibrant colors, and good HDR brightness. Despite the TV having modern gaming features, you can't use VRR with local dimming enabled, which is unusual and really holds back its usefulness for gamers. Finally, its viewing angle is mediocre, so you need to be seated centered to the screen if you want the best possible image quality.
Good HDR brightness means highlights stand out.
Excellent SDR brightness means it overcomes glare from indirect lighting.
Outstanding upscaling and good low-quality content smoothing.
Colors are vibrant, lifelike, and bright.
Narrow viewing angle means the image is degraded when viewed from the sides of the screen.
VRR and local dimming don't work simultaneously.
Poor handling of direct reflections.
Blacks aren't as deep as competing models.
The Panasonic W95A is good for a home theater. Blacks are deep during most scenes with local dimming enabled, but they do lose some depth when very bright highlights are also on-screen. Furthermore, there's some minor blooming around small highlights and subtitles. Colors are vibrant enough that they stand out, but they lack accuracy, so you do need to get it calibrated if you want accurate colors. Fortunately, it has good HDR brightness, so highlights stand out, but HDR content is displayed a bit brighter than intended, so it strays away from the filmmaker's intent in that regard. The TV has outstanding upscaling, so DVDs and other SD content doesn't look overly soft. It does a good job reducing artifacts in heavily compressed streams, but it doesn't eliminate them completely, so you still see some macro-blocking during dark scenes.
Good HDR brightness means highlights stand out.
Outstanding upscaling and good low-quality content smoothing.
Colors are vibrant, lifelike, and bright.
No DTS audio support.
Requires calibration if you care about accurate colors.
Blacks aren't as deep as competing models.
The Panasonic W95A is very good for a bright room. Blacks stay deep, and colors barely lose any vividness in a room with ambient lighting, so you still get solid picture quality with the lights on. Its excellent SDR brightness means it overcomes glare from indirect light sources. However, it really struggles with reducing the intensity of direct reflections, so any light source placed opposite the screen is very visible and distracting.
Excellent SDR brightness means it overcomes glare from indirect lighting.
Colors are vibrant, lifelike, and bright.
Blacks stay deep, and colors stay vibrant in a bright room.
Poor handling of direct reflections.
The Panasonic W95A is very good for watching sports. It has good colors, so it provides a vibrant-looking image. It also has outstanding upscaling capabilities, so low-resolution streams and broadcasts still have some sharpness in them. It does a good job reducing the amount of artifacts in low-bitrate feeds, but it doesn't remove them completely. The TV's excellent SDR brightness means it easily handles glare from indirect light sources. However, direct sources of light are very visible on the screen, so it's best to avoid placing the TV screen opposite a wall light, lamp, or window. Unfortunately, its gray uniformity leaves a lot to be desired, and there's apparent dirty screen effect that's quite visible when watching sports with uniform colors. Thankfully, its response time is quick enough that most sports are free from distracting motion blur. Finally, it has a mediocre viewing angle, so it's best to be seated centered to the screen for the best possible image quality.
Excellent SDR brightness means it overcomes glare from indirect lighting.
Outstanding upscaling and good low-quality content smoothing.
Colors are vibrant, lifelike, and bright.
Narrow viewing angle means the image is degraded when viewed from the sides of the screen.
Uneven uniformity that's noticeable with certain content.
The Panasonic W95A is only decent for gaming. It has vibrant colors that really stand out in colorful games, and the HDR brightness needed for an impactful experience. However, you can't use VRR and its local dimming feature simultaneously, so blacks look washed out in its True Game picture mode, which is a major drawback since it drastically impacts picture quality. Fortunately, it has low input lag for a responsive feel. However, its pixel transitions are pretty slow, which leads to some noticeable blur behind fast motion.
Good HDR brightness means highlights stand out.
HDMI 2.1 bandwidth for up to 4k @ 144Hz,
Colors are vibrant, lifelike, and bright.
Low input lag provides a responsive feel.
VRR and local dimming don't work simultaneously.
Poor handling of direct reflections.
Slow pixel transitions in True Game leads to blurry motion.
Blacks aren't as deep as competing models.
The Panasonic W95 has very good overall brightness. It has excellent SDR brightness, so it easily overcomes glare from indirect sources of light. It's not quite as good in HDR, but it's still more than bright enough for highlights to stand out in HDR content.
Good HDR brightness means highlights stand out.
Excellent SDR brightness means it overcomes glare from indirect lighting.
The Panasonic W95 has good black levels. The TV has excellent black uniformity but only satisfactory contrast, so blacks are deep in most scenes, but they do become a bit washed out when very bright highlights are on screen. Its dimming zones do a good job of keeping blooming to a minimum in most scenes, but you do see some noticeable blooming around small, bright highlights and subtitles.
Excellent black uniformity for even blacks.
Blacks aren't as deep as competing models.
The Panasonic W95 has good colors overall. It has excellent HDR color volume, so it displays dark and bright colors very well in HDR content. Its color volume is satisfactory in SDR, so most content is displayed well, but it does struggle more with certain SDR content that utilizes a wide color space. Unfortunately, this isn't a very accurate TV, especially in SDR, so this is a model that requires calibration if you want accurate colors.
Colors are vibrant, lifelike, and bright.
Requires calibration if you care about accurate colors.
Note: We're in the process of improving our tests related to image processing, but this score should give you a general idea of how a TV performs overall with its image processing capabilities.
The Panasonic W95 has good image processing overall. It really excels with upscaling, so low-resolution content doesn't lack sharpness. It does a good job minimizing artifacts in low-bitrate content, but it doesn't get rid of them completely. Colors gradients are mostly smooth, with only some noticeable banding in grays. Unfortunately, the brightness of HDR content is a little off, with most scenes being brighter than intended.
Outstanding upscaling and good low-quality content smoothing.
All colors, except grays, have minimal banding.
The Panasonic W95's responsiveness in the True Game picture mode is only satisfactory. It has HDMI 2.1 bandwidth for up to 4k @ 144Hz, and its input lag is low enough for a responsive feel. The TV also supports VRR, but you can't use local dimming with VRR enabled, which is a massive drawback. Furthermore, its pixel transitions are pretty slow overall, which leads to blurry motion in fast-paced games.
HDMI 2.1 bandwidth for up to 4k @ 144Hz,
Low input lag provides a responsive feel.
VRR and local dimming don't work simultaneously.
Slow pixel transitions in True Game leads to blurry motion.
We're in the process of fixing the way we evaluate a TV's overall motion handling. This section is currently broken, and the score isn't indicative of how well a TV handles motion overall.
Performance Usages
Changelog
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Updated Oct 21, 2025:
This review has been updated to Test Bench 2.1. We wrote text for the newly added Micro-Judder test, refreshed the text in the updated Judder section, and tweaked the text in the renamed Response Time Stutter section.
- Updated Oct 21, 2025: We added text to the new Micro-Judder section and refreshed the text in the updated Judder and Response Time Stutter sections after converting the review to TV 2.1.
- Updated May 08, 2025: Converted to Test Bench 2.0.1. We did this to fix an issue with our scoring in the Supported Resolutions section, since TVs with a refresh rate higher than 144Hz were being penalized for not supporting 144Hz.
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Updated Mar 26, 2025:
We confirmed the TV supports ATSC 3.0 after firmware update RS8112/2491 and updated the results and text in the Input Specifications section of the review to reflect that.
Check Price
Differences Between Sizes And Variants
We bought and tested the 65-inch Panasonic W95A (65W95AP), and these results are also valid for the 55 (55W95AP), 75 (75W95AP), and 85-inch (85W95AP) models. Costco sells a variant of the 65-inch model known as the 65W95APK. It performs the same but comes with an extended warranty. There are no other known variants of the TV, so our results should be valid for all regions, but the inputs vary depending on regional requirements for tuners.
| Size | Model Code | Costco Variant |
| 55" | TV-55W95AP | - |
| 65" | TV-65W95AP | 65W95APK |
| 75" | TV-75W95AP | - |
| 85" | TV-85W95AP | - |
Our unit was manufactured in August 2024, as seen on our product's label.
Popular TV Comparisons
The Panasonic W95 is a good TV overall. Unfortunately, it's really held back by the fact that you can't use local dimming and VRR simultaneously, so you have to choose between the best possible image quality or a tear-free gaming experience while using its True Game picture mode. This is unusual, and you can get similar and even better Mini LED TVs like the Hisense U8/U8N, the TCL QM8/QM851G QLED, and the Sony BRAVIA 7 QLED that don't make you decide between those two options.
For more options, see our recommendations for the best LED TVs, the best gaming TVs, and the best TVs.
The Sony X90L/X90CL and the Panasonic W95A are similar TVs and excel in different ways. The Sony has a slight edge regarding SDR brightness and reflection handling, so it overcomes a bit more glare in a bright room. The Sony is also the more accurate TV in both SDR and HDR, meaning it stays closer to the content creator's intent. On the other hand, the Panasonic has lower input lag, supports 144Hz, and displays slightly more vibrant colors. However, you can't use VRR and local dimming simultaneously on the Panasonic, so you must trade in a lot of contrast for a tear-free gaming experience, which is a major drawback.
The TCL QM751G is better than the Panasonic W95A. The TCL has superior contrast and HDR brightness, delivering a more impactful HDR viewing experience in a dark room. The TCL also does a better job cleaning up artifacts in low-bitrate content, and it does a slightly better job at reducing reflections caused by glare. The TCL is a bit better regarding motion handling due to its faster pixel transitions. On the other hand, the Panasonic has better upscaling capabilities. Both TVs support VRR, but strangely enough, VRR doesn't work with local dimming enabled on the Panasonic.
The Sony BRAVIA 7 is better than the Panasonic W95A in most ways. The Sony has better contrast and HDR brightness, which leads to a better dark room viewing experience. The Sony also has better image processing, so lower-quality content looks better on it. On top of that, the Sony is the more accurate TV in both SDR and HDR, and you can use its local dimming feature with VRR enabled.
The Hisense U7N is better than the Panasonic W95A overall. The Hisense has better contrast and HDR brightness, displaying deeper blacks in a dark room and brighter highlights. The Hisense also overcomes more glare in a bright room due to its superior reflection handling, is the more accurate TV in both SDR and HDR, and displays clearer motion due to its faster response time. However, the Panasonic displays slightly more vibrant colors and does a better job of upscaling low-resolution content. Sadly, you can't use VRR and local dimming on the Panasonic simultaneously.
We buy and test dozens of TVs yearly, taking an objective, data-driven approach to deliver results you can trust. Our testing process is complex, with hundreds of individual tests that take over a week to complete. Most of our tests are done with specially designed test patterns that mimic real content, but we also use the same sources you have at home to ensure our results match the real-world experience. We use two main tools for our testing: a Colorimetry Research CR-100 colorimeter and a CR-250 spectroradiometer.
Test Results
The Panasonic W95 Series has good HDR brightness, making highlights stand out during darker scenes. Combined with its outstanding contrast, this TV provides an impactful HDR viewing experience.
These measurements are after calibrating the HDR white point with the following settings:
- HDR Picture Mode: Professional 1
- Ambient Sensor: Off
- Luminance Level: 100
- Contrast: 100
- Adaptive Backlight Control: Max
- Gamma: 2.2
- EOTF Type: Auto
- HDR Tone Map: Normal
- Color Temperature: Warm 2
The Panasonic W95 is slightly brighter when the TV is set into True Game, but it's barely noticeable.
These measurements are after calibrating the HDR white point with the following settings:
- HDR Picture Mode: True Game
- Ambient Sensor: Off
- Luminance Level: 100
- Contrast: 100
- Adaptive Backlight Control: Max
- Gamma: 2.2
- EOTF Type: Auto
- HDR Tone Map: Clipping
- Color Temperature: Warm 2
The Panasonic W95 has excellent SDR brightness and overcomes glare in most bright rooms.
These measurements are after calibration with the following settings:
- Picture Mode: Professional 1
- Ambient Sensor: Off
- Luminance Level: 100
- Contrast: 90
- Adaptive Backlight Control: Max
- Gamma: 2.2
- Color Temperature: Warm 2
The Panasonic W95 has decent contrast. Its native contrast is great, but with local dimming enabled, the TV displays deep blacks that mostly stay deep when brighter highlights are also on screen. However, blacks are a bit raised during very bright scenes.
The TV has good lighting zone precision, but there's still noticeable blooming around bright objects set on a very dark background.
The TV has decent lighting zone transitions. Unfortunately, the leading edge of bright highlights when they quickly move across the screen is visibly dimmer, and there's very noticeable haloing.
Unfortunately, enabling VRR locks you out of using the TV's local dimming feature, so you can't use VRR and local dimming at the same time. This greatly impacts the deepness of blacks while gaming, which is unfortunate.
The TV has excellent black uniformity. With local dimming disabled, blacks are slightly cloudy and blueish. With local dimming enabled, blacks are deep and uniform across the screen, with only a bit of blooming around bright objects on a dark background.
The Panasonic W95A has satisfactory SDR color volume. Its coverage of the DCI-P3 color space is very good overall, but it doesn't perform quite as well with lighter shades. It's not nearly as good with the wider BT.2020 color space, and it struggles to fully display both dark and light shades.
| Volume ΔE³ | DCI-P3 Coverage |
BT.2020 Coverage |
|---|---|---|
| L10 | 93.47% | 73.17% |
| L20 | 93.49% | 73.13% |
| L30 | 92.47% | 72.79% |
| L40 | 90.76% | 73.33% |
| L50 | 88.88% | 72.67% |
| L60 | 86.76% | 68.14% |
| L70 | 85.33% | 58.70% |
| L80 | 85.36% | 57.46% |
| L90 | 84.90% | 59.26% |
| L100 | 84.43% | 68.69% |
| Total | 87.47% | 65.52% |
The TV has excellent HDR color volume. It displays a wide range of colors at high luminance levels, and most dark saturated colors are displayed well due to its effective local dimming.
The TV has sub-par pre-calibration SDR accuracy. Reds are overrepresented in all shades of gray, which makes the TV's color temperature much warmer than the 6500K we target. Gamma is close to 2.2, but brighter scenes are displayed a bit too brightly. Its color accuracy is good overall, but there are inaccuracies with whites and most lighter colors.
The TV has exceptional SDR accuracy after calibration. All issues prior to calibration are gone, and the TV's white balance, color temperature, gamma, and color accuracy are close to perfect.
See our full calibration settings.
The TV has decent HDR pre-calibration accuracy. There's too much red in mid-gray and light grays, which makes the TV's color temperature noticeably warmer than 6500K. Colors have alright accuracy overall, but there are mapping errors throughout, so colors don't stay true to the content creator's intent.
After calibration, the TV has outstanding HDR accuracy. Its white balance isn't perfect, but it's much better now, and the TV's color temperature is almost exactly at 6500K. Color accuracy is excellent now, but there are still minor inaccuracies throughout, with reds and blues being undersaturated.
The TV has unremarkable PQ EOTF tracking. Blacks are slightly brighter than intended, and dark shadows are a bit darker than intended. Everything else is displayed a bit brighter than it should be. With content mastered at 600 and 1000 nits, there's a sharp cutoff near the TV's peak brightness, but no roll-off is necessary since it's bright enough to fully display content mastered at those brightness levels. However, there's a gradual roll-off with content mastered at 4000 nits to preserve details in very bright specular highlights.
The Panasonic W95 has good low-quality content smoothing. It does an excellent job at preserving details, but it's only decent at actually smoothing out the image, so there is still some noticeable macro-blocking in dark scenes.
The TV does an outstanding job with upscaling low-resolution content like DVDs, standard definition cable channels, and lower-resolution streams. Details are well-defined and clear enough, but very fine details and small hard-coded text are a bit hard to make out.
Sharpness processing was calibrated with no over-sharpening for low-resolution content with the following settings:
- Sharpness: 30
- Resolution Remaster: Max
The TV has good HDR gradient handling. There's noticeable banding in all grays, but other color gradients have minimal banding.
This TV has low input lag when set into True Game, especially at 120Hz and 144Hz, which ensures a very responsive gaming experience. However, it's input lag is higher at 60Hz, so gaming feels a bit less snappy at that refresh rate.
The Panasonic W95 supports all common resolutions up to 4k @ 144Hz on two of its four HDMI ports. Chroma 4:4:4 signals are displayed properly with most supported resolutions when the TV's 'HDMI Setting' is set to Pure Direct, which is important for text clarity.
The Panasonic W95 supports FreeSync, HDMI Forum VRR, and G-SYNC, ensuring a nearly tear-free gaming experience from any VRR-enabled source. It works well across a wide refresh rate range and supports sources with Low-Frame-Compensation (LFC), which ensures your games remain nearly tear-free even when your frame rate drops very low.
Unfortunately, enabling VRR locks you out from using the TV's local dimming feature (Adaptive Backlight Control).
The TV has okay CAD at its maximum refresh rate of 144Hz. It struggles most when going from dark shades to very bright ones, and although it performs a bit better going from bright shades to dark ones, it's still pretty slow. This leads to noticeable blur behind quick motion.
The TV's CAD at 120Hz is mediocre. It's slow across the board, which leads to blurry motion. Furthermore, it overshoots some dark RGB values when leaving a black state, so there's some inverse ghosting.
The TV has bad CAD at 60Hz. On top of the persistence blur due to the nature of a 60Hz refresh rate, its pixel transitions are incredibly slow when leaving dark states, and there's some bad overshooting, which leads to very blurry motion and inverse ghosting.
The Panasonic W95 is fully compatible with everything the PS5 offers, like 1440p @ 120Hz and 4k @ 120Hz, as well as HDMI Forum VRR. It also supports Auto Low Latency Mode, so you don't have to worry about switching to True Game to get the lowest input lag. However, local dimming doesn't work when VRR is enabled.
The Panasonic W95 is fully compatible with everything the Xbox Series X|S offers, including 1440p @ 120Hz, 4k @ 120Hz, HDMI Forum VRR, FreeSync Premium Pro, and Dolby Vision gaming. It also supports Auto Low Latency Mode, so you don't have to worry about switching to True Game to get the lowest input lag. However, local dimming doesn't work when VRR is enabled.
This TV has visible response time stutter when watching low frame rate content, especially in slow panning shots. It's not quite as bad as TVs with OLED panels, like the Panasonic Z95B OLED, but it's still visible.
The TV is free from micro-judder with both 24p and 25p content if you're using the TV's native apps or an external device that can send a 24Hz or 25Hz signal, like a blu-ray player. However, there's apparent micro-judder present in 24p and 25p content when it's being sent to the TV via a 60p signal, so scenes with complex motion aren't as smooth as they should be.
The Panasonic W95 automatically removes judder from 24p and 25p sources, like an Apple TV with the 'Match Frame Rate' feature enabled, and from the TV's native apps. To remove 24p judder from 60p and 60i sources, like a cable box, you must enable the Accurate IFC setting. Unfortunately, it doesn't remove judder from 25p sources that are sent to the TV via a 60p signal, and frame times are pretty inconsistent, which leads to jerky motion.
The Panasonic W95A has a very good response time when watching content, so there's only some blur behind fast-moving objects. However, it's slower when coming out of dark states, so there's some black smearing in dark scene transitions.
The TV uses pulse width modulation (PWM) to dim its backlight. Fortunately, it's flicker-free, with the brightness set from 80-100 in all picture modes. With the brightness set between 42-79, it flickers at 480Hz, and it flickers at a very fast 1,920Hz with the brightness set between 0-41.
The TV supports backlight strobing, more commonly known as black frame insertion (BFI). The feature is designed to improve the appearance of motion by strobing its backlight and reducing the amount of persistence blur. Unfortunately, the BFI feature on the TV doesn't work very well, and there's still some image duplication and blurriness present.
This TV has an optional motion interpolation feature to improve the clarity of motion. It does a good job at smoothing out slower scenes, with only some very minor artifacts present. In faster-moving scenes, it doesn't keep up, leading to noticeable artifacts.
The Panasonic W95A has poor direct reflection handling. It barely reduces the intensity of direct light sources like a lamp placed opposite the screen, which is very distracting.
Black levels barely raise on this TV in a room with ambient lighting, so you still get deep blacks regardless of your lighting conditions.
The total reflected light of this TV is inadequate. Reflections are very noticeable on this TV during dark scenes, and there's some distracting light banding.
The perceived saturation of colors is great in a bright room, so you still enjoy punchy colors when you have your lights turned on.
The Panasonic W95A has a mediocre viewing angle, so it's not suitable for a wide seating arrangement. There's significant gamma shifting and brightness loss, and black levels raise as you move off-center. Additionally, colors shift and look increasingly washed out as you move further away to the sides.
The TV has sub-par gray uniformity. There's some noticeable dirty screen effect towards the center of the screen, the corners are darker than the center, and there are particularly bad splotches of uneven brightness on the right side of the screen. On a very dark or near-black screen, the corners and sides of the screen are lighter than the center.
The TV uses a BGR (Blue-Green-Red) subpixel layout instead of the traditional RGB layout. This doesn't cause any issues for video or gaming content, but it can be a problem for PC monitor use as it impacts the text clarity, although not everyone will notice this.
The TV uses quantum dots to achieve high color peaks with excellent separation between blues, greens, and reds. This gives the TV great color purity and allows it to display a very wide color gamut.
The Panasonic W95 has HDMI 2.1 bandwidth on HDMI ports 1 and 2, with both supporting up to 4k @ 144Hz. Unfortunately, the HDMI 2 port is also the eARC port, so you lose a high bandwidth port when you plug a soundbar into the TV. The TV supports both Dolby Vision and HDR10+. ATSC 3.0 support was added in early 2025 via firmware update RS8112/2491.
The TV supports eARC, which lets you pass high-quality, uncompressed audio to a compatible receiver or soundbar through an HDMI cable. Unfortunately, it doesn't support DTS audio formats commonly used on Blu-rays.
The Panasonic W95A TV has a nice overall design, with slim metal bezels and sturdy aluminum feet that make it look premium.
The two feet are made of aluminum and hold the TV in a stable position. The feet lift the TV about 3.5 inches above the table, so almost any soundbar fits underneath.
Footprint of the 65-inch stand: 46.2" x 12.5".
The back of the TV is made of textured plastic. When you touch the back, it leaves chalk-like marks, but these can easily be wiped away with a cloth. All of the inputs except for the optical audio out are located on the right side of the TV when facing the front, and they're easy to access if you have the TV wall-mounted. Unfortunately, there's no form of cable management.
The TV has excellent build quality, and there are no issues with quality control to report.
It runs the Fire TV OS, which is smooth and easy to use. Unfortunately, a bug prevents certain settings, like motion interpolation, from working despite being turned on. To fix this, you must enter the 'Home' menu and then return to the input or internal app you're using.
Unfortunately, like almost all TVs on the market, the smart interface contains ads, and you can't disable them.
The remote is almost identical to the ones included with other TVs that use the Fire TV OS, with quick access buttons for the most popular streaming services. You can use the built-in microphone to switch inputs, change apps, search within apps, and ask for the weather and time. Unfortunately, you can't use voice commands to change settings.
There's a single button on the bottom of the TV that can be used to switch inputs, adjust the volume, change channels, and power the TV on/off.
The Panasonic W95 has a mediocre frequency response. It barely produces any bass, but the sound profile is well-balanced at most listening levels, making dialogue easy to understand. However, the sound is very unbalanced at the TV's maximum volume, which is too bad since it doesn't get very loud.