Panasonic Z85A OLED  TV Review

The TV has decent HDR brightness, making highlights stand out during darker scenes, but it's not quite as bright as the higher-end Panasonic Z8BA OLED. Combined with its remarkable contrast, this TV provides a solid HDR viewing experience. Unfortunately, due to its aggressive Automatic Brightness Limiter (ABL), large, bright scenes are significantly dimmer than smaller, specular highlights.

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
• Peak Luminance: High
• Gamma: 2.2
• EOTF Type: Auto
• HDR Tone Map: Normal
• Color Temperature: Warm 2

There's no noticeable difference with HDR brightness when the TV is set into True Game.

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
• Peak Luminance: High
• Gamma: 2.2
• EOTF Type: Auto
• HDR Tone Map: Clipping
• Clipping Threshold: 2000
• Color Temperature: Warm 2

The TV has acceptable SDR brightness and overcomes glare in a moderately lit room. Unfortunately, it's not bright enough to overcome glare in a well-lit room.

These measurements are after calibration with the following settings:

• Picture Mode: Professional 1
• Ambient Sensor: Off
• Luminance Level: 100
• Contrast: 90
• Peak Luminance: High
• Gamma: 2.2
• Color Temperature: Warm 2

If you'd like a Panasonic model with better SDR brightness, take a look at the Panasonic W95A.

The Panasonic Z85A has remarkable contrast and a nearly infinite contrast ratio. Due to OLED's self-lit pixels, the TV displays bright highlights next to perfect inky blacks, making it very impressive in a dark room.

Since OLEDs don't use lighting zones and instead have individual pixels that can be lit up to their maximum brightness next to pixels that are turned off, there's no blooming when bright elements are surrounded by deep blacks.

It's an OLED with no backlight, so its self-lit pixels give it the same performance as an option with perfect local dimming and no zone transitions. We still film the zone transition video on the TV so you can see how it compares to a TV with local dimming.

There's no difference in dark scene behavior between the calibrated picture modes and when the TV is set in True Game.

Because OLEDs can turn off individual pixels, the TV has incredible black uniformity with no blooming or halo effect around bright objects.

The Samsung Z85A has great color volume. Its coverage of the DCI-P3 color space is outstanding overall, but it does struggle more with very light colors. Unfortunately, its coverage of the wider BT.2020 color space is more limited.

The TV has good color volume. It displays dark, saturated colors very well, and its ability to display bright whites is outstanding. Unfortunately, as with almost all WOLED panels, bright colors are a bit washed out, as the TV relies on the bright white subpixel to achieve the brightest highlights, which dilutes color purity. The higher-end Panasonic Z95B OLED displays brighter colors that aren't washed out due to its primary RGB tandem panel.

The TV has remarkable pre-calibration SDR accuracy. Its white balance and color accuracy are nearly perfect, with very minor errors that aren't visible with real content. Its color temperature is a bit warmer than the target of 6,500K, but it's barely noticeable. Gamma is close to 2.2, but some bright scenes are a bit too bright.

The TV has exceptional accuracy after calibration. Any minor errors in white balance, color temperature, and gamma are gone, and colors are even more accurate than before.

See our full calibration settings.

The Panasonic Z85 has fantastic HDR pre-calibration accuracy. There's a bit too much blue in darker shades of gray and not enough red in mid-grays, which makes the TV's color temperature cooler than 6,500K. Color accuracy is superb overall, with only some minor inaccuracies throughout. 

Calibrating the TV in HDR does very little to improve its accuracy. White balance is a bit better now, and although its color temperature is a bit closer to 6,500K, it's still slightly too cool. The accuracy of colors has barely shifted at all, and the TV is still very accurate, with very minor mapping errors.

The TV has exceptional PQ EOTF tracking. It follows the curve almost perfectly until it approaches its maximum brightness. With content mastered at 600 or 1000 nits, there is a gradual roll-off near the TV's peak brightness to maintain some detail in bright highlights. With content mastered at 4000 nits, the roll-off happens much sooner to preserve detail in very bright highlights.

The Panasonic Z85 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. Still, you end up with a much cleaner image than you do on a cheaper WOLED such as the Philips 974 Series OLED.

The TV has good HDR native gradient handling. There's some noticeable banding in grays and bright greens, but all other colors have minimal banding or no banding at all.

This TV has very low input lag when set into True Game, which ensures a very responsive gaming experience.

The Panasonic Z85 supports all common resolutions up to 4k @ 120Hz 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 Z85 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.

The TV's CAD at its maximum refresh rate of 120Hz is fantastic. Pixels transition to their target RGB level almost instantly, so fast motion is very sharp.

The TV's CAD at its maximum refresh rate of 120Hz is fantastic. Pixels transition to their target RGB level almost instantly, so fast motion is very sharp.

The TV's CAD at 60Hz is fantastic. Most pixel transitions are nearly instantaneous, but there's some overshoot in mid-grays when transitioning to darker grays, which leads to some inverse ghosting.

The Panasonic Z85 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.

The Panasonic Z85 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.

Unfortunately, due to the TV's nearly instantaneous pixel response time, there's stutter with low frame rate content, which is most noticeable during slow panning shots.

The Panasonic Z85 TV automatically removes judder from 24Hz sources and the internal apps. To remove judder from 60p and 60i sources, like a cable box, you must enable the Accurate IFC setting. Unfortunately, movies and TV shows aren't judder-free when BFI is enabled because the BFI feature only flickers at 60Hz.

The Panasonic Z85 has a nearly instantaneous response time, resulting in incredibly clear motion with almost no blur behind fast-moving objects when watching content.

This TV doesn't have a traditional backlight and doesn't use pulse-width modulation (PWM) to dim each pixel, but it's not completely flicker-free. There's a slight dip in brightness that corresponds to the TV's refresh rate. This differs from the PWM flicker on TVs with LED backlights and occurs on every OLED we've tested. It's not noticeable, and most people won't be bothered by this, but it can still bother people who are extra sensitive to flicker.

It does exhibit flicker-like behavior in low-luminance sections of the screen that resembles pulse amplitude modulation (PAM). This means that bright sections of the screen are flicker-free, but darker sections have very minor flicker present. Fortunately, this isn't noticeable with real content.

The Panasonic Z85 has an optional black frame insertion (BFI) feature that reduces the appearance of persistence blur caused by the TV's nearly instantaneous response time. However, it can only insert black frames at a 60Hz refresh rate, and it doesn't work very well, so the image is blurry, and there's some ghosting 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 minor artifacts present. In faster-moving scenes, it can't keep up, and there are distracting artifacts, image duplication, and haloing.

The Panasonic Z85 has mediocre direct reflection handling. It doesn't do the best job reducing the intensity of direct reflections, so glare from lamps or windows opposite the screen is distracting.

The Panasonic Z85 has exceptional black levels in a bright room. Black levels are barely raised in a room with ambient lighting, and they remain deep and punchy.

The TV has great total reflection handling. Its glossy screen finish significantly reduces the intensity of indirect reflections and is free from artifacts like light smearing.

The TV has good perceived color volume in ambient lighting. Colors shown at all levels of luminance are still vibrant and saturated in a bright room since they only lose a small amount of saturation from ambient sources of light.

The TV's incredibly wide viewing angle remains mostly consistent from almost any angle, but there is some color shifting and a very slight green tint at more aggressive angles. Still, it's a fantastic choice for watching TV in a group setting.

The TV has very good gray uniformity. If you look closely, there are some very faint vertical lines on the panel, but these aren't noticeable from a normal viewing distance.

The TV uses a WOLED panel with a RWBG pixel structure where all four pixels are never lit at the same time. Due to its subpixel layout, it has minor issues with displaying text on Windows since ClearType isn't well optimized to non-RGB subpixel layouts, but most users won't be bothered by this.

The white subpixel does an excellent job helping the TV display bright whites, but it dilutes the color purity of greens and reds.

The Panasonic Z85 has HDMI 2.1 bandwidth on HDMI ports 1 and 2, with both supporting up to 4k @ 120Hz. 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 with a firmware update (RS8112/2491) in early 2025.

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 Z85 has a premium design that looks fantastic in any room. Its thin bezels give the TV a sleek look when viewed from the front.

The stand is made of metal and is surrounded by a plastic enclosure. It holds the TV well and lifts the screen about three inches above the table, so most soundbars fit underneath without blocking the screen.

Footprint of the 65-inch stand: 15.7" x 11.8"

The back section that houses the inputs is quite thick and made of plastic. When facing the front, the inputs are located on the left side of the TV, but they're easily accessible even when the TV is wall-mounted. There are clips on the back to help with cable management.

The Panasonic Z85A OLED TV has outstanding build quality. With the exception of the back section that houses the inputs, the TV is made entirely of aluminum, which gives it a premium feel. There's some minor flexing near the VESA mounting points, but this is typical and doesn't cause any issues. There are no issues with build quality, but the TV emits a slight buzzing noise.

The TV 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.

• Setup guide
• Remote (with 2x AAA batteries)
• Zip tie for cable management

The Panasonic Z85 has a mediocre frequency response. Like most TVs, it barely produces any bass, but the speakers do get quite loud. The sound is well-balanced at moderate volume levels, making dialogue easy to understand. Unfortunately, the sound becomes unbalanced near and at maximum volume.