Well, took the other half to check several screens out. Couldn't persuade her on the 65" sadly. It would have fit, but with about 5mm gap on either side.
Had the 65" LZ1000 pretty much next to the 65" S95B and the 65" C2. Sony A95K was across the way and still arse puckeringly expensive. There was an issue with the Samsung though. The panel was warped. From head on it looked fine, but slightly off to one side and you could visibly see the edge of the panel was bent. And this is meant to be reasonably common on the Samsung as it's so thin.
They're all lovely screens. There's small differences in the picture but not really enough to worry about for 95% of the population. You feed it a 4K HDR signal and they'll produce a great looking image. Got to watch some of David Attenborough's A Life on Our Planet on netflix on them and ....
Slight colour and brightness differences between them but nothing that I could immediately point at and go WRONG! , all looked fabulous.
Smart features and general interface. I really don't care. I'll either be using my SkyQ, Fire Cube, Xbox or bluray. I've lived with terrible interfaces on many devices for years, so I really have no real opinion here.
Same with the built in speakers. Don't care. Everything runs through the amp, so they're off 99.999% of the time. Was only when the amp failed that we've used them. That said, was very impressed with the Sony built in speakers. I suppose they had to spend the extra cash somewhere and that seemed to be the biggest difference. Not heard sound like that from a TV since the 32" CRT's and rear projection years. Ahhh happy days...
Off topic for a moment... What the hell has happened to TV stands? I mean we're planning to wall mount it eventually but until then it's going on a stand. They're all either flimsy, hideous or absolutely enormous. The Panasonic easily had the most practical stand as it allows for the screen to rotate for you know, plugging things into it, but it was still felt a little precarious spinning a 65" screen on that small of a stand.
But, overall. We've ordered the 55" Panasonic LZ1000. Support all the HDR formats, picture was great, sound is passable for the one occasional we'll use it, stand sensible, and the price was very reasonable. Only has 2 HDMI 2.1 ports, but I'm not going to plug a PC into and won't have more than 1 modern console plugged in. It's fine for now.
In the end, with the other half getting special discounts from JL through work we got it for just under £1K and a set of Technics earbuds for real cheap with it. Yay? That's a christmas present sorted completely by accident.
Need to wait for delivery now. Oh, and put in that order for the modded Panasonic UB450 UHD player. Saves me having to use an American PS3 for region A blurays now.
