Well I thought it would be probably be a good bet given that it’s a plasma, but I was pleasantly surprised at just how good it was.

I spent about 5 minutes after getting out the box tweaking the settings a bit to my own tastes to get the colour balance right. (used expert settings and turned down sharpness, and reigned the colour back a bit to avoid the reddish tint on skin tones). There’s plenty of detail but image remains smooth (not soft or overly sharp & artificial). Backgrounds look pretty clean, very little in the way of mosquito noise.

I also noticed the slight greyish colour on whites mentioned in other reviews – although it’s worth pointing out that calibrated white is not actually pure brilliant white as you might expect, it is slightly grey.

The screen burn for me is the biggest issue, however I have only had this set a few days, so a certain amount of screen burn is to be expected in the first few hundred hours, but out of the box – video games are a big no-no, and do not leave it on a DVD menu screen or EPG – even a few minutes will retain the image. Although it’s easily cleared after 5-10 minutes of normal viewing. I’m really hoping this gets better with use.

Also, being picky – the diagonal lines can appear jagged or stripy on the standard settings however, I’m going to have a play and see if there’s a setting to eliminate it.

Connectivity is excellent on a screen this size and price. The Freeview picture is very nice, the EPG is crisp and clear, and still allows you to see some of the picture you’re watching and hear the sound which I much prefer to the way other sets do it that totally cuts the signal while you browse the guide.

As others have also said, this set murders the Panasonic LCDs, and I’ve installed a lot of those screens. However, it’s not quite in the same league as the 42″+ PZ80/85 screens but it’s not all that far behind.

It’s great that a manufacturer has released a Plasma this size, because it finally allows you to get good image quality on a small screen size – you don’t have to put up with LCD! (well at least not for as long as they keep making it!)