Hello everyone it's SpawnPoiint and today we're taking a closer look at Panasonic's latest OLED
TV the LZ980 it's a 4K OLED screen with HDR Dolby vision and Dolby Atmos support but it's
also packing some serious gaming features which includes HDMI 2.1 vrr and 120 hertz on top of
that Panasonic have their own gaming menu called the game control board which is an awesome feature
to have so last week I did an unboxing on the channel and I went through the entire setup
process and first impressions were good in fact I was surprised at how well it performed for gaming
and it's fair to say that their gaming Focus Features are massively underrated so that's what I
wanted to do today concentrate on the gaming side and how it performs on the PS5 and Xbox series
X now Panasonic have loaned me this TV and this video is sponsored but all opinions and thoughts
are 100 my own as with every video that I create so the model that I have here is the 48 inch
version but it's also available in 42 55 and 65 inches so whether you wanted a 4 42 inch monitor
for your desk or a 65 inch in the living room this TV should take most of the boxes and when
it comes to the picture quality and how it handles a selection of games and movies I've played on it
I've been very impressed now throwing an animated HDR movie on when always look impressive as this
shows off the colors and vibrancy pretty well but it's when you go looking for the black levels and
how it handles the dark areas of a movie or a game is where you truly appreciate the advantages of an
OLED those Inky blacks and contrast levels mean you're getting a near perfect picture without
worrying about blooming or washed out colors but one of the big features of this TV is Dolby vision
and Dolby Vision IQ support this means any content that is Dolby Vision optimized or certified will
work on here and this is always my preferred format out of the two HDR options so it's great
to see that Panasonic have included this on their TVs and as you can see the contrast the highlights
and the shadows of this TV are handled really well especially in HDR and if we take a look at
the brightness while oleds generally speaking don't get quite as bright as our traditional
LCD TV but drawing the two weeks of using this I've been running the luminance at around 80
percent and that has been perfectly fine for me and as mentioned this is a 4K screen so any games
are optimized for 4K will look absolutely stunning on here but what's more is this TV also supports
HDMI 2.1 so Panasonic have included something called gamer mode extreme and essentially it
makes their new OLED TVs ready for gaming on the PS5 Xbox or PC this gives us 120 hertz Alm and vrr
or the variable refresh rate this means games that support 4K and 120 hertz are crazy smooth
with no stuttering or screen tearing and taking a look at the Xbox and the PS5 screens it's great to
see all of those green ticks showing what the TV is capable of delivering so the first thing that
I did was set up the PlayStation 5 and tested out a few different games including Spider-Man
Gran Turismo 7 Ratchet and Clank and a few others both during the day and at night to see how this
TV performed in all situations I would normally play in spider man is a fast-paced game so there's
loads of movement and motion so if the TV was going to stutter or lag this was going to be it
and for me this turned out to be crazy smooth but it's not just the fast paced games that look good
with this smooth motion handling and high frame rate is any game that I tested take Gran Turismo 7
this game looks crazy clear smooth and vibrant I'm hoping this translates through the video but it
looks awesome and bearing in mind this TV is not calibrated yet sure I've tweaked the brightness
and the color temp but that's it it looks this good straight out of the box then if you do want
to hook up a gaming PC this TV also supports AMD freesync premium so you're going to get
a fluid and tear-free gaming experience on there as well so we know this TV is clearly capable of
delivering a decent gaming experience because it takes all of those boxes for both consoles but the
fact that Panasonic have gone above and beyond just giving us HDMI 2.1 and calling it a day
says a lot about their focus on Gamers so they've integrated this gaming menu into their TV and this
is called the game control board you can either pin this to your app area like I have here or you
can assign it to the my apps button so by pressing this button it will open the app by default now
within the game control board it gives you quick access to some handy features settings that you
can change on the fly without needing to dive into the main settings area things like enabling vrr
switching the picture profiles or checking if the 120 hertz bypass mode is enabled and if you press
the I on the remote control it gives you the current frame rate and resolution so you can
always check if you're running your games at the optimum mode or if you press more information on
the game control board it gives us even more information on the current input and game for
me this shows that Panasonic are targeting Gamers who want more control over their settings on the
go it's a nice touch and something that's pretty underrated so I've talked about gaming and that
is the focus of today's video but let me quickly highlight the movie Focus Features as well now not
only does this pack all of the gaming features it would need it also comes with Dolby Vision support
So any Ultra HD disk or streaming service that supports that will look awesome as well as the
filmmaker mode which allows any content to be displayed played as a director intended now as
this isn't OLED the viewing angles are almost perfect this means that no matter where you
place a TV in your room or on your desk you'll still see the picture with no loss in quality
contrast or color this is still one of the biggest selling points of an OLED as you don't need to sit
straight on for the optimum picture the only compromise is Reflections but this panel does
have a slight anti-glare coating we're not talking a matte finish here so there's nothing to worry
about it is still glossy but it's got a tinted finish so it appears darker and helps reduce
those mirror-like Reflections in your room so I've mentioned this TV supports 120 hertz a vrr and
4K gaming but what about the available ports well around the back we have a total of four HDMI ports
two of these RH to my 2.0 and two or HDMI 2.1 this means you can plug in two consoles or a console
and a sound bar via the e-arc port and you still have two ports available for non 120hz gaming
looking at the design and the overall appearance of the LZ 980 is a pretty normal looking TV as
far as Olex let's go we've got the rays stand in the middle that is plastic although it has
a brushed metal finish and then we've got the thin frame and bezels around the outside of the screen
there's just a small chin across the bottom which houses the Panasonic logo now the stand is also
raised just enough that you should be able to fit a sound bar underneath if you need it but as you'd
expect this TV does come with speakers built in now although I usually use external speakers most
of the time in my setups the speakers on this are surprisingly good for such a small screen
so it supports Dolby Atmos Sound Processing which makes a difference at creating that
immersive cinematic sound in your room I have found that setting the volume between 30 and
35 is ideal and it gives a nice balance between voice Clarity and bass without distorting either
oh man hey what happened to sleeping hey I know it doesn't look like it not a battery only one
problem right there to be continued and Outsider gaming and watching TV you might be interested in
the menus the UI and the settings and as mentioned during my unboxing video this has been one of the
snappiest uis I've ever used so tapping the home button brings up the app bar across the bottom
which you can rearrange as you'd like and you have all the normal apps like Netflix Prime and
Apple tv then if you press the my apps button it brings up the full app list as well as access to
the app store then we have the picture settings and sound settings area where you can switch off
motion processing enable the game mode Alm and loads more now I've talked about a lot of the
pros and the advantages of this TV but what are the negatives or the features that is missing so
although it comes with two HDMI 2.1 ports one of those are reserved for e-arc so let's say you had
a sound bar a PlayStation 5 and an Xbox series X you wouldn't be able to use all three using the
two available ports one of those consoles would then need to be plugged into the HDMI 2.0 Port
it also doesn't support hgig or g-sync so if these were were features that you were looking for well
you won't get them on this model but even with all of that said this TV packs a lot of features that
includes HDR 10 HDR 10 plus Dolby Vision 120 hertz vrr and a decent gaming menu so if you
were looking for a 42 or a 48 inch OLED for your gaming setup this would be an easy recommendation
based on what it can offer now I have linked to this TV below but here are the current sizes and
prices as of today now if you drop a "Gaming OLED" in the comments I will give you a thumbs
up for staying right till the end and if you did enjoy today's video check out this video
next thanks for watching and please like sub and follow me on Instagram and Twitter until next time