From the panasonics and samsungs I have calibrated Samsungs are by far the most color accurate displays I have seen. Their CMS and color calibration is on point. Panasonics are good, but Samsung imho beats them out when it comes to color accuracy. Though Panasonics have always been better with MLL, Gamma, and Grayscale, contrast ratios, etc which makes up the most defining factors of PQ.
I understand it might sound like I'm entering the blind faith corner (which I actually despise) but please bear with me in the sense that I'm an absolute sucker for sturdy industrial design and shit meant to last, at least on paper or down to industrial design.
I'm a designer at trade, both graphical and industrial, but I have a serious crush on objects... The sturdy ones (I have apple stuff, but I despise the decisions behind it, see, apple aligns itself into the "honest" branch of cold design (germanic) but they rape it in the ass each time they pull aluminum and glass shenanigans again. [this line of though origins in honesty which is also letting the product be whatever it wants to be, it's the line of thought that stated radios inside cabinets were silly, steel structures were pretty and didn't have to be hidden from view with rocks, etc), a laptop or tablet obviously wants to be made of inexpensive and tolerant to impact plastic -
not shitty alluminium] Specifically Aluminum is one of the less resilient metals on earth, and can't be wielded properly (but they do wield it on macbook lids, which is a bad principle), they also abuse glue and glass which are poor choices, glue comes loose with heat and glass, well, glass breaks, it's fine on screens like the ipad, but it makes little sense on a laptop or desktop computer where it suddenly acts as a mirror. The fact they charge more for not having the glass is an absolute travesti too but I'd pay more to have a plastic macbook pro, that's how strongly I feel about this.
This is for context, I always loved Nintendo classic design, stuff like the original gameboy or the Gamecube, which were absolute tanks when it come to surviving kids, I also loved IBM laptop designs back in the day, sturdy unassuming plastic, as I did motorolla 2-way radios, Land Rover Defender and stuff like that. Stuff meaning business. I dislike flimsy pieces of crap.
I obviously love pro-oriented devices, and I do see that on some Sony and Panasonic devices from time to time. I was actually talking about this with a friend yesterday, he found a mini disc player going through his things, complete with the included lcd remote thing and wondered how come that kind of sturdy build quality, finish and premium feature balance is not currently available, and I agreed, minidisc devices looked like professional derivatives back in the day, very premium, they came with the aforementioned remote that I haven't seen anyone shelling out in years, that meant that the player could almost never be seen - now they want to sell me a watch that can tell me I'm having a heart attack or leave me stranded with a darn volume and pause (double press to skip) buttons on my headphones, if I'm lucky. All that while that piece of 1998 history will tell you the name of the track and allow you go fast forward, rewind, pause, skip, order it to go random...
When I bought one of my PVM's, I got it shipped from germany and it didn't go so well, it arrived working but litterally disassembled, the packaging was loose and damn dudes transporting it clearly let it fall somewhere, hence, some screws came loose and broke the hook points on the front bezel, TV wouldn't close, really.
So I opened it. And holy shit.
First of all, this is not plastic with ordinary width, no, the design was something textbook worthy, reinforcements everywhere, every cable was insulated and everything was shielded, it also reminded me of a classical mackintosh, clearly more premium though.
I didn't have a lot of hope though, damn hook points were broken, I had pieces of them out, and others making noise inside, how could I ever close it again? perhaps with plastic wielding? Longer screws?
To cut the story short... the thing had unused screw holes on the structure and corresponding hook points on the bezel, so I only had to switch the screws somewhere else and the set is fine to this day.
They added multiple extra fixing points precisely because something like this could happen and the show must go on. I'm a sucker for that, seriously, I hope someday I can design something as sturdy and so well thought out.
I have a similar passion towards Pioneer sets and pro Panasonic sets even though I don't own any - yet. Kuro's had the same design as the pro set they sold without tuners, actually. And the design is 100% pro-oriented. I love it (I also love the fact they have ports for everything in there)
The other part of the story is how some user on shmup forums bought a 1998 BVM and discovered the thing had been 11 years plugged in nonstop (had more than 100.000 hours), quick google will tell you CRT's are meant to last 60.000 hours, never 100.000 let alone being that well off. That's testament to what a pro line has to be, 10 years nonstop operation was explained to me later as being the gold standard every company aims for in the pro market, it's what clients expect; which is why the OLED cooperation between Panasonic and Sony was the only one openly caring about lifespan, because both were thinking of channeling those panels intro professional offerings before offering those to the consumer oriented market.
I realize this might be biased to a certain point also, and nothing stops other companies from fighting their way around this through other means (downright good engineering, taste for offering a good product and the public responding to that), but I'm a sucker for pro-line products I can't possibly afford - or the next big thing (sometimes it's like wanting a Ferrari and buying a Fiat, but I don't think it's the case here, these plasma panels are really the consumer versions of a pro production line and they have all the bearings of it).
tl;dr - I just wrote a love letter to sturdy, long lasting pieces of technology. And took a shit on most of Apple aesthetic choices.
