Panasonic TH-L32X30D review

People were apprehensive about purchasing LED televisions till a couple of years ago due to the high prices involved. LCD televisions today are a lot more budget-friendly and have been around for quite sometime. Though the concept of LED televisions is not new, they’re still not selling in the market as much as they should be. Manufacturers have loaded many interesting features in their LED televisions to woo customers. As the number of LED televisions is steadily increasing in the market, manufacturers are reducing the prices to stay ahead of their competition. 

Connections are well spaced out at the back

Panasonic have launched the Viera TH-L32X30D LED television, which boasts of some pretty impressive specifications. The company seems to be targeting this TV at those who’re willing to upgrade from a CRT TV and yet, do not want to compromise on any of the added features most televisions come with these days. Read on to know if this LED LCD TV can be the ideal solution for you. 

More from Reviews

Best phones under Rs 75,000 (March 2025): Apple iPhone 16, OnePlus 13 to Google Pixel 9 Apple iPhone 16e First Impressions: The budget gateway into Apple Intelligence

On Video: Panasonic TH-L32X30D

Design and Build Quality

Manufacturers are introducing a lot of features to their LED LCD TVs these days. Panasonic too is no exception to this rule and therefore have added quite a few interesting additions to the 32-inch Viera TH-L32X30D. The TH-LX32X30D keeps up with the slim profile of LED televisions. The depth of this television is just an inch and a half, but it still features a whole bunch of connectivity options on the side and the rear. The bezel, like most televisions seen these days, has a glossy black finish. The sides and the top of the bezel measure at one inch, while the bottom part of the bezel is just less than two inches.

The Panasonic Viera TH-32X30D oozes class. It sports a minimalist style and is devoid of any physical buttons on the front, which lends it a touch of elegance. The Panasonic branding is located at the centre, below the screen and the VIERA logo has been placed on the top left side of the bezel. As mentioned earlier, the connectivity options on this TV are located at the side and at the rear. This LED LCD features a ton of connections, which are usually found in televisions of larger sizes. The connections on the left of the TV are quite a few, with Panasonic adding an SD card slot along with an HDMI port, a USB port, a 3.5mm audio jack and composite ports. By adding these quick access I/O ports, one can easily plug in relevant devices and swap them easily. 

Standard controls are well concealed at the side

The connections on the rear include two HDMI ports, a USB port, component and composite ports, a VGA port to connect to a PC, and an Ethernet port. The connectivity options on the TH-L32X30D are pretty loaded and with a total of three HDMI ports. This feature set may seem to be the ideal one for a 32-inch TV in a small home theatre system setup. To the left side of the TV are the controls found on most TVs, which include the buttons for surfing through the channels, an option to change the source, as well as an on/ off button. The remote control is made of plastic and is loaded with buttons. All these buttons are well-built and we had no problems with its build quality, whatsoever. Overall, this TV is stylish and is built really well. Above all, the TV is really light, so if you are someone who likes to re-arrange their house often, carrying it will not be a problem, with it weighing light at just 11kgs.

Features

The Panasonic TH-32X30D comes with plenty of features and the most notable ones are the Internet TV capabilities and the USB plug and play option. Panasonic has embedded Facebook as a widget on its menu, allowing quick access to the social networking site. The panel used on this television is an IPS-alpha LED-backlit LCD panel. The salient feature of using this panel is the accuracy in the colors reproduced and the great viewing angles it offers. 

The interface of the TH-32X30D is similar to those found on other Panasonic VIERA televisions. There is a blue bar at the bottom of the screen with different options from which one can choose. These include support for Facebook, as well as SHOUTcast internet radio streaming, amongst others. Another interesting feature of this television is that when an NTFS drive is plugged in, it can read it without any problems. The ability to read NTFS drives on the fly is a really great feature, as one can just plug in an external hard drive with high capacity and watch various movies, view pictures and listen to music. 

Colour gradients being rendered

The interface of the USB drive is pretty neat as there is a preview mode where a short clip of the video is played when the video is highlighted. This television can playback a range of file formats including M4V and MKV. Most of the televisions with this size in the market cannot play these files, so the ability to play these files places it a notch above the competition. The Panasonic VIERA TH-L32X30D has done well in terms of its design and has a fair amount of features. Read on to know about the performance of this LED LCD TV.

Performance

The performance of this TV was tested by running the DisplayMate test along with playing back Blu-rays and videos from a hard drive. While using the DisplayMate test, we had to configure the brightness and contrast levels of the TV, as it was way too bright. The black levels of this TV are very good and such is expected from an LED television. The colors that were reproduced on this TV were accurate and we had no problems with it, whatsoever. However, what we did notice was that there were some backlighting issues that were noticed at the bottom of the screen in the corners. During the color intensity scales test, we noticed that there was no color bleeding in most scales, except for Pink and Red. All other scales were very noticeable.

Colours rendered accurately

During the testing of the Blu-ray playback of our ‘The Last Samurai’ Blu-ray we noticed that the overall playback was really good. We experienced an error while pairing this television with a Philips Blu-ray player. This is not the first time we noticed such an error pop up while pairing a Panasonic TV to a Philips Blu-ray player. The error caused the television to freeze and also rendered the controls useless for that brief period. One has to switch off the television completely and turn it back up for it to work again, during such times. Other than the issue of pairing this television with a Philips Blu-ray player, there were no other playback issues we noticed when pairing it with some other player. The speakers on this television are decent and no issues were found with it. 

This television is great for watching movies from USB drives. We played back a number of videos across different file formats and all of them played brilliantly. There was no judder or freezing at all. The only issue was in the movie menu, while scrolling between the different video files. The screen would blackout for the second it took to pass from one file to the next. Overall, besides these mentioned issues the performances of this television is really good.

Stylish in glossy black

Verdict

The Panasonic TH-32X30D LED LCD television is priced in India at Rs. 37,000. The television has some pretty impressive features and the ability to play MKV files from a NTFS drive is something that we really enjoyed. The style adds to the impressive specifications of this television. While this is a great television, it does have some drawbacks and the main one being the price, which is slightly on the higher side. If one does not have an issue spending this amount on a 32-inch television, then this will be a good option to purchase.