Pioneer PDP-LX5090 HDTV

Pioneer has been a leading force in the Plasma television market. It has single-handedly reignited the interests of would-be HDTV buyers in plasma televisions with the introduction of their Kuro line in 2007. LCD’s have dominated the market for a couple of years now, but Pioneer’s innovations has kept the plasma TVs on the market.

Now, Pioneer has come a long way, especially with their new Pioneer PDP-LX5090. It is a 50-inch true HD television with a resolution of 1920×1080.

Like most Pioneer sets,the PDP-LX5090 plasma HDTV sports a clutter-free glossy black bezel which is adorned only by Pioneer’s logo along the bottom border, and some red or blue LED indicators at the bottom left corner.

The PDP-LX5090’s reflective screen has a dark grey appearance in bright illuminations. This strengthens the case for stringent ambient lighting control to prevent the potentially inky blacks from being excessively diluted by stray light.

At the back, the PDP-LX5090’s build quality is revealed. A pair of recessed handgrips are thoughtfully embedded at the back of the Pioneer PDP-LX5090 plasma TV to aid lifting. The 3 HDMI ports behind the Pioneer PDP-LX5090 now face backwards rather than downwards, making them easier to access. However, this effectively means that owners who wish to mount their plasmas flush to the wall may have to bend and stress their HDMI cables to some degree even though the compartment housing the HDMI inputs is somewhat recessed relative to the rear plane of the panel.

A side USB port allows you to view JPEG photos on the Pioneer PDP-LX5090 Kuro plasma. The absence of an S-video input is probably not going to be missed by many.

As an HDTV television, the PDP-LX5090 displays images brilliantly, specially with a Blu-Ray player. Not only does the splendid black level on the Pioneer PDP-LX5090 plasma television shower the viewers with an exquisite sense of depth and dimensionality, it also served as a pristine canvas which allowed wonderful rich colours inside a movie to pop off the screen.

Furthermore, the PDP-LX5090 has one of the most deepest black level ever measured (0.0031 cd/m2) on a flat panel HDTV. It has enormous dynamic range with full preservation of shadow and highlight detail. It has excellent high-definition and standard-def video processing and renders motion fluidly with minimal motion blurring.

The Pioneer PDP-LX5090 is probably one of the best plasma HDTV ever released by Pioneer.

If you’ve read through all the reviews on this website, you’ll discover that every single HDTV which has been awarded “Highly Recommended”… or better… delivers excellent black level. Inky blacks enhance the realism of dark scenes, bolster image depth, and lend richness to colours. All things being equal, it is truly a straightforward case of “May the HDTV with the best blacks win”.

And it is in this aspect that the Pioneer PDP-LX5090 stands peerless. Sure, the Samsung F96 LCD TV can produce 0 cd/m2 true blacks by switching off its local-dimming LED backlight, but only when there’s little to no content on screen. During normal viewing, the blacks on the Samsung F96 LCD looked noticeably greyer compared to the Pioneer PDP-LX5090 Kuro right beside it. Although the improvement in black level going from an 8G (which is already miles ahead of other flat screen televisions on the market) to 9G (PDP-LX5090) Pioneer plasma is perhaps not as dramatic as the significant leap from a 7G (the generation prior to Kuro) to 8G (the first generation of Kuro), it is still visible nonetheless… certainly more than subtle in a dimly-lit viewing environment.

The Pioneer PDP-LX5090 performed very well on pretty much every criterion of picture quality tests. D65 greyscale, 2.2 gamma, accurate chromaticities, spot-on colour decoding, excellent video processing, fine detail resolution, high motion resolution, and wide viewing angles.

Sources:
http://www.hdtvlounge.net
http://whathifi.com
http://www.t3.com