Panasonic Viera TH-46PZ8OU Plasma HDTV Review - Audio

The quality of the Panasonic TH-46PZ80U's audio is nothing to write home about, but neither is it terrible. We don't recommend you use the simulated surround sound feature, as it's pretty much worthless.

Sound Quality (6.0)
The Panasonic TH-46PZ80U's two built in speakers provide reasonable sound quality. It certainly won't be the highlight of your home theatre system, but if you aren't an audiophile they should suit most users fine. We didn't detect any major problems with quality in our informal test using some standard movie sequences.

Surround Sound (3.0)
The Panasonic TH-46PZ80U has a simulated surround sound mode. Many modern TV's have this setting that is supposed to create the illusion that you are using a surround sound system. Like most TV's the Panasonic TH-46PZ80U's simulated surround sound was unimpressive. Compared to an inexpensive surround sound system that we use it produced nowhere near the same effect, in fact we struggled to be able to tell the difference in audio with the feature turned on and off. If you do want surround sound we recommend you go out and by a real surround sound system, even a cheap set of speakers will be better than the Panasonic TH-46PZ80U's simulated surround sound.

Loudness (8.45)
The Panasonic TH-46PZ80U measured 84.5 decibels in our test of loudness. This is quite loud enough to deafen you, and should be loud enough for almost anyone. We made this measurement using a sound pressure meter from five feet away with the volume at maximum and using pink noise as our reference sound.