(NEW) Panasonic W95 Mini LED 4K Ultra HD Smart TV (2024)

It's so exciting to have Panasonic TVs back in the U.S., but I'm worried some buyers will pass these new Panasonic TVs up on the basis of them having Fire TV instead of Google TV or some other "preferred" OS on them. Now, if you're not a Prime subscriber, then Fire TV will probably be somewhat lost on you, but I think Fire TV is THE way to go if you're a Prime subscriber and also happen to prefer a more "traditional" TV-viewing experience. I'll eventually get around to "calibrating" this TV, but I don't expect it to need much in the way of adjustment, as everything just looks fantastic on it right out of the box (assuming you chose Home mode instead of Store mode during setup, obviously). I'm no expert when it comes to measuring brightness and color accuracy, but I'll also say that this TV seems to respect the intended brightness of scenes, as well as their color balance, though it can sometimes feel a smidge dim if you're relying on the ambient light sensor. After turning the ambient light sensor off, however, I find that the TV has been at least bright enough to overcome most reflections in my living room, which is great when you consider how glossy the screen is. This TV also gets very loud. My previous TV was regularly at 50% volume, but 50% volume on this one is honestly a bit too loud for me at times. It's also worth noting that there's a setting to ensure spoken dialog stands out well, so you shouldn't find yourself having to turn this TV up too loud specifically to hear what people are saying. Getting back to the Fire TV discussion, I absolutely love the live TV guide. I realize that Google TV has a built-in guide, but the live TV guide in Google TV absolutely hates it when you have ad-block set up on your router, while Fire TV's live TV guide seems to have no such issues. Furthermore, the live TV guide in Fire TV aggregates so much more from so many more apps compared to Google TV. Basically, if an app integrates into the Fire TV live TV guide, then all the setup it requires is for you to launch that app once and (if applicable) sign in. You'll have a massive live TV guide in no time after setting this stuff up once. It really is a thing of beauty. App installations sometimes work a bit differently in Fire TV compared to Google TV, as Amazon allows you to subscribe to "channels" directly through the Amazon store and on the TV. As such, when you're downloading apps for services you already subscribe to or plan to subscribe to through a service other than Amazon, make sure you choose to just download the app, rather than choosing the first option that also starts a free trial for the service through Amazon. Note that subscribing through Amazon will give you access to only some of a specific service's catalog through Prime, but signing into that same service's app could grant you far more. Likewise, while Google TV has a tendency to recommend content from apps of your choosing and doesn't tend to organize them by app/provider, I believe much of the Fire TV interface is recommending content available through Prime and its channels but can and will display additional rows for content recommendations from apps you've installed. In practice, Fire TV and Google TV don't look too different from one another when you consider how they present content recommendations in rows, but understand that Fire TV is presenting you with rows of Prime channels content and separate rows for your apps that are intended to draw you into those apps to access the respective fuller catalogs when applicable. If you preferred Android TV to Google TV for how its rows acted as "channels" prior to the switch to Google TV, then you'll probably actually prefer Fire TV as long as you don't miss the level of control you had in displaying those "channel" rows. In short, I'd say Fire TV excels at the Prime and live TV experiences, while Google TV is probably the way to go if you want to go app-hopping. Google TV offers more apps overall, but Fire TV has been known to have the odd occasional exclusive. Anyway, this is a great TV for the price, and I really hope Panasonic's choice of Fire TV as the OS doesn't limit the appeal of these new Panasonic TVs. Fire TV is a really underrated OS when it comes to pre-installed TV OSes, and you can still set it up as a "dumb TV" if you really just want to attach some other streaming device to it. Definitely don't overlook these TVs, though, as they're quite good for the price you're paying.