Panasonic ST50 vs Samsung E7000

I've had my ST50 for a week, after replacing a 1080p Sony Bravia SXRD, and I'm still amazed at how much better the Panasonic looks.

I do a LOT of gaming on 360 and PS3 and the 16ms input lag on the Panny is fantastic. A gamers dream.

Side note - the ST50's in my local Best Buy's really look horrible, as they're set on "Standard" mode, which is quite dull and lifeless. Just a word of warning in case you make a point to view one in the store. The difference is huge once you switch to custom settings or even just "Cinema" mode.

I can't recommend the ST50 enough.

Good to know, because it looks dull at my local BB as well. Can't wait to pull the trigger.

The Samsung E7000 is more in line feature-wise with the Panasonic GT50 and they are also closer in price point. The ST50 is more in line with the Samsung E550 series in regards to price point or closer to the E6500 feature-wise. The E7000 has a dual core processor as does the GT50. If you're looking into this price point you should give the GT50 a close look. You get more HDMI and USB ports as well as an additional PC port not available on the ST50.

The E7000 is closer to the high-end of the Samsung line as is the GT50 in the Panasonic line. The ST50 is the mid level of the Panasonic line.

Or if you don't need the extra features the GT offers, get the ST50 and save a few hundred bucks to put towards something you want.

Have you heard anything about the input lag for gaming on the GT50? Somewhere I saw that it was changed upward and not very good.

To the OP, go with the ST50. And as someone said above, the 16ms input lag really can't be beat for gaming.

One thing to be very cautious with regarding going into Samsung is the fluctuating brightness. I returned my D7000 last month and bought an ST50 because I couldn't take it anymore. The screen was constantly shifting brightness when displaying darker scenes. The problem is very heavily discussed on the forums here. The problem is it seems to be happening on the E7000/E8000 as well. The ST50 looks spectacular. It's not perfect - none of these sets are - but overall I'm much happier with the ST50.

I'm also in the market for a plasma and have narrowed down my likely choices to a ST/GT50 or a E7000. My local BestBuy has a 8000 sitting right next to a GT50 in the darkened room area, with the same source DVD playing on both. The thing that is very obvious is how much sharper the E7000 is. I checked the sharpness settings and the GT50 is set right at 50% of the scale, and the E7000 at about 25%. Also, it's a 60" GT50 and a 64" E7000. So, you would expect the GT50 to look sharper, but it's clearly not. In comparison it looks out of focus or smoothed. They've also got a 65" VT50 playing a different source but it also looks soft. I've seen several comments and reports of the Samsung plasmas being sharper than the Pannys but didn't expect it to be so stark a difference. Are there other settings that could account for what I saw, or is this just a known difference?

Get the ST50. Better Picture quality then the Samsung