Panasonic ST50 panel brightness

TV life i believe. But i second this.

If you like it brighter by all means make it so. It will look great from here no matter where you keep the settings.

It's probably best to change other settings and leave the panel on mid. I wouldn't be worried about energy consumption, but odds are you're washing out detail in darker scenes. If you like an overly bright display though, then go for what you like the best. I suggest leaving it on mid and calibrating with AVS709 if you haven't already tried, but again it's up to you.

The reason people don't use High PB is not because of power consumption. Most people use mid because it provides sufficient brightness for most people. I haven't actually checked, but setting it to high probably messes up the gamma curve. Reason I haven't checked is because I have no need for a higher brightness... not even close. Mid should be able to provide enough brightness for even the brightest rooms.

I fiddled with this setting last night.
It can increase power use, but on a white screen it seems to decrease max power. Some folks like to increase CONTRAST to increase brightness when watching thru 3D glasses.
So this would possibly another way to do that.

I guess we really do not know, for the various pre-set PICTURE modes such as VIVID, CINEMA, GAMES etc. what the default settings are. Seems to me for example VIVID may well have Panel Brightness = High

I have an ST30 so I'm not sure if this applies to the ST50, but on high brightness it introduces color banding in color gradients. Not worth it. It also always defaults back to low brightness after 10 minutes (probably ST30 specific).

I actually messed around with this a lot yesterday. Putting the panel brightness on high is awful, and putting the brightness too high will wash out deep blacks. The best thing to do is adjust the gamma settings. You should be using a gamma of 2.6 for 50-55 inch models and 2.4 for 60-65 inch models. Lowering gamma slightly will lighten both dark and bright images, but won't wash out the darkest blacks. At least on my 50" I found a gamma of 2.4 to be perfect on almost any content.