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As if all the settings already mentioned weren't enough, an ‘Advanced Settings' submenu allows you to get really involved with the nitty-gritty of the 55X4500's pictures. Black correction, advanced contrast enhancement, gamma adjustments, white balance, detail enhancement, edge enhancement, even the extremes of the LED dimming (should you actually find the preset level too dynamic) can all be adjusted via this menu. To be honest, aside from perhaps the Detail Enhancer, I didn't really feel that I improved things much with any of these advanced options, but I'd still rather have them there than not.

The only glaring absentee from all the 55X4500's flexibility is a truly effective colour management system. So it's just as well that the factory colour settings of the 55X4500 I tested seemed pretty much immaculate without my intervention!

With good quality HD sources, in particular, the extent of the colour palette is outstanding, delivering everything from exceptionally bright peak whites and vibrant fully saturated reds and blues to the darkest of deep greens and murkiest of yellows. What's more, the set delivers skin tones quite beautifully, producing them with exceptional naturalism at all times, no matter how difficult the lighting conditions are within a scene.

We mentioned the exceptional nature of the 55X4500's peak whites a moment ago, but actually it's what's happening at the opposite end of the luminance scale that makes the 55X4500 truly special. For its black level response is really quite mind-blowing.

Even during the very darkest of scenes, such as the opening murders in a night-time lay-by at the start of David Fincher's Zodiac (via Sky HD), my eyes detected not a trace of the grey misting over dark areas that characterises almost all flat TVs to some extent. Black looks black, and that's that. Pioneer's KURO plasmas are no longer the only TVs that can achieve this key picture quality feat.

What's even more gobsmacking about the 55X4500's black levels is the fact that they're achieved so effortlessly. In other words, achieving deep blacks doesn't demand anything like the same accompanying reduction in brightness that you have to tolerate with normal LCD TVs when they try to do black, which means that shadow details are free to emerge with total clarity; they don't get lost in any grey or forced black murkiness. As a result, dark scenes are presented with a greater sense of solidity and immersive three-dimensionality than I've seen anywhere aside from - perhaps - Pioneer's latest KURO plasmas. Remarkable stuff.

The 55X4500's ability to combine deep blacks and unfettered bright elements within the same frame means it pretty much achieves the holy grail of flat TV picture performance in this reviewer's humble opinion.

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