Bang & Olufsen's new BeoPlay V1 television can be suspended from the ceiling, hang on your wall, or sit on the floor but despite being part of the affordable B&O Play range, will still set you back £2,000.

Bang

Bang & Olufsen has long been associated with high-end audio-visual products, with a strong emphasis on design and quality. At the Consumer Electronics Show in January, the company launched a new category of more 'affordable' products which come under the title B&O Play, with the £600 AirPlay dock, the Beolit 12, being the first product to launch.

Today the company has unveiled the second device in the range, in the form of the BeoPlay V1 television with comes in 32in and 40in models, and will set you back £1,999 and £2,499 respectively, when they go on sale from today, 2 May.

The BeoPlay V1 has been designed to be flexible in terms of where you put it in your living room setup. It can be mounted on a tablet top stand, a floor stand, on the wall and most intriguingly on wires suspended from the ceiling.

Building on the audio tradition of Bang & Olufsen, the TV features speakers powered by the company's own ICEpower amps. And the results are certainly impressive. At a briefing ahead of the launch, we were shown the TV in action and the sound quality was among the best we've heard from a TV on its own.

The TV also features excellent connectivity and if you are an Apple TV owner, then you're in luck, as a rear panel comes off to reveal a space specifically built to accommodate the little black box. The remote control lets you control a range of third party devices, like Blu-ray players, games consoles, a NAS drive and the aforementioned Apple TV.

Bang

Should you want to connect your TV up to an external speaker system, the V1 features integrated 5.1 surround module and speaker subwoofer connections.

The screen uses LED technology and features contrast control which adjusts to the ambient light, as well as dedicated film and gaming modes.

The TV was designed by Anders Hermansen and while the design wasn't to our tastes, it is true to the "Scandinavian idiom of no-nonsense industrial aesthetics," according to Bang & Olufsen. The TV is manufactured out of two sheets of metal which have been folded together and powder-coated to give it a soft touch.

The loudspeaker grille has been stamped directly into the cabinet below the screen. The TV comes in black or white and the speaker cover can be changed with a range of different colours available including black, red, green and grey.

Tue Mantoni, CEO of Bang & Olusfen, who unveiled the TV this morning, said: "BeoPlay V1 has been designed by studying the way people use television in their homes. We want it to fit into people's lifestyles, so they don't have to fit their lives around a television."

The TV is available from today exclusively at Bang & Olufsen stores in Europe and will be released elsewhere later in the month.