B&O launches three classy new products at CES 2012

The Gadget Show  Tuesday 10 January 2012

Trust Bang & Olufsen to bring a little bit of class to the hustle and bustle of CES 2012. The luxury home entertainment brand has revealed a new 3D plasma TV, a new iPhone speaker dock and a new wall-mounted loudspeaker.

Starting with the TV, the BeoVision 12-65 is about as thin and light as a 65-inch high-end TV set can get (6.4cm and 68kg, since you’re asking). It combine an ultra-slim NeoPDP panel with a distinctive V-shaped profile to create a seriously stylish home cinema focal point.

This V-shaped chassis is formed out of two separate pieces of aluminium – one in black and the other in a natural polished aluminium finish. This creates an optical illusion of sorts, which B&O claim makes the set seem even thinner.

Not only does the BeoVision 12-65 feature eye-popping colour contrast (which plasma screens have always excelled at), the picture can also pop out at you in full 3D. Time to whip out that Avatar Blu-ray again, we think.

Moving on to the iPhone speaker dock, the Beolit 12 is the first product in B&O’s new B&O PLAY range. This is intended to show off the Danish designer’s more playful side, and will also be focused on portability.

With that in mind, the Beolit 12 portable music system promises to pack the usual high level of sound quality we’ve come to expect from B&O into a compact shell that accepts a range of portable Apple devices. In this regard it follows on closely from the excellent BeoSound 8 sound system.

Check out our Bang & Olufsen BeoSound 8review

The Beolit 12 comes with AirPlay, which is Apple’s wireless streaming technology. It lets you play music from your iPhone, iPad iPod touch, Mac or PC without having to physically connect it – provided you have a Wi-Fi connection to hand, of course.

So why the ‘Beolit’ name? The original Beolit was a transistor radio released by B&O back in the 1960s. The Beolit 12 is seen as the spiritual successor to this product, offering solid sound quality in a stylish and ultra-portable shell.

The Beolit 12 will be available in B&O showrooms and select Apple stores for around €699, which makes it the most affordable B&O portable iPhone dock we can remember seeing.

The BeoLab 12 is exciting for being a brand new concept from Bang & Olufsen. It’s a wall-mounted speaker system that’s designed to be used within your home cinema surround sound setup.

Thanks to B&O’s Acoustic Lens technology, sound is dispersed in a 180 degree radius in front of the device, which sits flush to the wall. Combined with its discrete wave design, this means that the only thing you’ll notice is how clear the sound is.

Despite being compact and discrete, the BeoLab 12’s sound should be seriously hefty, thanks to B&O’s ICEpower class D amplifier technology. It’ll kick out some 480 watts in total, which is mighty impressive from a device that weighs just 2.8kg and measures less than 20cm thick.

Do any of these premium products appeal to you, or will you be lowering your tech sights as you tighten the purse strings in 2012? Let us know in the Comments section below.

Check out our Bang & Olufsen Earphones review