In the style stakes, most modern televisions just don’t cut it. Your silver-grey Sony, Panasonic and Philips boxes just don’t have the geek-chic of Apple products, or the elegance of radios such as the Tivoli.

There’s one exception to this hard-and-fast rule: Brionvega televisions from Italy. These compact, portable sets are shot through with James Bond cool: the latest digital components are wrapped in authentic 60s designs from the likes of Marco Zanuso, Richard Sapper, and Mario Bellini.

Original Algol sets are displayed in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, but the current incarnation is no museum piece. It has SCART, S-VHS and A/V inputs, and a formidable memory: eight pages of Teletext, five user-definable video settings, and 100 storable programmes. Even the colours have attitude: Sun Orange, Moon Grey, Night Black and ‘Dark’. It costs $1,655.

Another Brionvega model, the $1,998 Doney, is less Jackie O and more The Jetsons. It’s from a slightly earlier vintage, but no less stylish: it won the prestigious Compasso d'Oro award in 1962. And then there’s the $2,250 Cuboglass, a transparent, reflective crystal-cube shaped TV based on Brionvega’s iconic Black ST 201 model from 1969.

If you prefer audio to audio-visual, check out the beautiful folding AM/FM radio, the $580 ts522, that runs on both batteries and mains power.

Tempted? The New Zealand distributor is Found in Christchurch.