Stand back and be amazed: this Hitachi LCD has just put the ‘flat’ right back into flatscreen.

At just 35mm deep, this blade-thin screen is the sveltest of its type that we have ever seen, let alone got our mitts on to test. It has the sort of profile previously thought to be the preserve of OLED technology and even then, only ever seen on smaller, ‘concept’ sets at trade shows.

Hitachi's seriously svelte design

The Hitachi UT32MH40U is available now, though: after having apparently beamed into Hitachi dealerships from the future in some sort of fortunate space/time mix-up that is sure to leave the company’s rivals choking on their own disbelief.

Because make no mistake, this thing is gorgeous. Designed around the ostensibly preposterous notion that people want tellies in the middle of their rooms, Hitachi has set about creating a set that is not only impossibly slight, but also looks as good from the back as from the front. Whatever you might think of that idea, it’s a 360° stunner.

It’s tempting to conclude that it must be features that bulk out conventional screens, because this set barely has any. The most glaring omission is a digital television tuner, the lack of which confines the Hitachi to the now strangely anachronistic-sounding job description of display rather than TV.

This harks back to the days when anything flat was a ‘panel’ and anyone who had one was a ‘videophile’ with a cellar dedicated to home cinema. TV fans needn’t fret too much, though: Hitachi will be bringing out a dedicated digital tuner box in October.

Simple menus

The economical approach is reflected in the socket roster and remote control which, respectively, have three inputs (HDMI, an RGB computer port and a stereo audio minijack) and 14 buttons between them.

The latter is a real throwback, with large rubbery buttons and a sparse, Fisher-Price-type aesthetic that seems peculiarly incongruous when set against the achingly futuristic slither of a screen it’s supposed to control.

The UT32MH40U is blessed with the same Hitachi operating system that has graced so many successful sets over the past year or two.