All the 801 versions are very good speakers - IMO you can do just as good for a lot less money if you are willing to sacrifice the cool looks. B&W is a mixture of looks and quality sound.

The 801 is also quite picky on what drives it properly and the room size and positioning. My dealer replaced the Big B&W 802 and 801 with Audio Note E speakers. May be worth it to you to compare the two yourself like me - it may save you a lot of money and get you a better speaker(which has much deeper bass, is easy to drive to keep your tube amp options open should you go that route) - though you don't get a show stopper in the looks department. You may also be able to find info on higher efficiency designs on the AudioAsylum forum as easy to drive is a benefit most of the time in the dynamics department.

Some of the new ML's are a bit easier than they were - but get nasty sometimes in the upper frequencies. If they blow you'll be out some huge change as well. But they look cool and sound nice - Quite expensive for what you get IMO.