Vizio Thin+Light CT15: Something New and Edgy
by Vivek Gowri on February 14, 2013 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
- Intel
- IPS
- Ivy Bridge
- Vizio
- Ultraportable
- Ultrabook
At the $900 price point, it’s hard to not look at the Vizio’s 1080p IPS display, i7 CPU, 256GB SSD, fully aluminum body and just say it’s awesome for the price. Admittedly, that’s because it really is phenomenal value for money, but that’s almost a cop out. This is essentially a first generation piece of hardware, and Vizio did a pretty good job on it. Their commitment to providing systems with excellent displays and zero bloatware is absolutely admirable, and their industrial design is clean and elegant. Build quality is a bit of a question mark, and obviously the input devices have had their fair share of issues, but those are easy to get used to. The CT15 ends up being a very pleasant system to use, even with the keyboard issues, because the display and responsiveness are just so great.
It’s worth keeping in mind that the next generation Vizio Thin+Light has already debuted and should reach market sometime in the next eight weeks. The top level SKU that replaces the CT15-A5 will bring four big things: multitouch display, quad-core IVB processor, a much improved keyboard, and a bigger battery. It’ll likely retail in the $1199-1249 range, similar to the CT15-A2 and A5, making the real question: is the extra money worth it?
The answer depends on how much the touchscreen experience entices you. The new generation of Vizio notebooks are clearly much improved, and between the multitouch display, quad-core CPU, larger battery, and better keyboard, I think they’re clearly worth the extra money. But that’s still a big gap—the competing notebooks at the $1200 pricepoint are very different from the types of notebooks you can get at $800.
If you cross-shop the CT15 with the rest of the notebook establishment, you’ll find stuff like Samsung’s Series 5 Ultra Touch, the ASUS VivoBook S400, and the Sony VAIO T15. All of those play in the $700-900 range, and come with the low end of the Ultrabook spec—i3 and i5 ULV processors, mechanical hard drives and 16-32GB mSATA SSD caches, multitouch 1366x768 displays with mediocre TN panels, plastic chassis, etc. The only reason I can think of to go with one of those over the CT15 is if you’re really desperate for a touchscreen notebook; otherwise I’d almost unhesitatingly recommend the Vizio. At this moment, for this amount of money, the current CT15-A5 simply cannot be topped if you're looking for a traditional notebook PC.
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rangerdavid - Thursday, February 14, 2013 - link
Soldered-on is pretty standard in these thin form-factors. Yes, 6 or 8 would be nice, but removable means thicker in most cases. No pun intended. Wait, no; intended.blueboy11 - Friday, February 15, 2013 - link
LOL! Yeah, the damned soldered unremovable RAM that should've been upgraded to 8GB in the first place! What the hell where they thinking in the first place? Oh wait, they weren't!!MobiusStrip - Sunday, February 17, 2013 - link
Just because a rip-off has become standard doesn't mean we should accept it.Apple has led the way in degrading its computers with soldered-in RAM, glued-together chassis and now shitty laptop drives in its desktop computers. We should not give them or any other manufacturer a free pass on this crap.
PeteH - Wednesday, March 6, 2013 - link
I honestly don't think manufacturers are doing things like soldering down RAM to rip people off, I think they're doing it because that's the only way to get the form factor.The problem is that consumers continue to endorse trading flexibility for pretty industrial design (based on what they buy). Manufacturers are just giving the consumers what they want, and it's hard to fault them for it.
Ninhalem - Thursday, February 14, 2013 - link
When do you need more than 4 GB of RAM? If this is used as a non-gaming notebook I don't think you will ever need more than 4 GB for a regular notebook (the HD 4000 already guarantees that this isn't a gaming oriented notebook).I'm running a desktop at the moment with only 4 GB of RAM with about 5 applications open (including Adobe running a big file) and only using about 1.7 GB.
Actually this notebook is a slam dunk for me. I've been crawling the internet for a notebook with these specs for my father to use as a research (history) tool when he goes overseas.
I just don't think the perception of 4GB is not enough is viable here.
halo37253 - Thursday, February 14, 2013 - link
Tell me what you need more then 4gb of ram for?I have 6GB of RAM in my main system and have never had a program fill it other then p95 while stressing. Really unless the user is running VM crazy or is going crazy in some adobe program I think the user is more then set with 4gb.
RAM does not make your PC faster if you don't need it, no one using a laptop like this with no GPU to load advance compute or even games onto. Though even for gaming you don't need more then 4gb.
4GB in my gaming HTPC and 6GB in my main system, both always has RAM left.
I would rather have them take the 256gb SSD out of this laptop and toss in a 128gb m-sata chip and toss in a HDD for user storage. For SSD you only need some apps and OS on your SSD. Pretty much all user files in the c:\users\yourname can be moved onto the HDD for more storage. Do the same thing with my laptop and desktop, but with sata SSD not msata. No point to have movies, music, games installed onto the SSD.
themossie - Thursday, February 14, 2013 - link
Chrome can easily use more than 4 gigs of ram with a minimal set of extensions.6 gigs used right now (2 more cached) out of 8 gb on my old Arrandale Studio XPS 16. Notepad++ and two web browsers with 50 tabs open, flash disabled and minimal extensions.
How could I upgrade to a machine with less RAM? Many people can sacrifice processing power for battery life and form factor, but not RAM - especially given how cheap it is these days.
themossie - Friday, February 15, 2013 - link
Also - 4 years ago (early 2009), the entry-level config of the earliest version of my laptop (Core 2 Duo) came with 4 gigs of ram.It had the same $1100 MSRP at the time, though definitely not an ultrabook - weighing 2.5 lbs more:-)
seapeople - Sunday, February 17, 2013 - link
Browsers allocate far more memory than they actually use, and are programmed to trim this allocation with virtually no impact to performance once the memory is needed elsewhere in the system.So even though your Chrome may routinely report a use of 4-6 gb on your 8 gb system, if you only had a 4 gb system then Chrome would likely purr along just the same while using only 2-3 gb of RAM. Perhaps once every four days when you switch over to tab number 80 it will take 2 seconds for Chrome to pull up the picture at the bottom of the page on this tab, which you would only even notice if you switched to that tab and immediately hit Ctrl-End.
Not to mention that hibernating a system with 8 gb of RAM will take significantly longer than one with 4 gb of RAM...
cbf - Thursday, February 14, 2013 - link
Software Development.Visual Studio, local ASP.NET server (for debugging), and connection to large databases.
Also, certain CAD work. Normally one would say you need a workstation class laptop with Quadra or FirePro onboard, but frankly Intel HD4000 graphics is pretty close to where mobile Quadra or FirePro was a few years ago, and works OK with a lot of CAD packages now.