Vizio Thin+Light CT15: Something New and Edgy

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.