Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Vizio Thin + Light CT15T-B1 notebook review: A new HD touchscreen—and little more

Vizio, best known for manufacturing HDTVs, is a relative newcomer to the PC business. It’s been producing slim, minimalist laptops and all-in-one desktops for about 18 months. The Vizio CT15T-B1 is the latest iteration of the company’s 15.6-inch “Thin + Light” laptop, and its main selling point is a glossy HD touchscreen.

The CT15T-B1, which costs $1470 as of this writing, maintains the signature look of Vizio laptops: It has a smooth, gunmetal-gray metallic cover with neatly beveled edges, a spacious keyboard deck, and an edge-to-edge glass screen. In fact, Vizio hasn’t really updated its design at all from the CT15-A4. Because it’s what’s on the inside that counts, right?

Well, what’s on the inside of the CT15T-B1 is a little disappointing, since it was released before the launch of Intel’s fourth-generation Core (aka Haswell) processor. The CT15T-B1 sports a quad-core Intel i7-3635QM processor from the Ivy Bridge line, along with 8GB of DDR3/1600 memory and a 256GB SSD. It doesn’t disappoint when it comes to performance, though: With a Notebook Worldbench 8.1 score of 334, this is one of the speedier laptops we’ve tested. It’s a little more than three times faster than our Core i5–powered reference notebook.

Benchmark numbers

If you’re looking for a laptop that will perform various tasks quickly and efficiently, the CT15T-B1 is a good choice. One caveat: This machine doesn’t have a discrete graphics card, so its graphics performance is mediocre at best. In our Bioshock Infinite test (low resolution/low quality settings), it managed just 24.2 frames per second, nowhere near the 79.7 fps of the ultrafast Cyberpower FangBook EVO HX7-200.

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Source: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2043523/vizio-thin-light-ct15t-b1-notebook-review-a-new-hd-touchscreen-and-little-more.html#tk.rss_laptopcomputers

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