newfangled condign: Hands-on with Vizio's laptops, desktops and 10-inch tablet

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Hands-on with Vizio's laptops, desktops and 10-inch tablet

One of the more intriguing stories to come out of CES so far has been Vizio's decision to enter the PC market. The company's laptops and desktops have been leaked, announced and shown off in press shots, but now we've gotten up-close and personal with the machines. We also got a chance to manhandle its 10-inch tablet that officially broke cover this morning. Check out the gallery below for some hands on impressions. We spoke with CTO Matt MacRae about the cooperation with Microsoft that surrounded the development of the PCs, and confirmed they would ship (late summer / back to school time frame most likely) with a clean Windows 7 (8 when that is available) image -- no bloatware. While the hardware, specs and design were still not final, we can confirm they're as thin and light as they looked in the press pics. The screens on these demo units were equally impressive, and Vizio promises they will be among the best available when they ship.

All but the smallest laptop feature 1080p screens, and the desktops even have HDMI passthrough, so they can be used as an HDTV with the PC portion turned completely off. The thin profile of the all-in-ones (that neck is a single piece of metal, not just painted plastic) is made possible by integrating the power supply into the subwoofer. As for the tablet, it's running an upgraded version of Vizio's custom Android skin, currently built on Honeycomb, although the company mentioned it will upgrade to the latest stable version (read: ICS) once it's available. The 8-inch that's currently available was also in the house running the upgraded skin, and all of those units should see an OTA patch kicking them up a version eventually.

Gallery: Vizio PCs and 10-inch Tablet