Vizio delivers a (mostly) excellent big-screen thin-and-light

Hi there. I'm Josh Goldman with CNET and this is a look at the VIZIO CT15T-B1. Still best known for its TV's, VIZIO entered the PC market more than a year ago with the goal of creating affordable computers that still look good, and for the most part that's what you get with the B1. The anodized aluminum unibody construction not only looks great but gives it a very solid feel, though its travel weight exceeds 5 pounds. So while it's very thin it's not all that light. It is very clean looking outside though. Ports are minimal. You won't even find an SD card reader. Inside is nice and clean too. The 1080p IPS touch panel is excellent for work and play with wide viewing angles. The keyboard isn't the island style kind. We've seen the most of lately, so if that's what you're used to, it might take some time to adjust. The touch pad is big and responsive or at least more responsive than their last generation, but the software support is lacking, so again if you're used to having a lot of multi-touch gestures available or even just palm check to prevent accidentally opening the Windows 8 Charm bar you might be disappointed. Also considering it's more than a thousand dollars, the keyboard should be backlit but it's not. Inside the case you'll find a 3rd gen Intel Core i7 quad-core processor, 8 gigabytes of memory, 256 gigabytes SSD and integrated graphics. The combo performs very well for all big graphics intensive things. So playing newer games at high settings isn't something you'll wanna do, but it had no problem with playback of high-bit rate full HD movies. If battery life is important to you, the VIZIO ran for 7 hours on our video drain test which is great, and you should be able to push past that mark for less intensive tasks. All in all, a very nice laptop. It just needs a little more polish. I'm Josh Goldman and that's the VIZIO CT15T-B1.