VIZIO details PC line-up

OS News
By Thom Holwerda
June 14, 2012

And finally, finally, finally, Vizio has fully unveiled its brand new line up of laptops and all-in-ones . The successful American TV maker announced its new kit at CES in January, catching my eyes with a set of beautiful, distinctive laptops and all-in-ones, and, as they promised back then, they have now unveiled all. This has want written all over it. Update: Rejoice: non-glossy, matte screens on the laptop.

Especially the all-in-ones intrigue me. I'm actually a fan of the form-factor, but few companies have ever been able to offer decent Windows all-in-ones that even came close to Apple's iMac. These new machines by Vizio seem to be the first - and it's done by a newcomer, not an incumbent. The only question remaining was price, and it seems Vizio has nailed that one as well.

The all-in-ones (more non-rendered prettiness here) come in either 24" or 27", both as 1920x1080 panels - which is a little bit of a letdown; I had hoped that the 27" model would at least have a higher-res BTO option. For the rest, we're looking at Intel Ivy Bridge processors, NVIDIA Kepler GeForce GPUs, and storage options that max out at a 1TB regular HDD coupled with a 32GB SSD for the operating system. It comes with a wireless subwoofer, touchpad and keyboard.

Software-wise, Vizio scores major, major brownie points by working very closely with Microsoft to deliver a completely vanilla Windows 7 installation, with not a single piece of bloatware. Only Microsoft Security Essentials has been installed, but considering its lightness, I wouldn't call that bloatware. To illustrate just how far Vizio as willing to go with this: all Vizio's machines come with a special 'V' key (on F1) to launch services like Hulu Plus, Vudu and Netflix; however, none of these will come pre-installed, just to avoid bloatware. Nice, nice going.

And now for pricing. The all-in-ones will start at $898 for the 24", and $1098 for the 27". That's way cheaper than I originally anticipated, which makes me very happy. I really, really want one of these, so I hope Vizio will sell them internationally; so far, the company has focused entirely on its home-turf, the North-American market. If any of you know anybody who works at Vizio - let us know.

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