Discount VIZIO CT15-A4 15-Inch Thin + Light Ultrabook

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EDIT 12/1 I have had a chance to put the PC through it's paces with several full battery runs. That is, working on it (writing, web-surfing, email) a couple of times. The battery life with real world use is about 3 1/2 hours. Maybe a tad less. This is with setting the power plan to "power saver" and the screen at half brightness. Also I ran HWinfo and after 4 charges the battery wear is at 4.8% which is weird.

Bottom line. This is a terrific slim laptop IF you can deal with the terrible battery life. Ultrabook specs call for 5+ hours of battery life so I don't think it can be classified that way.

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I received this ultrabook on Nov 28th and thought I'd give some quick thoughts then expand later. I'm a writer and I need a laptop with a good keyboard. I took a risk on this laptop but have been pleasantly surprised by the way the keys behave. They don't have the same travel as your typical keyboard it's a bit shallow but I am a heavy typer and I appreciate the over sized keys. The text is black on silver and a bit hard to read without a back light. Wish they had backlit keys.

The box and packaging was good in fact the box is white, colorful, and very sturdy. Amazon shipped the laptop in a small box with only some small padding on the side so I was a bit concerned but the laptop is fine. The docs are minuscule but who reads those anyway?

The screen is gorgeous. I mean GORGEOUS. It' bright and it is such a relief to view a true HD screen after spending several weeks looking at crappy 1366 resolution. Even the Samsung 15" Series 7 with a matte display looked washed out at 1600 x 900 and was the main reason I avoided the Series 9. The Vizio screen is amazing and the high point of the laptop.

It's fast, boots rather quickly. Seems to have overall snappiness with all apps I have tested including office 2013.

Now the downside. The battery life stinks. I'm at 60% and it says I have 2 hours left. I suspect the life is a bit under 4 hours. I was really hoping that this model, with the i5, would have better battery life.

More later.

Edited to correct some typos ...

Now that I have a day on the laptop I continue to be amazed at it. I do think it is necessary to mention that the dreaded touchpad problems persist. I did not try the first generation just read the horror stories. At times this touchpad is great but at others it's maddening. Something like scrolling a page appears to be laggy until I lift my fingers. Swiping from the left to switch windows works about 25% of the time (this is a windows 8 gesture). Tapping and two-finger tapping work very well.

I wrote about 1,500 words today in a new project and found the keyboard to be quite nice. As I mentioned I really like the large keys. I've used macs for the last few years and find the keyboards to be amazing but I fat finger a lot on the small keys.

I've run the batter down to 10% today and I think I got about 3 1/2 hours out of it. That is simply unacceptable in an ultrabook but I can't find another computer with a true HD 15" screen with these kind of specs. As much as I want a 15" Macbook Pro Retina, I refuse to pay over $2,000 for a laptop. My next choice was the Zenbook Prime but I don't think my eyes can handle the tiny screen.

The power brick with the Vizio is really nice. It's compact and the plug features a light that indicates when the laptop is charged.

I noticed that Amazon added the CT-15 A5 to the $200 free gift card deal kind of irritating since I purchased this PC the day before. I would have paid the extra $250 since it now comes with the gift card. I thought about sending this one back and exchanging but with my luck the deal would run out the minute they issued my credit.

I appreciate the clean look off the PC as well as the free space on the hard drive. Because this is a Microsoft signature ultrabook it is not loaded with bloatware. I was really impressed that I didn't have to spend hours uninstalling Norton and Mcaffe crap. Also there were no stickers all over the case. Nothing says cheap quite like opening a new laptop only to find logos all over the palm areas and stickers hanging off the screen that show the PC stats. I KNOW what I just bought, you don't have to remind me that my computer has X amount of hard drive and RAM installed.

I'm really leaning toward bumping this review to a 4 star. It's a strong 3 1/2 right now. I hope that some new drivers will make the touch pad experience better.

BTW I'm a writer but I am also a gear-head with 20+ years of working PC experience. It's the day job ...

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I've been using this laptop for 2 weeks now and I've been extremely pleased with my purchase. This is the best value for an "ultrabook-style" laptop. I was pretty close to buying a 13" mac book air until I saw this computer. It has similar build, it's just as thin, it has the same components but with a larger 15" 1080 screen and it's almost half the price. I was a little concerned when i purchased it because there were quite a few reviews of the older model complaining about the track pad and the keyboard. I guess they've changed the track pad because it's one of the best I've used however the keyboard is still mediocre, not a deal breaker though.

Pros:

Basically a knock off mac book air that runs windows

price!

very fast. boot time is amazing

can do light gaming

excellent screen

battery lasts all day under normal web browsing/e-mail use

thin and lightweight

Cons:

keyboard is just okay

Other thoughts:

the keyboard doesn't have home or end keys. most people probably wouldn't even notice but it really bothers me.

15 inches is the perfect laptop size in my opinion.

SSD is a must for any new computer purchase. 128 GB is ample

Windows 8 is a little strange at first.

There is no bloat ware included. That was a refreshing change.

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I was very disappointed. It was the perfect computer, but it had keyboard problems sticking keys. The tech support on Vizio is very good and they told me I could take off the relevant keys and blow under them and then snap them back. This I did and it worked some of the time. But then the space bar decided not to space or sometimes would space.

The keyboard is not backlit and the keys are not indented so the fingers tend to slip on to other keys. The punctuation marks are just about impossible to see because they are minute and instead of their normal position at the top of the key they are placed at the bottom.. To make matters worse the color of the keys is close to the color of the letters etc, so that is an added difficulty. I loved the other features, but whoever chose the keyboard really missed the boat.

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Bought this for the wife for home and remote work.

Overall the design is very good. Light weight is definite plus and it doesn't get hot sitting on your lap. There is a small fan for cooling but it doesn't run constantly.

Display is bright and full 1080. This is a replacement unit though as the first one suffered a display failure in the first 30 days. Amazon sent out a new one with return shipping free in a day. 5 stars for Amazon service.

Boots up in 15 seconds with the SSD. Performance is very good. Video doesn't lag and HDMI output to flat panel works great. Wireless works very good anywhere in the house but then I put 7db gain antennas on my wifi router.

Lack of SD reader is minor but I have an SD/USB adapter to remedy that.

The biggest drawback is the keyboard. All the keys are flat hard plastic with very short keystrokes. I find myself having to retype for missed keystrokes and her nails are a problem for her. Definitely not a keyboard for heavy typing. I bought a Logitech BT keyboard and Dell BT mouse so she can use it at her desk when she has a lot of work to do.

They must have fixed the drivers on the mouse pad as haven't experienced any issues with it.

Windows 8? What a joke. Don't use any of the worthless new features. Run it in traditional desktop mode.

Just bought her a Nexus 10 so the daily use is going down for this laptop and will probably unload it before long.

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I had to return it because the trackpad was so bad. No amount of driver downloading could make that thing behave like a piece of 21st century hardware. It barely registered two finger gestures, forget three or four. When I realized I was getting anxious every time I wondered whether pinch-to-zoom was going to respond, I knew I was done.

The screen is beautiful, though. And the computer has set a new standard for laptop-to-tv resolution for me. Very sleek, all aluminium with a much appreciated rubberized underside. The part of the charger that enters the computer glows orange when it's charging and green when it's done (or was it the other way round? Whatever. I liked it), but you'll only get 2-3 hours out of a charge.