Vizio 15.6-inch Thin + Light Touch (CT15T-B1)

Pros Quad-core processor. Excellent performance on benchmark tests. Large, bright 1080p touch screen. Microsoft Signature prep. Long battery life. Roomy 256GB SSD. 802.11ac.

Cons Slippery, non-backlit keyboard. Pricey. Bulky. Only two USB ports. Bouncy screen. Bottom Line The Vizio 15.6-inch Thin + Light Touch (CT15T-B1) has long battery life, quad-core power, great design, and speedy, spacious SSD storage. Still, you'll need some hands-on time with this 15-inch laptop before you can decide it's the one for you.

By Joel Santo Domingo

The Vizio 15.6-inch Thin + Light Touch (CT15T-B1) ($1,359.99) is a laptop whose looks and design promise brilliant visuals, Cutting edge technology, high end performance, and a great user experience. Unfortunately, the CT15T-B1 delivers most, but not all of these attributes. It's getting there, and is certainly a contender, but its features need work.

Design and Features
The CT15T-B1 follows the same design lines as previous Vizio Thin + Light laptops, like last year's Vizio 15.6-inch Thin + Light (CT15-A1) ($999). The CT15T-B1 is essentially in the same chassis as the Vizio CT15-A1, measuring about 0.68-by-15-by-10-inches (HWD), though the new system weighs 4.69 pounds, which close to a pound heavier than the older model. Chalk the extra weight up to the touch screen and presumably to a more densely packed battery (more on that below). Visually, the system is on par with systems like the Google Chromebook Pixel (64GB, LTE) ($1,449), though gaming systems and convertible ultrabooks like the Sony VAIO Duo 13 ($1,399.99) are certainly flashier.

The CT15T-B1 has very bright and clear 15.6-inch screen. The screen's 1,920-by-1,080 resolution ensures that you will be able to view all the pixels presented in a 1080p HD video, as well as giving you a large screen to work with in media creation apps or when viewing websites with a lot of info. That said, the ChromeBook Pixel and Apple MacBook Pro 13-inch (Retina Display) ($1,999) both give a higher resolution screen for even more screen real estate. The CT15-B1's screen resolution matches the current Editors' Choice for high-end ultrabooks, the Asus Zenbook Prime Touch UX31A-BHI5T ($1,199).

There is a noticeable flaw in the CT15T-B1's screen: It bounces a bit after you touch the screen. Since this is a touch-screen laptop, the bounce can become annoying after a while, particularly on action games or reaction tests where you have to tap and move often. Contrast this with the Acer Aspire S7-191-6640 ($1,200), which has a dual-friction hinge to help prevent screen bounce while using the touch screen.

The CT15T-B1 has improved on its trackpad performance compared to the previous CT15-A1. The trackpad now works a little better and responds to input from your fingers a bit more accurately. Where the system still needs improvement is Vizio's choice of a slick material on the floating key-type keyboard. The keys themselves are slick and the lack of space between the keys means that you may have trouble touch-typing until you get used to this quirky keyboard. It's easy to handwave keyboard problems on a desktop, since you can replace a desktop's keyboard easily. With a laptop, you're stuck with the keyboard that the manufacturer supplies. This is definitely a system we'd recommend you try out before you commit to a purchase.

Sound from the built in speakers was loud enough for a moderately noisy room, but you'd be better off using a pair of headphones for any critical listening. The CT15T-B1 comes with very few pre-installed programs, basically just Windows 8, Skype, an ad for Microsoft Office, and a couple of Vizio utilities. All Vizio PCs are part of the Microsoft Signature program, which reduces bloatware and gives the user 90 days of Microsoft-based tech support for Windows 8. Vizio covers the systems with a one-year standard warranty for repairs and a year of standard tech support.

The CT15T-B1 comes with a 256GB of SSD storage space, which is plenty for an average user that doesn't download many movies off of the Internet. For those that do, we'd suggest adding an external hard drive to one of the system's two USB 3.0 ports. Two USB ports is a little light for a 15-inch laptop, but it'll do. The system also comes with a HDMI port for connecting to an external monitor. Speaking of connecting, the system comes with an 802.11ac adapter, so you can connect to the newer wireless routers appearing on the market now. The system comes with 8GB of system memory, perfect for the users that like to open dozens of browser tabs during a surfing session. The SSD helps the system with quick reboots, while opening programs, and with general speed in day-to-day operations.

Performance
The CT15T-B1 has a third-generation (Ivy Bridge) Intel Core i7-3635QM processor, 8GB of memory, Intel HD Graphics 4000, and that 256GB SSD to thank for its performance. The system makes quick work of the Handbrake and Photoshop CS6 tests, as well as the day-to-day tests of PCMark 7. Unsurprisingly, it lags the Sony Duo 13, which has a fourth-generation Intel Core processor, on the 3D tests. In any case, you'll be playing mainly less demanding 3D and casual games on these systems with Intel HD Graphics in any case.

The place where the Vizio excels is its battery life. We were able to get 8 hours 40 minutes on our battery rundown test. This is just 15 minutes behind the Sony Duo 13, and more than two hours longer than the EC Asus UX31A-BHI5T.

So there's the rub: There are elements of brilliance (nice screen, quad core power, almost 9 hours of battery life, etc.) in the Vizio 15.6-inch Thin + Light Touch (CT15T-B1). However, these gains are reversed by physical problems like the slippery keyboard and the bouncy touch screen. While the trackpad is improved, the keyboard and touch screen are the primary ways to interact with the system. On this PC, these are at best annoying and at worst frustrating enough to slow your workflow. It's for these reasons we give the CT15T-B1 an improved score over its CT15-A1 predecessor, but it's still not enough to unseat the Asus ZenBook Prime Touch UX31A-BHI5T as our high-end ultrabook Editors' Choice.

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Dell XPS 27 Touch All-in-One (2720)

Pros Solid performance, thanks to fourth-generation Intel CPU and the latest Nvidia graphics. Spacious storage. Thunderbolt port for speedy storage and displays. Great looking touch display. Good sound. Well-made peripherals included. Has a full-year McAfee Security and premium service warranty. HDMI input and output.

Cons No Blu-ray. USB ports aren't easily distinguished. Bottom Line The Dell XPS 27 Touch All-in-One (2720) all-in-one desktop updates the best Windows 8 PC around with Intel's latest hardware, and comes up a winner.

By Brian Westover

Earlier this year, Dell caught our attention with an all-in-one desktop that offered powerful performance, flexibility, and one of the best Windows 8 experiences found on a desktop PC. Freshly updated with Intel's newest Haswell processor, the Dell XPS 27 Touch All-in-One (2720) continues to impress. With a gorgeous high-resolution touch display and a host of features, the Dell XPS One (2720) is the cream of the crop, and snags the Editors' Choice for high-end all-in-one desktops from its predecessor.

Design and Features
The XPS 27 One (2720) features a big, beautiful touch screen, with an articulated stand to adjust both the height and angle, letting you easily transition between the normal upright monitor position to a low angle more comfortable for tapping and swiping at the screen. The 27-inch display offers 2,560-by-1,440 resolution, a better than 1080p quality, and an IPS panel that looks good from nearly any angle. It also offers capacitive touch with 10-finger tracking, making it ideal for use with Windows 8.

Surrounding the display is a thick black bezel, with a layer of edge-to-edge glass covering the screen and allowing edge swipes and other Windows 8 gestures. Just below the display is speaker bar "chin," and the sound quality is quite good. The volume is robust but not so loud that you can't turn it down to a reasonable level, and the clarity is as good as you'll get without a separate speaker system. The sound quality is further boosted with Waves MaxxAudio software enhancement and 5.1 surround sound (via HDMI).

Included with the XPS 27 One (2720) are two wireless peripherals, a wireless mouse and keyboard. The mouse, while a little blocky in design, is pretty good, with an ambidextrous design. The keyboard is very good for a bundled accessory, with a simple design and sculpted chiclet keys that offer smooth typing action and more key motion than most chiclet keyboards offer.

The all-in-one chassis places the internal components behind the display, and while it may not be as trim as the Vizio 27-inch All-in-One Touch PC (CA27T-B1) (which shifts the components to the base) it's still very self contained. Thanks to an internal power supply there's no clunky power brick to clutter up your desk, and the XPS 27 One (2720) is outfitted with a slot-loading optical drive (DVD+-R/RW), two USB 3.0 ports and an SD card slot on the easily accessible edges of the monitor. Given the great display we might have liked Blu-ray to be standard, but alas, no.

On the back of the system you'll find more ports. Two more USB 3.0 and two USB 2.0 ports are great for most peripherals and storage devices, but media fanatics and video pros will welcome the addition of a Thunderbolt port. Previously found almost exclusively on Apple products, like the Apple iMac 27-Inch (Late 2012), Thunderbolt offers much faster data transfer than USB 3.0 (up to 10GBps), and opens up an array of options for not just storage, but also monitors (it doubles as a mini DisplayPort), with new peripherals on the horizon.

The XPS 27 One (2720) is also equipped with HDMI-in and -out connections, meaning that not only can you connect the all-in-one to a second monitor or projector, but you can also connect it to your game console or cable box and use the 27-inch display for TV and gaming. An Ethernet port is available for wired networking, but the XPS 27 One (2720) is also equipped with Kireless Wireless N 1202, which offers both 802.11n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0 connectivity. Last but not least, the 2-megapixel webcam above the screen offers 1080p video capture, and has a built-in lens cover to defuse any hacker-related paranoia.

A 2TB, 7200rpm hard drive offers spacious storage for all your data, and it's paired with a 32GB solid-state drive to ensure rapid boot times and snappy performance. Preinstalled on the drive is Windows 8, along with a handful of apps and programs, like CyberLink Media Suite, and Amazon's Kindle Reader. A 30-day trial of Microsoft Office 365 is pretty standard, but a one-year trial of McAfee Internet Security is rather generous. Dell also covers the XPS 2720 with a one-year warranty that includes tech support and remote diagnosis, in-home service, and premium phone support.

Performance
The XPS 27 One (2720) boasts a 3.1GHz Intel Core i7-4770s fourth-generation processor, a step up from the Intel Core i7-3770s used in the previous Dell XPS One 27 Touch. Paired with 8GB of RAM, the new CPU offers solid and speedy performance, but with only a narrow lead—the XPS 27 One (2720) scored 4,958 points in PCMark 7, where the previous iteration scored 4,905 points, and the quad-core equipped Vizio AIO came even closer with 4,926 points. Despite the similarity in scores, the new XPS 27 One (2720)'s Haswell processor is faster, with a Cinebench score of 7.55 points, and faster performance in processor-intensive tasks like video transcoding (32 seconds in Handbrake) and image manipulation (2 minutes 58 seconds in Photoshop).

The XPS 27 One (2720) is also outfitted with an Nvidia GeForce GT 750M discrete GPU. While this contributed to the impressive media performance, don't expect high-powered gaming performance without sacrificing some detail. In 3DMark 11, the XPS scored 4,647 points at Entry settings, and 922 points at Extreme. In actual game tests, the XPS produced playable scores at lower resolution—55 frames per second (Alien vs. Predator) and 38 frames per second (Heaven)—but at full resolution, with the detail settings turned up, frame rates dropped to unplayable levels. If you're willing to back off of the detail settings and drop the resolution a bit (to 1080p or so), you should still find most games playable.

Though the improvements are iterative, the new Dell XPS 27 Touch All-in-One (2720) impresses us with all the same details that made us fall in love with the previous XPS 27, and a boost in performance thanks to a new fourth-generation Intel Core i7 processor and Nvidia graphics. It drops the Blu-ray player we liked, but accordingly drops the price, and still offers the best Windows experience we've seen in a desktop PC, making it a clear pick for Editors' Choice.

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