Bringing the sexy back minus a few
key components
Smart TVs are basically dumb PCs, so it
shouldn't come as a surprise that Vizio one of the world's most successful HDTV
manufacturers plans to grow by jumping into the all-in-one PC market. Vizio’s
CA24T-A4 is a surprisingly good rookie effort, but there is room for
improvement.
The 24-inch, 10-point touchscreen display
is crisp, clear, and very thin (about .75 inches). It's an MVA (multi-domain
vertical alignment) model, with an LED backlight. Resolution is 1920x1080
pixels, which is typical of this class of machine (Vizio also offers higher-end
models with 27-inch displays at the same resolution).
Vizio
CA24T-A4 All-in-One PC
The display is mounted to a thin stalk
rising from the pizza-box base that houses the machine’s guts. The display can
tilt from minus-5 degrees to plus-20 degrees, which is fine for using the PC
from a seated position, but it doesn't tilt back far enough to use the machine
while standing. Unlike the displays on the Asus E2300 and Lenovo A720, it can’t
be folded flat. It also doesn't pivot or swivel left to right.
The CA24T-A4’s base is incredibly small at
just 1-inch high, it’s even thinner than the svelte Lenovo A720 but Vizio
removed two important components to achieve that profile: The computer has
neither a discrete GPU nor an optical drive. You won’t mind integrated graphics
unless you’re a hardcore gamer, and the absence of an optical drive won't
matter if you acquire your movies, music, games, and other software online. But
Intel’s dual-core 2.5GHz Core i5-3210M CPU and its HD4000 graphics is a
98-pound weakling when it comes to modern gaming with eye candy turned up, and
we were grateful to have a USB DVD drive on hand to install some of our
benchmarks. Gaming performance on the box could have been helped with
higher-clocked RAM, but alas, Vizio went with DDR3/1333.
The
CA24T-A4’s base is incredibly small at just 1-inch high
Vizio outfitted the CA24T-A4 with four USB
3.0 ports, two HDMI inputs (so you can connect both a satellite/cable set-top
box and a gaming console or Blu-ray drive), and an eSATA port (which we’d
happily trade for Thunderbolt for forward-looking compatibility). Everything
except one USB port is in the back of the machine, so you won’t have ugly
cables sticking out of its side; and unlike many AiOs we've tested, Vizio
doesn't hijack any of its USB ports to host a wireless dongle for keyboard and
mouse. Actually, Vizio doesn’t put a mouse in the box - it provides a wireless
multi-touch track-pad, instead. Vizio tells us that this is to take advantage
of Windows 8 gestures, but we can’t say we’re enthused about it: Track-pads are
necessary on laptops, but they don’t deliver a lot of benefit paired with a
desktop rig (unless you’re using the PC from the couch, and that’s an unlikely
scenario with just a 24-inch display).
Vizio’s all-in-one delivers much better
sound than we've heard from most computers, thanks in part to the presence of a
subwoofer cleverly integrated into the computer's detached power supply (Asus
offers a sub for its all-in-ones, but at additional cost with most models!.
There’s a volume control and an HDMI toggle switch conveniently integrated into
both the keyboard and the remote control. That's a much better solution than
integrating these features into the display, as Asus and Lenovo do. You can
also use the HDMI display without needing to power up the computer (the
keyboard controls don’t function in this situation, but the remote does).
Vizio’s
all-in-one delivers much better sound than we've heard from most computers
The Vizio CA24T-A4 delivered very weak
benchmark numbers. If you care about performance, the similarly priced Asus
E2300 crushes it, thanks to its higher base clock, larger cache, and dedicated
GPU. But if you anticipate using the Vizio’s HDMI display capabilities as much
as its computing power, it’s the better buy.
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Specifications
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Price : $1,250
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CPU : 2.5GHz Intel :ore i5-3210M
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GPU : Integrated
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RAM : 6GB DDR3/1333
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HDD : 1TB (5,400 r pm)
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Optical : Mono
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Display: 26-inch, LED- backlit, MVA .CD
1920x1080 10-point touchscreen)
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