Ahead of CES on Sunday, Vizio announced its first Windows 8 tablet. Despite the fact that sales of Microsoft's Surface PC Windows RT tablets -- along with others -- are slow (and that is being generous), Vizio's move was seen as inevitable since the company moved into PCs in 2012.
The Vizio Tablet PC is an 11.6-inch slate running full Windows 8 Pro (not Windows RT, the more-limited ARM-based version). The Vizio tablet has a first in it, too: It sports a dual-core, 1GHz AMD Z60 chip, making it among the first Windows 8 tablets with an AMD CPU inside.
It also sports a 1080p display. which is better than you'd expect for a low-power tablet with an AMD Z-series or analogous Intel Atom CPU. As a further plus, just like the rest of Vizio's PC series, the somewhat boringly-named Vizio Tablet PC comes with a Microsoft Signature software install, with zero crapware.
The rest of the specs are pretty normal, with the device sporting 2GB of RAM, 64GB of internal solid-state storage, a 2-megapixel front-facing camera and micro-HDMI and microUSB ports. Vizio didn't announce pricing or availability along with the tablet, unfortunately.
Still, we don't expect the first non-Microsoft-branded Windows 8 Pro tablets to beat the Surface tablets to market. Those tablets are expected to hit retail as early as Jan. 26, with the 64GB standalone version at $899 and the 128GB standalone version at $999.
Notably, as we said earlier, that pricing does not include the keyboards which really make the tablet sing.
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