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CES 2012: Vizio previews new 10-inch, Android tablet

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New televisions, laptops, all-in-one desktops and a ‘Stream Player’ set-top box that can add Google TV software to any HDMI-equipped television set -- Vizio had a lot of announcements to make at the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show.

A bit more quietly, the Irvine company also previewed a new tablet that it says will launch this year as a follow-up to the 8-inch Vizio Tablet that launched late last year.

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Vizio let us get a few minutes of hands-on time with its new tablet, but details on what the device would be made up of were few and far between.

VIDEOS: 2012 Consumer Electronics Show

The new tablet sports a 10-inch touch screen and front and rear cameras, and it felt a bit lighter than the current 8-inch model.

Rob Kermode, a senior product manager at Vizio, said the company was declining to say anything about the tablet’s price or release dates or about what processor, how much RAM, how much storage or what screen resolution the tablet would be.

In my short time using the tablet, I felt a step up in performance compared with its 8-inch predecessor. The device reacted faster to my touch, launched apps more quickly and seemed not to stutter as much when it handled simple tasks such as playing animations Vizio has programmed into the operating system.

The prototype tablet was running Google’s Android Honeycomb software with Vizio’s VIA Plus user interface over the top of it, which looks very similar to the version of Android Gingerbread found on the 8-inch tablet. Kermode said Vizio was looking into Ice Cream Sandwich, the latest version of Android, but wouldn’t promise that the new tablet would ship running that OS.

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To see the new tablet in action, check out our video from CES in Las Vegas above.

RELATED:

CES 2012: Hands on with Vizio’s new laptop and desktop PCs [Video]

CES 2012: Vizio introduces all-in-one desktop, laptop PC line [Photos]

Vizio Tablet mixes high- and low-end features, but can it compete? [Video]

-- Nathan Olivarez-Giles in Las Vegas

Nathan Olivarez-Giles on Google+

Twitter.com/nateog

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Vizio’s 10-inch tablet. Credit: Vizio

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