32GB
storage; 8-inch 1,280 x 800 IPS screen;
9mm thick; ‘Active’ stylus; 4,830mAh
battery;
Bluetooth 4.0; Dual band Wi-Fi
Manufacturer: Dell
What is the Dell Venue Pro 8?
The Dell Venue Pro is an 8-inch, Windows 8.1 tablet that
like the Toshiba Encore, the Acer W4 and the Lenovo MiiX2, gives you a full
version of Microsoft's latest operating system so you can reap the benefits of
having a PC without the extra bulk.
After our numerous grievances with the Encore, we were
hoping that Dell's offering could restore some optimism that Windows in an iPad
mini 2 Retina or Nexus 7 2-sized body can actually work. Fortunately, we have a
more glowing report about the Venue Pro 8. It's by far the most impressive
8-inch Windows 8.1 tablet we've seen so far.
Dell Venue Pro 8: Design
Sat next to Apple's 7.9-inch tablet or the Nexus 7, the
Venue Pro 8 doesn't exactly break the design mould for a small tablet. But when
you compare it to other 8-inch Windows 8.1 tablets, it's by far the
best-looking and nicest to hold in the hand.
The front looks like your run of the mill Android tablet
with a black bezel that narrows down the sides of the 8-inch display. When you
flip it over, the soft plastic back with raised concentric circles gives it a
Nexus 7-feel and provides greater friction than the flat smooth surfaces on the
Encore and the W4 tablets. It does have a habit of trapping fluff, but we think
this gives the Venue Pro 8 something a bit different compared to other portable
Windows tablets.
At just 9mm thick, it’s not as chunky as the Encore either
and other rival 8-inch Windows 8.1 slates. It weighs just 395g, making it
heavier than the iPad mini 2 Retina Wi-Fi (331g), but it’s more than
comfortable to use one-handed and gives it a profile well suited to using in
two hands.
Everything from the chrome buttons to the unibody design is
well constructed and fills us with enough confidence that it's able to
withstand the rigours of daily use. For £250, we are happy with what Dell has
served up here.
Looking around the tablet you’ll find the 5-megapixel main
camera on the back and front-facing camera in the top right on the bezel. Down
the right edge of the you’ll find the MicroSD card slot concealed by a latch.
If you opt for the 3G/Wi-Fi version, the micro SIM slot will also be hidden
away here. Further up is the chrome-style volume rocker and on/off button.
The microUSB charging port also doubles as a USB host and
means you can connect other peripherals, although you'll need to invest in OTG
cable. There’s no HDMI so hooking it up to a TV has to be done wirelessly over
Miracast and will of course mean you need a compatible TV.
On the top edge is the headphone/mic port and bizarrely the
Windows Home button. Most other tablets include this at the bottom of tablet
and whether this is Dell’s way of trying to be different or genuinely believing
that it’s better positioned, our numerous times spent hitting it thinking it
was the on/off button suggests it was a bad move.
Dell Venue Pro 8: Screen and Sound Quality
The Dell Venue Pro 8 features an 8-inch 1,280 x 800 pixel
IPS touchscreen display with a widescreen aspect ratio that effectively matches
Toshiba Encore and the original Nexus 7. In comparison to the Nexus 7 2 and the
Kindle Fire HDX 7 though, the cheaper Android tablets offer more pixels and
more impressive resolution.
That’s not to say that the screen is terrible. For everyday
tasks like watching video and reading web pages it’s perfectly acceptable. You
don't get the full HD treatment. although the screen is nice and sharp and
colours are slightly more punchy than the Encore.
Viewing angles are good thanks to the IPS display
technology, though it suffers like most other tablets with some reflection in
bright outdoors. Our only real issue is that the auto brightness out of the box
is set very low, so we would suggest jumping into the settings and disabling
the auto-brightness otherwise you are going to find it a very unsatisfying
experience.
In terms of screen responsiveness, the Venue Pro 8’s display
supports 10-point multitouch and shows little signs of struggle registering
swipes, selecting apps or pinching and zooming your way through a web page
where the font is a little on the small side. The tablet does also support its
own digitiser stylus that Dell is calling the 'Active' pen. Unfortunately, once
again, this needs to be purchased separately and we didn’t have one to try
doodling with.
The speaker on the bottom of the edge of the tablet is
certainly nice and loud, just don’t expect booming, rich audio to fill your
ears. The louder it gets the more noticeable the distortion becomes. It’s more
than suitable for watching films and gaming but it's underwhelming for blasting
out Spotify playlists.
Dell Venue Pro 8: Software
Ultimately, the ability to run a full version of Windows 8.1
and not limiting RT is the biggest appeal of owning something like the Venue
Pro 8. You can install full desktop applications with a 32GB of hard drive
space that's actually around 25GB. There is an alternative configuration so you
can move up to 64GB and will cost you closer to £300. This means you are not
restricted to downloading applications from the Windows Store, which still lags
behind Google Play and Apple’s App Store for content.
For anyone who has used a Windows 8 tablet, the interface,
charm bar and desktop mode will all be very familiar. The typical apps are
included with Bing-powered content for sport, travel, health and fitness and
food & drink all beautifully presented. Xbox powers music and gaming while
Dell includes four maintenance-style applications to keep the tablet up to
date.
The big sell is getting Microsoft Office Home and Student
2013 for free, turning this into a potentially great productivity tool. We say
potentially, because to make the most of it you will need to invest in a
Bluetooth keyboard, something that Dell does offer as a case or standalone
format, but again is something you are going to have to pay extra for.
Typing away on a third-party Bluetooth keyboard is fine but
our problems with getting the most of it is the fact that the classic desktop
mode is not scaled to make it easy to use. The icons are too small to make and
it's far too fussy trying to drag windows around the screen to make it a truly
intuitive experience. You can pinch and zoom within windows, but it isn't
enough to make working with it anything other than frustrating.
The scaling issue can also be extended to some apps like
Netflix, which runs with borders instead of filling the whole screen and that
could irritate some when the entire screen is not fully embraced.
We naturally spent most our time in tablet mode to search
the web, play games from the Windows Store, watch movies and look at photos.
That’s another issue that Microsoft needs to address, making the two more
closely intertwined and not so alien from each other.
Rumours suggest the next Windows 8.1 update will integrate
Metro apps into the Classic desktop mode and that could be a step in the right
direction to make this operating system more suitable for an 8-inch tablet.
Dell Venue Pro 8: Performance
Like its rival 8-inch Windows tablets, the Dell Venue Pro 8
is powered by an Intel Atom Bay Trail quad-core chip with 2GB of RAM to handle
multitasking. While not in the same league as Intel Core i3/i5/i7 processors it
gives the Venue Pro 8 enough power to handle a full version of Windows and
ensure the battery life is enough to make it through a least a day’s use. The
Intel Atom Z3740 processor is clocked at 1.8Ghz, just slightly higher than the
Toshiba Encore and certainly leaves us with a better impression.
For general navigation swiping around the UI, the Venue Pro
8 is a nice, zippy performer. It handles snapping apps for multitasking with
little issue and games like Wreck-It Ralph run nice and smooth. It’s not all
good news, though. The app loading times still grind and even trying to pair
devices over Bluetooth can take an age to connect. Some of the more visually
demanding games on the Windows Store like Avengers Initiative still suffer from
some minor framerate drops, too.
Turning to the benchmarks, in the 3D Mark Ice Storm
Unlimited gaming test the Venue Pro 8 scores a 15,005 beating the Toshiba
Encore’s 14,024 score. It's still behind the Qualcomm Snapdragon 800-powered
RT-based Nokia Lumia 2520 (16,123), though it outperforms the Microsoft Surface
Pro 2 (13,557). In the Geekbench 3 Pro tests the Venue Pro 8 manages a 2,515
multi-core score, which is roughly around the same as the Nexus 7 (2523) and
iPad mini 2 Retina (2551) manages. This suggests there is very little
difference in raw performance, although we'd say the reality is iOS and Android
are snappier and faster to load then Windows 8. The Venue Pro is still a marked
improvement over the Encore, though that's more a reflection on how poor the
Toshiba was.
Dell Venue Pro 8: Camera
If you want to take pictures of the selfie or scenic
variety, Dell has included a 5-megapixel rear-facing camera and a 1.2-megapixel
front-facing camera. The main camera delivers the kind of quality you'd expect
from a budget phone with a fairly low-resolution sensor and very little in the
way of software to take great pictures.
As the samples show below, the low-resolution sensor
produces images that lack sharpness, look overprocessed and colours that are
far from accurate. There's no LED flash so it's not going to be much help
taking shots in low light and the front-facing camera is adequate for video
calls and much less useful for photos. The HD video recording similarly suffers
from the kind of noise and underwhelming quality that you are unlikely to swap
your smartphone for filming in a hurry.
Dell Venue Pro 8: Battery Life
The Venue Pro 8 packs an 4,830mAh battery that Dell says
gives the 8-inch tablet up to 9.9 hours battery life, effectively putting into
the iPad mini 2 Retina realms of battery life. In our testing it's less than
that, but not by much. Getting 8 hours and 30 minutes is more accurate if you
are using it sporadically during the day and you don't have the brightness
cranked up, which in most cases is necesssary because the default brigtness setting
is set so low.
Using it more sporadically during the day to do some gaming,
browse the internet and stream video it does make it through a day, though you
will want want the charger by your bedside to power it up for the morning just
to be on the safe side.
In more intensive testing running an entire series on
Netflix it manages closer to 7 hours 30 minutes, so it's not quite the 9-10
hour battery life of the iPad mini 2 Retina. It does match the Toshiba Encore
and shows that the Intel Atom Bay Trail-powered tablets are able to go the
distance.
Should I buy the Dell Venue Pro 8?
If you are intent on buying a 8-inch, Windows 8.1 tablet
then the Dell Venue Pro 8 is currently the best one out there. It's comfortable
to use, has a nice, bright display, the battery life really impresses and
general performance is very good. For £250, it represents great value for money
as a standalone tablet you are going to use for everyday tasks.
We still have our niggling issues most of which are levelled
at the operating system more than anything else. Until Microsoft sort out
scaling issues for the traditional desktop mode, Microsoft Office is difficult
to use without an additional keyboard. That means investing more pushing the
price closer to £300 if you go for Dell's official option.
The only serious issue in comparison to other 8-inch Windows
8 tablets is the lack of any physical video output. That means you're totally
reliant on Miracast, which though a promising technology does limit your
options a little. If you want to use the Venue Pro 8 as a kind of desktop
docking tablet then you may find this tricky.
Looking at other alternatives, for less money you can buy
the Nexus 7, which does offer a better display, overall performance and a whole
lot more apps to choose from among other things. The iPad mini 2 Retina is
still comfortably the best tablet out there, but you are going to have to pay
over £300 to own one.
This is only really the beginning of the onslaught of
smaller Windows tablets so we are not suggesting this is the one to rival Apple
and Google's slates just yet. It does get a lot of things right and certainly
does a better job of showcasing Windows 8.1 in smaller, more portable body than
what we've seen so far.
Verdict
This is by far the best 8-inch Windows 8.1 tablet we’ve seen
it’s just a shame that Microsoft's operating system is not yet fully equipped
for a smaller screen.
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