Dell Venue 8 - Review'ish

jeffhesser

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I can't figure out where to put this but I feel there needs to be some more info out there so here is a run down of my experience with it so far. Hopefully it helps someone

Hardware
Form Factor: The unassuming black slab is not setting a new bar for design but Dell has seemingly paid attention to some very important details when putting this tablet together. The material used for the back/sides is a soft touch plastic that grips nicely in the hand and prevents slippage while sitting on a surface. The charging port in the upper left (just above the volume rocker) is slightly out of place but not necessarily inconvenient. Dell opted to place the speaker on the bottom of the device rather than the back or front. This placement works decently when considering the likely scenario of this device ending up in a case at some point but can be inconvenient when gaming in landscape mode or some single handed uses. Has expandable storage slot that is easy to access and quickly forgotten about while closed. It may be a bit heavy for a tablet of this size but it feels so solid that I am willing to look past the weight to avoid some cheap plastic feel.

Screen: The screen provides pretty great viewing angles and can be very bright. Text is very crisp despite not having the highest dpi around. The display does not offer the most vibrant colors on the market but at this price for an 8? tablet I am more than happy with what I?m seeing.

Battery: The battery will last all day with little to no issues?. Unless you try to play games for more than an hour in a given day. You will be fine if you are watching videos, reading twitter feeds, the web, etc but if you are used to iPad battery performance when it comes to gaming, you will be very disappointed.

Internals / Performance: I was concerned seeing the Intel chip as the heart of this device only because there is little in regard to a performance track record or comparable devices but I am happy to say this thing is very peppy. Tested games ?
? Asphault 8 ? runs great but seeing those graphics blown up to a larger screen can take a bit of the magic out of that game.
? Kingdom Rush Frontiers ? Not the most graphic intensive game but still chews through battery for some reason.
? Plants Vs Zombies 2 ? This game was horribly unoptimized for my S600 phone but seems to run like butter on the Venue 8
? Dead Trigger 2 ? Played this one with the Moga Pro controller on my phone and the new tablet. Looks great on both and seems to run smooth once it?s up and moving on the Venue 8 even at High visual settings.

Cameras: I?m not going to talk about the camera because? this is a tablet. It has a front and rear camera, they work?. End of story.

Software
If you (like myself) were worried that Dell might load up the bloatware or have some ugly Dell customization, YOU CAN RELAX. This thing came as close to bone stock as I?ve ever seen a non-Google device launch. It has one app for a cloud service they offer with the device but that?s it. Completely blank screen (with that one exception) on boot. It?s 4.2.2 but hopefully it will not take long to get updates considering the minimal customization that is going on here.

Wrap Up
There are a bunch of 7? tablets in this price range but for me 7? was just too small and the 8? options are fairly slim pickings. I was worried that a slew of 10? Tegra Note based tablets were going to come out for $200 and make me regret this purchase but after spending some time with this device those fears are gone. This is a very good tablet and for $180 I can?t imagine it will be
 

Chris Amaral

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Thanks for the review!!! I was planning on picking the up Venue 8 from Dell after I seen their black friday ad knocking $50 off the price but was hesitant since I couldnt find any reviews on it since its just released.

If you like it at $180 I'm sure you would agree that at $130 its a no brainer soild deal.
 

jeffhesser

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Oh, i did not see that. At that price I might pick up another one. haha. I wish they made a 10 or 11 version of this tablet like they did for the windows versions. If they could scale this quality up to that size and keep the competitive pricing it would be a win-win.
 

theanimala

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I just got my Venue 8 Red 32GB today, and I would agree your review is spot on. I am very surprised with the performance of it. I got mind for $160 after tax with an online coupon, at $130 it is a total no brainer...
 

droidx2g

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Great write-up! I too am interested in the Venue 8 but it being so new, there's not much first hand reviews yet. So I really appreciate your review.
If I may ask:
How is the GPS... does it lock quickly? I've gone through tablets that are good in this regard, and bad as well, so I'm curious how the Venue 8 gps performs.
Can you charge it through the micro-USB port?
Does it have an auto brightness setting?
Thanks in advance.
 

jeffhesser

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Great write-up! I too am interested in the Venue 8 but it being so new, there's not much first hand reviews yet. So I really appreciate your review.
If I may ask:
How is the GPS... does it lock quickly? I've gone through tablets that are good in this regard, and bad as well, so I'm curious how the Venue 8 gps performs.
Can you charge it through the micro-USB port?
Does it have an auto brightness setting?
Thanks in advance.

GPS - seems to lock on quickly but I haven't used it in the car much yet.
Brightness - It does some auto brightness but I'd still recommend using Lux (even the free version) for better control.
Charging - It charges over the micro USB with no problem. Works for with my phone charger or the stock one they supplied.
 

deltatux

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When talking about the battery life, how long is it on a single charge for web browsing? Like is the battery life comparable to Nexus 7 (2012)? My mum accidentally broke her Nexus 7 that I bought her and was thinking of replacing it with a Dell Venue tablet. (She wouldn't really care about Android updates so I wasn't thinking of getting her another Nexus tablet). Battery life is probably the most important thing for her use case. As long as this tablet have similar charge life, I would get this for her.

Thoughts?

Cheers,
deltatux
 

jeffhesser

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I don't know how long the nexus lasts but I can say I've had it unplugged since about 6am (it's about 2pm now), played about 1 hour of games, read twitter and facebook for a couple hours, and have 51% battery. Games are kind of brutal but even still I never really charge it during the day. Not sure how that compares to the nexus but I like the battery life except for gaming (3d games are rough on it).
 

thatotherdude24

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When talking about the battery life, how long is it on a single charge for web browsing? Like is the battery life comparable to Nexus 7 (2012)? My mum accidentally broke her Nexus 7 that I bought her and was thinking of replacing it with a Dell Venue tablet. (She wouldn't really care about Android updates so I wasn't thinking of getting her another Nexus tablet). Battery life is probably the most important thing for her use case. As long as this tablet have similar charge life, I would get this for her.

Thoughts?

Cheers,
deltatux

Battery life is a big one for me to. No tablet I have ever used comes close to the battery life I get in my Ipad 2. I get 2 weeks on a charge with 17 hours of actual use.

Now, my android tablet is a Sero 7 Pro from Walmart for 129. I can easily get 2.5 days out of a charge. If you haven't heard of it it is very underrated.

Sent from my SCH-I605 using Tapatalk
 

deltatux

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I don't know how long the nexus lasts but I can say I've had it unplugged since about 6am (it's about 2pm now), played about 1 hour of games, read twitter and facebook for a couple hours, and have 51% battery. Games are kind of brutal but even still I never really charge it during the day. Not sure how that compares to the nexus but I like the battery life except for gaming (3d games are rough on it).

That sounds pretty respectable, the Nexus 7 is about the same (I'm guessing ofc). I was just afraid that the tablet might have a tiny battery or Intel's SoC would drain the battery pretty fast. How's the build quality? Does it feel flimsy in any way?

Battery life is a big one for me to. No tablet I have ever used comes close to the battery life I get in my Ipad 2. I get 2 weeks on a charge with 17 hours of actual use.

Now, my android tablet is a Sero 7 Pro from Walmart for 129. I can easily get 2.5 days out of a charge. If you haven't heard of it it is very underrated.

Sent from my SCH-I605 using Tapatalk

Unfortunately, the Sero 7 Pro is not available in Canada, I've been searching high and low for it, but can't find it... not sure I can trust eBay is the issue. At least not something for my parents, I wouldn't mind doing that for myself.

Cheers,
deltatux
 

miapach_77

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hi. I've read the specs of Dell venue 8 and your reviews and before i made my decisions in buying i just want to know whether it comes with sim card or not because in my location only wifi usage is risky??
 

TylerB1999

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Well, it's almost 2014 and I've been using a Samsung Galaxytab 2 7.0 from 2012, i think it's time for me to upgrade. Now, i've never really bought anything from Dell before, But i've owned/used a few dell laptops which worked fine and had good build quality. The specs of this tablet seem pretty good, the 720P display is just fine for me. My few concerns are: Gaming, how good would this tablet run games like Minecraft:pocked editon, Terraria, Riptide GP 2, etc? Also, Build quality, and support from dell (I've heard a kit kat update was coming soon, is this true?) The tablet goes on sale for $129.99 on thanksgiving at 6PM, which is an insanely good deal. But this will be my only device until i upgrade again, so i need to make sure it's a good device. Cameras aren't a problem for me, since i never use them. The specs look good on paper, 2ghz dual core processor, 2gb's of ram, etc, but do most apps work with the atam processor? Sorry if i sound like a noob asking these questions about the processor, i've just never used an intel processor on an android device before. I know the nexus 7 is a Great cheap tablet, but i don't exactly have a lot of money to spend (I'm only 14, don't have a job yet :p) , and if this tablet is good and has that cheap price on thanksgiving, it'd be an awesome 8" device for me. Also, would this be a solid upgrade from my current device? (Samsung Galaxytab 2 7.0, 1GHZ dual-core processor, 1GB of ram, 10,24 x 600 display, android 4.2.2)? Thanks for the post BTW, gave me a bit of info on this tablet :) also, does the screen get smudgy and stuff? My current tablet's screen gets super smudgy and just nasty, i have to clean it a lot. One more qustion, how is dell's customer support? I know the tablet comes with a 1 year warranty, and i've had great customer support with samsung, so just wondering :) Thanks!
 

Eion

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I've had the tablet since the first week of November and I'm really enjoying it. Love the feel of the unit and it's quite fluid. One thing I can say is that I'm having issues at the moment finding a case for it. Hopefully there will be some as the tablets popularity picks up. Would love even just a simple bumper case for the unit.

Some pics of the tablet:
91581d1384372304t-dell-venue-8-dell.jpg91582d1384372324t-dell-venue-8-dell2.jpg91583d1384372338t-dell-venue-8-dell3.jpg91586d1384373165t-dell-venue-8-dell7.jpg
 
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Thanks for the review! I'm actually considering the Black Friday deal for my parents. Could you please comment on the front and back cameras? That's the main purpose of the tablet (for Skype and to send me pics of stuff). Also, since you had it, have you received any updates? What is Dell's promise on the updates?
 

jeffhesser

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The back camera is pretty good but the front one is really not a very high resolution. If they have a good internet connection the camera will probably be a bottleneck to getting the best video from them. I called myself from my phone (which has an amazing front camera) and video quality was acceptable but not great. The video showing on the tablet looked great so if you are more concerned about them being able to see you (or kids), this would still be a good call. There was one update when I first started the device but nothing since. Not sure how much support they are planning but with the super minimal amount of customization they've done it should be super easy to kick out new Android builds. I think everyone is focusing on 4.4 now so we'll see.
 

jeffhesser

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Well, it's almost 2014 and I've been using a Samsung Galaxytab 2 7.0 from 2012, i think it's time for me to upgrade. Now, i've never really bought anything from Dell before, But i've owned/used a few dell laptops which worked fine and had good build quality. The specs of this tablet seem pretty good, the 720P display is just fine for me. My few concerns are: Gaming, how good would this tablet run games like Minecraft:pocked editon, Terraria, Riptide GP 2, etc? Also, Build quality, and support from dell (I've heard a kit kat update was coming soon, is this true?) The tablet goes on sale for $129.99 on thanksgiving at 6PM, which is an insanely good deal. But this will be my only device until i upgrade again, so i need to make sure it's a good device. Cameras aren't a problem for me, since i never use them. The specs look good on paper, 2ghz dual core processor, 2gb's of ram, etc, but do most apps work with the atam processor? Sorry if i sound like a noob asking these questions about the processor, i've just never used an intel processor on an android device before. I know the nexus 7 is a Great cheap tablet, but i don't exactly have a lot of money to spend (I'm only 14, don't have a job yet :p) , and if this tablet is good and has that cheap price on thanksgiving, it'd be an awesome 8" device for me. Also, would this be a solid upgrade from my current device? (Samsung Galaxytab 2 7.0, 1GHZ dual-core processor, 1GB of ram, 10,24 x 600 display, android 4.2.2)? Thanks for the post BTW, gave me a bit of info on this tablet :) also, does the screen get smudgy and stuff? My current tablet's screen gets super smudgy and just nasty, i have to clean it a lot. One more qustion, how is dell's customer support? I know the tablet comes with a 1 year warranty, and i've had great customer support with samsung, so just wondering :) Thanks!


It runs games very well. I was a bit concerned as to whether I'd run into any app compatibility issues using this intel processor but zero issues so far. The upgraded speed, memory, and screen should make this upgrade pretty solid from the Tab 2. Pretty much all of the games you listed support the Moga controller so if you do a big of gaming you should see if you can get one of those bad boys for christmas (just search moga on Amazon), I use mine all the time for games like Dead Trigger 2 and Dungeon Hunter 4.

Can't speak to their support as I haven't had to deal with them yet. Unfortunately the screen does get smudged fairly easily. I'm hoping to find a good screen protector or something that might help with that. Good luck with black friday, I may grab another one myself at that price.
 

jeffhesser

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That sounds pretty respectable, the Nexus 7 is about the same (I'm guessing ofc). I was just afraid that the tablet might have a tiny battery or Intel's SoC would drain the battery pretty fast. How's the build quality? Does it feel flimsy in any way?
Cheers,
deltatux

Build quality is great on this device. I wish they could get the weight down a bit but this thing is solid for sure, nothing feels hollow or flimsy.
 

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