Five years ago, the first of what we would call modern tablet computers
were released to the world. What is now an entire product category was
originally seen with massive skepticism by many consumers, analysts, and
journalists. Even those who had high hopes for the future of tablets
could not have predicted their meteoric rise in popularity and ubiquity.
Although tablets are still derided by many as being useless for
productivity work, there are many cases where a consumer has been able
to not just supplement, but replace their traditional computer with a
tablet. Of course, as tablets made by companies in the mobile space
replace traditional computers, the producers of those computers are
faced with a problem of maintaining profit and relevance. The inevitable
move was for PC companies to produce their own tablets to compete with
their new competition.
This brings us to the Dell Venue 8 7000 Series tablet, also known as the
Dell Venue 8 7840. Although there have been other Venue 8 tablets, for
the remainder of the review I will refer to the Dell Venue 8 7840 as the
Venue 8 as the full name is quite long and there shouldn't be any risk
of confusion with older Venue 8 tablets. Dell is actually not a brand
new player in the tablet space, nor are they new to the mobile space.
Some people may remember the Dell Streak 5, which was a 5" phone that
could be called one of the first phablets on the market. However, Dell
is still not a well known player in the mobile space despite their
previous attempts to break into it. On paper, the Venue 8 has all the
attributes required of a flagship tablet, but whether or not it's enough
to make Dell a serious contender remains to be seen. Before discussing
the design of the Venue 8, I've laid out its specifications below to
give an overview of how the Venue 8 stacks up to the competition.
| Dell Venue 8 7840 | |
| SoC | Intel Atom Z3580 Moorefield quad core Atom with 2.33GHz burst speed, PowerVR G6430 |
| RAM/NAND | 2GB LPDDR3, 16GB NAND + microSDXC |
| Display | 8.4" 2560x1600 AMOLED |
| Dimensions | 215.8 x 124.4 x 6.0 mm, 306g |
| Camera | 8MP Rear Facing + 2x 720p Depth Cameras 2MP Front Facing |
| Battery | 5900mAh (21Wh) |
| OS | Android 4.4.4 KitKat |
| Connectivity | 1x1 802.11a/b/g/n/ac + BT 4.0 , USB2.0 LTE SKU Available |
| Price | Starting at $399 |
As you can see, the Venue 8 is a high end device in most areas, at least
when evaluated on paper. The limited storage configuration of 16GB is
one of the few question marks, though the microSD slot helps; the GPU is
also going to be potentially limiting. Note that Dell also offers an
optional wireless keyboard/case as an accessory. The rest of the review
will determine how well these specifications translate into a good real
world experience, but before jumping into the technical details it's
important to discuss the design and ergonomics of the Venue 8.
One big selling point for the Venue 8 is that it's currently the
thinnest tablet in the world according to Dell. Both Apple and Sony have
tablet offerings that are 6.1mm thick, but Dell has shaved off that
decimal point and made a tablet that is exactly 6mm thick across the
entire chassis. I can't really tell the difference between the thickness
of the Venue 8 and the iPad Air 2, but both devices are remarkably
thin. The Venue 8 feels even more impressive than the iPad at times
because it's smaller and significantly lighter in addition to being
thinner. The bulk of the chassis is made of aluminum, with a small
plastic region at the bottom to house the speakers and camera. The whole
device feels great in the hand, and the aluminum feels solid and
sturdy.
However, there is a unique aspect of the Venue 8's design that needs to
be addressed, which are the unconventional bezel proportions and speaker
positioning. On most tablets, you'll see a bezel of equal width on
every side, or a a pair of equal bezels on the top of bottom, and a pair
of equal thinner bezels on the left and right sides that are thinner
than those on the top and bottom. The Venue 8 with its Infinity Display
instead opts to use very thin bezels of equal width on the top, left,
and right, and a thicker bezel on the bottom. This is necessary to
provide space for the various circuitry and display drivers that are
required. In addition, Dell has placed the front-facing camera and a
pair of stereo speakers in a section beneath bottom bezel.
This leads to an unconventional and unfortunately unbalanced bezel
design, and it can cause some issues when holding the tablet. In
portrait mode the fact that there's a larger bezel and a speaker at the
bottom of the tablet doesn't pose much of an issue, but in landscape
mode it makes it uncomfortable to hold. It's hard to hold the Venue 8 in
landscape without it feeling uneven. This is exacerbated by the fact
that the bezel on top of the tablet is extremely thin.
The thinness of the other bezels can also pose their own issues with
having fingers rest on the display. When Apple first used asymmetric
bezels on an iPad with the iPad Mini, they tweaked the touch rejection
in iOS to account for the fact that fingers were more likely to be
resting on the display. Android has no such accommodation, and there
have been instances where I find myself unable to scroll or accidentally
zooming because one of my other fingers is resting on the display and
being detected as touch input.
