Dell gets its mojo back with the Venue 8 7000, a stylish and very thin Android tablet.
Remember a time when Dell made some of the best looking devices? No? Well, I do – the Studio Hybrid, a tiny desktop PC, is one of the most beautiful machines ever made even by today’s standards.
That was back in 2008 and the company hasn’t made anything as stunning, with a few exceptions.
Recently, however, it has started making more aesthetically pleasing products, most notably the XPS 13 notebook and the device we have on review today, the Android-based Dell Venue 8 7000.
Thin tablet
While this tablet has not yet been released locally, we managed to get a hold of a unit on a trip to the United States.
First off, the Venue 8 7000 runs on Android 4.4.4 KitKat and will be upgradeable to Android 5.0 Lollipop when Dell eventually releases the official update for the tablet.
The tablet runs on almost a stock version of Android with some Dell apps pre-installed such as McAfee Security.
The first thing you’ll notice about the Venue 8 is that it’s incredibly thin – when placed side by side with an iPhone 6, the Venue 8 is actually a hair thinner than the iPhone 6.
In fact, when it was released in January 2015, it won the crown for being the thinnest tablet on the market.
In spite of this, it feels hefty (it’s made of aluminium) and Dell claims that the device has a 10-hour battery life.
In our tests, however, we found the battery life to be much closer to about five to seven hours with the brightness set to a comfortable level — you probably could get it up to 10 hours if you set the brightness to auto, but we generally found the auto brightness a little too low for comfort.
The 8.4in (1,600 x 2,560 pixels) OLED screen on the Venue 8 7000 is phenomenal — the viewing angles are excellent and colours are very punchy with very deep blacks.
However, it has to be said that the colour is a little too punchy, as the saturation of certain colours like red and green is a little over the top and not true to life.
Nevertheless compared to most other Android tablets, I much prefer the Venue 8’s display.
The Venue 8 is unusual in the world of Android tablets in that it doesn’t run on some flavour of the ARM processor — instead, it runs on Intel’s Atom Z3580 quad-core 64-bit processor with a PowerVR G6430 graphics chip and 2GB RAM. The device comes with 16GB of internal storage and there is a microSD slot if you need more space.
Designed differently
Getting back to the aesthetics, it has to be said that this is one of the best-looking Android tablets we’ve seen so far — Dell has designed the screen of the Venue 8 7000 to be nearly edge-to-edge, with only a very thin bezel surrounding the display.
However, to create such a thin bezel, everything else — from the speakers to the cameras — had to be relocated to the bottom of the device.
The problem is that the space below the display is where you’re most likely to hold the device, as there’s not much room at the edges of the screen for your fingers.
But the rear- and front-facing cameras are all also located in this area, making it impossible to hold the Venue 8 in a way that doesn’t block at least one of the cameras on the front or back of the device.
So how do you snap pictures? Well, whenever you need to use the camera, you’re supposed to flip the device upside down before you start shooting.
In terms of performance, Android runs very smoothly on the Venue 8 and there was no sign of stutter when doing most things — even graphically intensive games ran smooth for the most part.
However, there is one area where you have to wait and that’s when taking pictures using the special camera array on the back — the camera launches quickly enough and you can snap photos almost immediately, but the Venue 8 has to do a whole lot of processing before you can view your shot.
The extra processing is needed because the two Intel RealSense 720p cameras work together with the 8-megapixel one on the back to perform some software magic that’s actually pretty cool. More on that below.
Measure it
So what does the array of three cameras do?
Well, one of the things it does is that it allows you to refocus a shot after you’ve taken the picture or apply depth-specific effects to your shot — nothing too unusual here, since HTC and a few other manufacturers already offer such a feature.
What makes the cameras on the back of the Venue 8 special is that they allow you to measure the dimensions of any object that you’ve taken a picture of.
For example, once you take a photo of a person, you can measure his or her actual height by bringing up a virtual ruler and lining it up with the top of the person’s head and his/her feet.
Believe it or not, it works really well — it’s not always easy to precisely line up the ruler markers with humans, but you’ll get a pretty accurate reading, plus or minus an inch or two.
It’s much easier for objects with defined edges where you can clearly see the lines and corners.
When I first tried the feature, it was actually quite inaccurate — apparently, the RealSense cameras need to calibrate themselves before they will give correct measurements.
The camera does this automatically but you need to take up to eight photos of various objects and scenes before the measuring feature becomes accurate enough for use.
Apart from the nifty measurement feature, the 8-megapixel camera on the Venue 8 isn’t anything to shout about — in bright light, it takes decent pictures, but in low light, the performance is really very poor, with visible noise even in spite of the noise reduction which smooths out detail in your subject matter.
As I said, battery life is very dependent on how bright you set the display but at comfortable brightness levels the Venue 8 was a decent, if not outstanding performer in terms of battery life.
When the processor is under load, such as when playing games or other CPU/GPU intensive tasks, the back of the device does get pretty warm, but it’s never at an uncomfortable level.
Conclusion
The Venue 8 is a nice looking device with a good build — it’s a pity that this is a case of form over function as the thin bezel and location of most components at the bottom cause some handling issues.
Nevertheless, at US$399 (RM1,500) for a 16GB model, it’s actually quite a good price for an Android tablet, especially one with such a good performance and RealSense cameras.
There is no word yet on when this tablet will be available locally, but when it is, you should really check this one out — despite the minor design flaws, the resolution and quality of the screen make it a worthy option.
Pros: Amazingly thin; well built; RealSense cameras allow you to measure just about anything.
Cons: Thin bezel and placement of cameras makes it a bit awkward to hold; image quality from the 8-megapixel camera is only so-so.
Venue 8 7000
(Dell Inc)
Android tablet
Operating system: Android 4.0 KitKat
Display: 8.4in (1,600 x 2,560 pixels) OLED capacitive touchscreen
Camera: 8-megapixel camera (back), dual 720p RealSense cameras (back), 2-megapixel camera (front)
Processor: 2.3GHz Intel Atom Z3580 quad-core chip, PowerVR G6430 graphics chip
Connectivity: WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 4.0
Memory: 16GB internal storage
Expansion slot: MicroSD
Dimensions (W x D x H): 124.2 x 6.1 x 215.9mm
Weight: 305g
Website: www.dell.com
Price: US$399 (RM1,500)
Rating: 4 stars
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