I finally have fully understood the point of a tablet. Reading ebooks and datasheets; well, maybe a bit more than that: Light web browsing, YouTube videos, reading the news, etc. are all good tablet tasks. They’re convenient, light and good for some laid back content consumption.
Sporting an Intel Atom SoC (Z2580), 2GB of RAM and running Android 4.2 (Ice Cream Sandwich) to boot, the Dell Venue 8 is a well-rounded tablet. The update to Android 4.3 (Jelly Bean) is out for the device and a convenient over-the-air update installed the software for me when I first started the device. 16GB of on-board storage is installed, out of which about 12GB is available to the user. A microSD card slot is available to expand storage space by another 32GB.
2GB of RAM on this device really helps performance, it barely ever stuttered despite a lot of apps being open. I do recall some stuttering in heavier apps like Google Maps though. Most games were smooth, but this tablet isn’t for gaming.
The touch is mostly responsive and the screen is very good. The IPS display is 8-inch across the diagonal, with a 720p (1280x720) resolution. Colour reproduction seemed very good. Build quality was generally quite good, with just a mild creaking sound being emitted if I’d put pressure on it.
Heat was a non issue, even while running benchmarks (3DMark, Epic Citadel, Vellamo, etc.) it never felt hot to touch. The battery life was pretty impressive, with at least a day and 14 hours under my workload. Again, this is effectively a subjective test, as your mileage may vary. But it’s more than capable of lasting longer.
I do wonder whether it could have been made any lighter. When holding it by one hand from the screen’s edge, my hand would tend to get tired fairly quickly. I think it’s more of a question of how you end up holding it; I think a 7-inch tablet is more suitable to such usage.
So this brings up two things: Firstly, this is a really good tablet for about '15,000 as long as gaming isn’t your priority and secondly, I do wonder whether its 7-inch version would be better value than the old Nexus 7 at the same price, given the additional RAM and expandable storage.
I think it’s worth noting in the end that Dell claims that the device has “Intel HD Graphics”, which is incorrect and potentially misleading, as only the newer Bay Trail SoCs have Intel’s own GPUs, and the buyer should keep that in mind.
