This lightweight new android tablet features a beautiful 8" HD touch screen. Unleash your creativity with two cameras and storage to spare
86 of 87 people found the following review helpful.
By DigitalGurl
I ordered this from DELL and have had it approx. 2 weeks. I am more than pleased with the build quality of this device. The back has a nice rubberized texture which makes it quite easy to hold. The display is nice and bright (actually it is VERY bright) and the colors are OK but not as vibrant as my Samsung devices.
This tab is very fast and snappy which is due to the intel processor and 2 gigs of RAM. All apps open fast and run perfect. I haven't had any glitches with any apps that I've installed from the Play Store. Netflix & YouTube work perfect!
I was pleasantly surprised by the minimal amount of apps that was installed on the device. I was expecting a ton of bloatware as that is the norm for DELL on their desktops and laptops. There is only a couple of DELL cloud apps installed and you can easily disable these if you don't want to use them. In other words, this is as close as you will get to a "pure" Android OS without buying a Nexus 7. So, a big thumbs up for DELL on this point.
What you won't be pleased with is the cameras. But, who uses a tablet to take photos? Your phone will produce much better images. So, this is not a deal breaker for me and shouldn't be for anyone interested in buying this tablet.
The speaker is quite loud (much louder than any of my Samsung devices). Plug in some headphones and you will be impressed!
The micro usb port will work with an OTG cable. GPS works great. It does have an ambient light sensor for automatic brightness. This device does NOT support haptic feedback ... so if you are a gamer and need this feature, look elsewhere.
The only thing that I have to gripe about is Adobe Flash Player ... sideloaded it and can't get it to work in any of the browsers that support flash. Maybe it has something to do with Android 4.2.2? The only reason you would need "flash" is to watch Amazon Prime (since they refuse to give us Android users an app). If anyone has been able to install flash and get it to work, please share :o)
For $199 you won't find a better tablet that has 2 gigs of RAM, 2.0 GHZ intel processor and an almost pure Android system.
I will update this review if I have any major problems with the DELL Venue 8.
41 of 46 people found the following review helpful.
By S. J McCartin
This is my second tablet, the first was an android 4.0 cheapie off ebay with 512k ram and a 1 ghz processor and a seriously poor screen but what do you want for seventy bucks? That tablet is stuck in a boot loop (common problem with some units) and it's not worth the repair to reload the OS from scratch, it's a future project to try to get a generic android os like uberoid installed on it. I can't find out if the venue has a hardware factory restore mode outside the OS, but for the price I'd think it should.
What's in the box?
Tablet
2Amp power adapter (usb non hard wired micro usb cable)
setup sheet
Setup:
Plug it in
Turn it on, asks for language, time zone and google account information.
Immediately updates the firmware to latest, restarts and downloads updates. (It saw my wifi immediately, I didn't have to do anything at all because I have no security on my access point.)
Automatically connects to google and downloads all your apps and calendars, contacts etc. Anything not compatible with android 4.2 is not downloaded or installed.
Connectors:
Micro usb for data and power adapter, OTG capable
headphone plug, also works for external amplified speakers etc.
micro SD aka transflash card slot
Buttons:
Volume up/down
power (hold down several seconds for hard reset, no reset hole)
I loved this thing from the moment I turned it on. The decent amount of ram and fast cpu makes it positively zippy. The decent quality screen (I understand there are better) really makes it wonderful to use. So far I've watched movies, played a lot of candy crush, did my banking, used the online gateway for Neverwinter and the mobile utility for RIFT, used a kitchen measure conversion utility from the android play store and played a dungeon crawl android game. This tablet handled it all speedily. I did find a game that ran awful slow, probably needs an update for the newer OS. From what I've read Dell has promised that we'll get the newest android KitKat when it is released for everyone other than the test sites, lol. When I ordered this the beginning of November they were saying early december delivery date but I had it in less than two weeks, was I happy! Someone made a comment about flash player, I couldn't get it installed either. But that is really minor, most web pages run great even without flash support. Maybe kitkat will resolve the flash player issue. Battery life is what dell claims, around four hours of continuous use, about two full length movies and maybe a little more. When the screen is off, the standby mode is really efficient, I left it in standby all night a couple of times and the battery was only down a little the next morning when I turned it on; really impressive!
Dell offers extras that you don't need like stylus, etc. The difference between 16 and 32 gb onboard storage was $20.00 so I ordered the bigger storage. Micro SD cards are currently available up to 32 gb and the micro usb slot is OTG (on the go), so with a cable you can plug in any usb drive/zip drive or an external self powered OTG compatible hard drive even. You can buy a usb thumb drive/zip drive on ebay with a regular male usb connector on one side and a micro usb male connector on the other, so you don't even need an otg cable with those. I would really prefer a separate AC plug instead of charging from the usb but few are doing that, my old chinese tablet did but that's apparently not the usual. There are cables on ebay that split with a male and female to let you charge and use the data connection simultaneously. The cables are a few dollars, I think dell should have included one of those in the box myself. Cases are under ten bucks on ebay and you'll probably want a screen protector to protect from scratches and little peanut butter fingers.
The only big thing that aggravated me when I ordered this was the complete lack of the LTE (3g cellular network) modem option. It's mentioned in one place, but never made available during the ordering process. I found some pictures of the internals online, the motherboard has the circuit traces for the sim card slot but there is no hardware for the card to slide into at least on the android 3830 version motherboard. I was also pleasantly surprised to see that the battery plugs into the motherboard, it's not hardwired like my cheapie that you'd have to unsolder to change the battery out. Any tech savy type could disassemble this in their sleep, so maybe after the warranty is out i'll see about a new motherboard with the sim card slot. It's really not that big of a deal, most carriers have those wifi hot spot things that act as an access point for several devices. Virgin mobile has one for $70.00 for the device and enough data to do a lot of small things is about $25.00 a month, that might be where I end up going in the future.
After a 9" tablet I was afraid smaller would be annoying but so far 8" is fine, I don't think I'd like the 7" version. This is a great product and you can't do any better on ebay for the same specs. Dell is also providing support in the way of auto updates over the internet instead of download. For the price recommend this to anyone. I looked at the pro but I had to ask myself why you'd want to run a resource hog like windows 8 on so little hardware resources...why? Android is so much more stable and better support and more free apps in my book. Love this thing!
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful.
By Donald J. Gardner
I have the 32gb venue 8. This is without a doubt the best performing tablet at a price point well below competition. HD screen resolution is very good. The 8" tablet to me is the perfect size, I played with a lot of 7" and 10" tablets and the 8 just felt the all around best. This tablet is not really on peoples radar which is unfortunate because the specs and quality are superb. The only thing I would like to see is a better resolution camera (it is only 5M) as well as a camera flash. Currently cases are hard to find. Targus is supposed to make one similar to the one available for the venue 8 pro. BTW I opted for the 8 over the pro, because well hey, android is just a better platform for most anything one uses a tablet for. If you have to run Microsoft office, sure opt for the pro but it will be slightly slower and use more of the internal memory due to the OS, I have windows 8.1 on my laptop but I definitely would not want on my tablet. Overall this tablet is a major score, and at $199 for the 32gb, plus an microSD slot for an additional 32gb, the competition does not come close to this value.
No comments:
Post a Comment