Dell Venue 8 Pro Initial Review

[savingpvtbryan]

Open charm bar and tap Search. Type Control Panel. Change View By to Small Icons. Tap Power Options. Tap Change Plan Settings that is next to the plan labeled Dell. Tap Change Advanced Power Settings. Tap the plus sign next to Display. Tap the plus sign next to Enable Adaptive Brightness. Disable it.

Thanks! That fixed it.

 

[stephen_az]

As a point of reference, I recently had to make use of a version of that allegedly "America's best warranty" on another Dell product. Eleven days, a BBB complaint, and withholding of my payment on my Dell account later, I finally had my rapid service. I would not recommend a Dell product to my worst enemy. Please take a close look at real customer satisfaction figures before buying their poorly manufactured, ill supported, products. If a new product line, take an even closer look since Dell's quality control which is weak at the best of times is second to everyone on new products.

 

[Jazmac]

Beautiful. This is what I expected from the Venue 8. I was hoping for a lot of what you described in the review. One thing I didn't see is Watcom pen support. Do you have any info on that or is that something for Bing?

 

[mase123987]

Beautiful. This is what I expected from the Venue 8. I was hoping for a lot of what you described in the review. One thing I didn't see is Watcom pen support. Do you have any info on that or is that something for Bing?

Be careful with the name. Venue 8 is an Android tablet. Venue 8 Pro is a Windows tablet.

They have an active stylus for sale that works with the Venue 8 Pro. I don't know if it uses N-Trig or Wacom though. I don't own it...yet.

 

[mase123987]

As a point of reference, I recently had to make use of a version of that allegedly "America's best warranty" on another Dell product. Eleven days, a BBB complaint, and withholding of my payment on my Dell account later, I finally had my rapid service. I would not recommend a Dell product to my worst enemy. Please take a close look at real customer satisfaction figures before buying their poorly manufactured, ill supported, products. If a new product line, take an even closer look since Dell's quality control which is weak at the best of times is second to everyone on new products.

I think the same could be said about a lot of the PC makers. Let us hope your situation is just more of an isolated "ball dropped" on Dell's part.

 

[theefman]

Poor after sales support is not the sole preserve of Dell. It was a nightmare getting Asus to acknowledge their 11.6' Vivotab and even after that service usually consisted of telling users to hard reset then request the device be sent in. And this was in response to a request for working drivers. I personally owned the much maligned Dell Venue Pro and know what people went through with bugs but I always had good service from just having reasonable expectations and in the end, all was fixed.

At the end of the day, buy what you feel comfortable with but I doubt any of these companies would still be in business if they were as bad as some try to make them out to be.

 

[Insti Gator]

I understand it's installed, but since it's not activated I'm thinking you can use that activation key on another device and remove it from the Venue 8.

Just saying if I have both a Surface Pro 2 and Venue 8, I'd rather use Office on the Surface.

Hey - I actually had the exact same idea! I was successfully able to activate the office 2013 bundled with my Ionia w3 on my desktop Win8 machine.

See thread discussing here : http://forums.windowscentral.com/ge...49-acer-iconia-w3-free-office-2013-deal.html#

 

[Jazmac]

Be careful with the name. Venue 8 is an Android tablet. Venue 8 Pro is a Windows tablet.

They have an active stylus for sale that works with the Venue 8 Pro. I don't know if it uses N-Trig or Wacom though. I don't own it...yet.

Noted. I just heard Costco will be moving these next month. I will probably get one there.

 

[mase123987]

Noted. I just heard Costco will be moving these next month. I will probably get one there.

I was originally going to pre-order with Amazon. It seems that pre-orders are becoming less and less reliable these days so I just went with who had physical stock.

 

[Buren06]

Be careful with the name. Venue 8 is an Android tablet. Venue 8 Pro is a Windows tablet.

They have an active stylus for sale that works with the Venue 8 Pro. I don't know if it uses N-Trig or Wacom though. I don't own it...yet.

Synaptics. The gents over at this forum have been having trouble with it.

 

[mase123987]

Synaptics. The gents over at this forum have been having trouble with it.

I will have to look into that. This is one feature that helps set it apart from the other current offerings.

 

[John Balacano]

hope you can post some pictures from the front cam and back cam

 

[TrackSmart]

Noted. I just heard Costco will be moving these next month. I will probably get one there.

I'm curious where you heard this, or at least if you have pretty good confidence in the source. Costco has excellent return policies (90 days - full refund - on electronics) and is always price competitive. Microcenter is also excellent on that front (although more like 30 days). It would be great to pick one up locally - although I'm only interested in the 64GB version. And it seems like Dell is the only vendor carrying the stylus, which is another must-have...

 

[TrackSmart]

I will have to look into that. This is one feature that helps set it apart from the other current offerings.

One thing is obvious from that thread: The Surface Pro allows for some beautiful tracking when writing notes in print or cursive, while the Dell V8P does a lousy job in print and is on only passable for cursive handwriting (below). I'm guessing this has to do with the software implementation more than the hardware, but who knows?

The real question is whether it is still "good enough" for One Note and the built-in Windows keyboard to translate your handwriting reliably into text. If 'yes', than I can live with it. If 'no', then I will pass on this device as the Stylus is the main input method I was planning to use.

http://forum.tabletpcreview.com/att...enue-8-pro-owner-s-lounge-20131028_213151.jpg

 

[majortom1981]

If you are a business looking to get this you can get it for $312 with the case stylus and 2 year accidental warranty.

 

[TrackSmart]

majortom1981: If you are a business looking to get this you can get it for $312 with the case stylus and 2 year accidental warranty.

Thanks for the heads-up! How would I access that deal for business customers? Does it require a 'bulk' order of many units?
Also, doesn't Microsoft force PC makers to remove the included "home" version of MS Office when selling to businesses? That would be a big tradeoff, unless you have an alternate MS Office license you can install.

Anyway, any further information is certainly welcomed.

 

[fatclue_98]

Thank you for the awesome review!!!

Do you have a microUSB to USB adapter that you can verify if the Dell Venue will act as a host and recognize flash drives and portable USB drives? I was curiously if it had enough power to utilize those devices. Also, I cannot find anywhere on the web if the Dell uses Gorilla Glass or just hardened glass. If it is hardened glass...do you think it would incur scratches easily by throwing it in and out of a backpack regularly?

I can't speak about the Dell, but I have the Acer W3 and I can do anything on the USB port just as i would with a desktop. BTW, you don't need a dedicated cable. Just buy a female-to-female USB adapter and you can use a regular micro-usb cable. I picked mine up at TigerDirect for about $2.

 

[svenhassel]

Hi, thanks a lot for your review.

Have you tried to connect it to a monitor? I think it can be done via miracast. If you have, how is the performance?

Can you use, let?s say outlook, onenote, word and chrome with reasonable performance while streaming to the monitor??

 

[mase123987]

Hi, thanks a lot for your review.

Have you tried to connect it to a monitor? I think it can be done via miracast. If you have, how is the performance?

Can you use, let?s say outlook, onenote, word and chrome with reasonable performance while streaming to the monitor??

I don't have a miracast receiver of any kind.

 

[mase123987]

hope you can post some pictures from the front cam and back cam

I will try soon.