Dell - Venue 8 7000 Series - 8.4" - Intel Atom - 16GB - Black

I was totally awed by the design and qHD screen on the Venue 7840. The screen is the best display I have seen on an Android tablet. I looked at the Samsung Tab Pro 8.4, but TouchWiz was a deal-breaker. I was curious about performance with the Intel Atom chip and it has not disappointed. The is slight lag, but I suspect this may be more Kit Kat related. Apparently Dell has not provided a release date for Lollipop. The camera is a bit gimmicky, the features advertised in the Intel commercial are NOT functional in the software. I found this to be odd. Sony just got popped for advertising unavailable features on the PS Vita. Not that I would ever use the feature, but it was a bummer when I went to test it out only to receive a message that it was not yet available. The 16GB has not been an issue but the is a MicroSD card to expand. I have not had tom use it yet. The chin on the 7840 houses speakers and the front-facing camera. It's a little odd but is a good compromise for the thin bezel on the sides and top. It comes in handy holding it landscape. I use the tablet primarily at right as a reader or as a second screen when I don't wanna watch dumb reality shows the wife is watching. If she gripes about Sports or Sci-Fi I'm watching, the 7840 gives me the option to abdicate and give her the bedroom TV. Live to die another day. Thanks Dell!!

I picked this tablet 5 days ago and so far have been really enjoying it. The screen is amazing, the Intel Z3580 with 2GB of RAM absolutely flies, the build quality is top notch, the power/volume buttons feel nice, and I love the way this device feels in the hand. For me, this device has two fatal flaws: 16GB of memory is an ABSOLUTE joke. After taking the immediate OTA update, you are left with 9.XXGB of free space. This is 110% unacceptable in 2015. The ability to add and SD card is nice, but Android has made external storage much less appealing over the years. The second is no MHL or HDMI/slimport support whatsoever. (same as Nexus9) I imagine this is to drive users to the new dell cast, which may be nice, but forces users to drop an extra 80$. Overall, I love the device, but may end up taking it back and waiting for Dell to release a 32GB+ option. If this were included off the bat, I would say without hesitation that this is the best tablet on the market right now.

I've already written about my experience with the Dell Venue 8 7000 elsewhere so here it is edited for what Bestbuy considers inappropriate language: I've been agonizing over what to do about my light computing needs at home. I've got a workstation laptop at work which I take home, 10lb powerful behemoth which is great for technical work, but not so much when I'm just chilling on the couch or lazing around and doing light stuff. I'd been very tempted by the Surface Pro 3, in part because of my almost 10 years (school, work, grad school) of using thinkpad convertibles, but every time I tried one out, couldn't shake the feeling that it was too heavy for extended couch use and too redundant with the behemoth. I saw news on the 7840's release and was tempted to give it a try, especially since a local BestBuy had it available. Maybe I could leave the Windows ecosystem for my home needs. . . after all, I do have the behemoth when work needs to be done. . . So, I bought both a 7840, liked it, but wasn't quite sure I'd made the best choice. But I was disappointed by all the Windows tablets in BestBuy so I went back to the net to search for alternatives (or reasons to get a SP3) and was reminded of the Nvidia Shield tablet. The specs seemed promising and while it wasn't as high res as the Dell and had subpar reported battery life, the graphics potential seemed really good, so I pulled the trigger and ordered one from Amazon so I could compare them side by side. The Shield has a much better camera, the stylus is great (for those like me who like that stuff), and in certain situations, the Shield speakers are better (otherwise, they sound about the same to the Dell being slightly better), is much better for graphics intense games, and $100 less than a similarly specced 7840. On the other hand, for just about any activity other than intense gaming, the Dell's screen is much better, brighter, higher contrast ratio. The Dell also has better battery life and a bit lighter. The biggest plus for the Shield is when playing high quality graphics games (Grand Theft Auto just isn't going to stress things that much). After being disappointed that the Shield and Dell pretty much were the same when it came to rendering HD video, I was blown away by how much better the Shield was in a graphics intense game - even with scenes where there wasn't much going on, it was clear the Shield's graphics processing was superior. That said, I bet if there was a native Shield video player, it would kick the Dell's butt too. So, for me, I'm keeping the Dell. While it would be nice to pocket the $100 difference, I rarely play games at the level where I'd appreciate the Shield. Most of my use is web browsing and apps where the awesome screen on the Dell excels. That the Dell appears to have 2X+ the battery life (both from reviews and my personal use of the tablets) of the Shield is also a huge factor. Both tablets are gorgeous IMHO and if you are looking for a Android gaming device that doubles as your lazing around tablet, I'd hands down recommend the Shield over the Dell. I entertained getting rid of my FireTv and just keeping the Shield for tablet and TV duty but unless my game playing habits make a big change, I'll stick with the Dell. In unrelated news, this is cool to me because I got the Dell Streak when it first came out - they blazed the Android phablet trail and at least for the moment, are pretty compelling again. Edit: In response to a comment, I went and played with a Nexus 9 for a bit to compare against the Dell, here's what I found: Ok, got to use an N9 for a bit side by side and played a game (Modern Combat 5) on both. The N9 screen is brighter (likely due to a powerful LCD backlight) and resolution-wise comparable to the Dell. The Dell edges it out on crispness and likely sunlight readability. The screen tech in the Dell also strikes a blow in battery life, in just the 30 - 40 minutes I spent comparing the two, the N9 battery dropped twice as much as the Dell. Speaker-wise, they're on par with the N9 slightly edging out the Dell. UI responsiveness was about the same, game play in Modern Combat 5 was identical, though I did notice that the N9 loaded Modern Combat faster than the Dell (they were neck and neck for the first few sets of graphics / textures and other game elements, but then the N9 pulled away - ended up finishing about 5s sooner than the Dell). The Dell screen length and N9 screen length are about the same. So side by side, the N9 looks like someone took the screen and squared it up a bit. When browsing websites, the extra pixels on the Dell did give it a slight advantage when looking at things in portrait mode. In landscape, it was a bit nice to have images be bigger (on the N9). Even though the N9 weighs a bit more than the Dell (and Shield), it actually felt just as easy to hold as the Dell. I'm not sure if it has better weight distribution and perhaps I'd need to hold it for much longer, but over my demo time, my wrist felt the same holding either one. And the camera. Once again, the Dell is trounced camera wise. I'm still keeping the Dell so I"m really hoping there's an update that removes some of the awful camera performance. Note, there seem to be reports of less than stellar build quality on the N9 so you may want to do a comparison of product reviews on a big source like Amazon.

I am a tablet and phone geek. I just cannot help myself. Ive had 4 Nexus 9`s recently (due to shabby hardware), the Tab S and the G Pad 8.3 and i will say that hands down the new Dell 7840 is hands down the finest of the lot. The build quality on this tablet is 2nd to none, it is the best built Android tablet on the market in terms of quality. The all aluminum finish feels great and is reminiscent of the HTC One M8. The screen is just WOW and the sound is really nice for a tablet. The almost edge to edge display makes the screen pop even more so, the blacks are wonderful and the colors are bright, the whole thing just pops at you, equally as good as the Tab S 8.4 if not slightly better. The speakers, yes we have 2 speakers but they are next to each other on the chin of the tablet meaning you lose some of that big sound but in comparison with the Nexus 9 with the HTC Boom Sound i have to say that the dell out performs its competitor, once you tweak the audio with the MaxAudio app this is where you can really make the tablet loud and more full. It`s running an almost stock version of Android Kitkat 4.4.2 i only say almost as we do have some Dell apps which are needed. Its fast and responsive and will supposedly soon be getting the Lollipop update. The Intel Atom processor has no issues pushing all those pixels around, the new Moorefield 64bit processor seems to have some real good power in it. The 16gb onboard storage is low, but most tablets have this and fortunately we have an SD slot which once Lollipop drops will make storage somewhat easier if the app developers choose to go with apps to sd like in other versions of android other than kitkat. The realsense camera...... let me just point out that the camera on this things seems to be very noisy, a really poor camera and i dont seem to have realsense working like it is in the 1st look demo`s you see online. Maybe this is an issue that Dell can fix with an update. One thing this tablet does need and is obviously missing is double tap to wake. This is due to the power and volume buttons being on the left side of the tablet at the top making the power button a pain to reach. Hopefully this can be implemented by Dell in the future. If you are looking at buying a new tablet i highly recommend stopping and looking at this tablet, for me its much better than the competition

Just holding this tablet feels like the future. It is super thin and the nice metal build makes it feel completely different from other tablets. So much so that I feel bad leaving it in a case to protect it. Still very small but doesn't feel as nice. Note that unfortunately it does not support magnet cases auto sleeping the screen. The screen though, looks fantastic. High res OLED looks super sharp and bright. Only gripe with it though is it has so little border it is very easy to touch the screen with the hand holding the tablet by accident. Need to consider how you hold it carefully. On initial release there was also quite a few issues with the lack of storage space. 16gb was way too small and the SD card was pretty much pointless since transferring apps wasn't possible. It also took far to long to get the upgrade to 5.0 and once it was updated it still didn't allow transfers on half the apps. Luckily though, that is all resolved now and the current running version works great and you can move all your apps to the SD card making the low storage space on device less of an issue. Overall it looks and feels great, but considering the price has some minor flaws it really shouldn't have.

Picked this up on Saturday the 3rd of Jan. It has a fantastic build quality - as nice as an iPad, if not nicer. The battery is ~5500mAh and the Intel processor is very fast. Screen is jaw droppingly awesome. 2gigs of RAM is enough, I guess, BUT 16gigs (~9 free on first boot) is a joke. I may still keep it, but what in the world Dell? It's 2015. 32 is the bare minimum. The speakers (yes, there are Right/Left on the chin) are LOUD and bassy. Very nice. Hoping Lollipop lands on this thing sooner rather than later because KitKat has too much restriction on the use of the microSD card. I mean, it's nice to have external storage, but you can only load music and videos (and files) on it. No apps. Shame, really. It's expensive for what it is, but so far it's as good as a Nexus. I sure hope Dell has it's stuff together for OS updates. I'm a skeptic, but am willing to forego my concerns because the hardware is beautiful. Strange launch though. Just showed up. Not a good splash, Dell.

Yes, Dell actually made a full fledged premium tablet with the specs and looks to prove it. Like all tablets, there are quirks and kinks to iron out like the new depth camera settings, internet identity issues, and upgrading a dated version of Android. Other things should have been changed prior to it's release such as the infamous placement of the cameras in less than ideal places, power/volume buttons on wrong side, lack of flash, no NFC, and no smart cover function. That last one, Dell came up with their own feature to wake the tablet once the gyro senses movement which is elective thankfully. If they're competing with the likes of Fire HDX 8.9, they need a flash. With Nexus 9, they need NFC. With all others, they need cameras and buttons in the right place. That said, the screen is phenomenal, the OS is fluid though dated (just received update yesterday), support for wifi AC is fast, speakers bright and pleasant, paltry 16GB easily expanded for $30 with 64GB card. The feel in your hand is sturdy and seamless, though a bit slippery. The fact I could grip an 8.4" tablet in one hand is great; makes picture taking less awkward. Due to the antenna and light sensor placement, I tend to use it upside down. Really a departure from my first gen Nexus 7. Starting to enjoy it more and more every day.

The display is excellent. The initial speed was excellent already. After upgrading to lolipop it has been running even faster. The only disappointment are the cameras. The pictures have too much noises and not so clear. The only thing that is useful for the camera is the measurement feature. However They are still off by a few inches for most things i measured. Although it is thin, but the whole thING is solid and strong. I even slept on it by accident without breaking anything.