Dell - Venue 8 - 8" - Intel Atom - 16GB - Black

The Dell Venue 8 3840 has a nice, clean design and a good hi-res display. It works excellently for me as a reader because in horizontal mode I can get the print size up to where it is easy for me to see, even on a standard web page. The Dell wireless charging cradle, which I ordered separately, charges the tablet right through the portfolio case. I've also ordered the Dell Cast dongle, but haven't received it yet. If possible I will add that to this review later. One of the reasons I chose the Dell is because it supposedly runs a "native" install of Android 4.2.2 Kit Kat. But in whatever way this may be true, it doesn't behave the same as 4.2.2 Kit Kat on my Moto-G Google phone. On the Moto-G, Kit Kat runs flawlessly and seamlessly, never getting overloaded in memory. I can have any number of apps and pages open at once, and the phone can quickly switch between them without a glitch. On the Venue 8 however, it seems that Dell has "customized" the Android installation, and my experience is that whenever a manufacturer does that it becomes some degree of a compromise. For whatever reason, the Venue 8 is not nearly as smooth as the Moto-G, although both have 1G system memory. For example, The Venue 8's Google Android OS does not play well with the Google Chrome browser - if you can imagine that. Whatever has been modified makes Chrome glitchy and apt to freeze. I had to abandon it in favor of Firefox. The Dell also didn't like the app EverNote, which I think came pre-installed. Once I uninstalled it things suddenly got much better. Still, I have to be careful how many apps I leave open at once, or the tablet will begin to overload and slow down. Sometimes I'll need to reboot to clear it. I never have this problem on the Moto-G, even though it's also busy running the phone apps in the background. This is my first tablet, and it would be interesting to get my hands on a Google Nexus, just to see how that behaves comparatively. But the Dell is good for what I use it for. Even the single speaker sound is good quality, and HD video plays seamlessly. So my complaints are minor ones, and generally I think the Dell was a good choice. If the Dell Cast works as advertised, this could be even more fun. And then we'll see what happens when Google/Dell bumps the OS up to Android 5.0...

I bought this tablet from an extremely knowledgeable associate at the Bradenton Florida location. He spent a lot of time with me going over the processors and features of all the tablets in my price range. I had just broken my prized nexus 7 2nd gen and was looking for something similar. The screen on this tablet is great and bright. The tablet is light and easy to handle. The micro SD card slot is a great feature which makes storage upgradeable for cheap! I was super excited to use it but quickly realized it could not handle more than one or two open tabs on chrome with a few other programs running. It bogged down fast and froze for 45 seconds plus several times. I repeated the same tasks after resetting the tablet and ended up with the same freezes and lag. I returned it.  Clearly the lack of sufficient RAM combined with the relatively weak processor makes this tablet fall into the performance range of tablets under $100. The screen sells the tablet, but don't be fooled. I bought the Asus MeMO pad 7 ME572C FOR $162 AND IT ROCKS!!!!

It is a decent android tablet. Does the job if you are casually browsing, watching youtube videos, and do some non- cpu/gpu intensive gaming. Given the price, one of the better choices out there. Battery life is good, with occasional use, goes 2-3 days without charging. Well built, cameras are good. My daughter loves it, my son, though, thinks it is slower than his Asus [MemoPad 7]. Apps open up slower than Asus, but when using the app, I don't see apparent difference.

This Dell Venue 8 has 1GB memory, unlike it's predecessor, which had 2. The difference is staggering-- what was an incredibly smooth experience has become a jumpy, laggy one. the Ven8-1999 (the prior model) was very impressive. A little cost savings (perhaps because of an improved screen) went a long way to making this a mediocre Android experience.

At the time of purchase, this tablet had the same specs as other popular tablets in the store but after the first day of use, it was a huge disappointment. The pre-installed apps were sluggish before and after we got to reach home and connect it to Wifi to download any updates that were available from the playstore. We did a factory reset just like we had to do on the ipad that started freezing up after the ios update. After 2nd day of use, we decided it wasn't worth keeping and brought it back. We read so much about how Dell has improved their Laptops and such but I guess their attempt to making this tablet is a huge disaster.

My 10 year old really enjoys this tablet. It has just enough memory to accomodate both school work and his games he likes to play.

I wanted a tablet to take with my when I travel so it wouldn't be so cumbersome like a laptop. It does work for that. But at times it responds so slowly when going from one page to the next it frustrates me. Also sometimes after just a few seconds, the screen goes to black. That's fine, I understand it is saving power, but trying to get it back sometimes takes awhile.

We bought this tablet for the memory and the wireless charging, well the memory worked out great for all the kids games and such, but the wireless charging did not. The charging location was in the lower right corner so it was nearly impossible to charge with any standard wireless charger, you would need to spend another $80-100 to get the dell specific wireless charger to make it worth using. My recommendation if you are buying this for the wireless charging capabilities, rethink your decision.