The Dell Venue 8 7000 Series Review
by Brandon Chester on March 12, 2015 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Tablets
- Dell
- Android
- Mobile
- Venue 8 7000
Battery Life
Battery life is obviously one of the most important aspects of a mobile device. With flagship tablets, users have come to expect that their device will give them ten hours or more of usage on a single charge. The Venue 8 comes with a 5,900 mAh (21Wh) battery, and Dell rates it for ten hours of usage.
In our WiFi web test, the Venue 8 manages just over nine and a half hours, which is fairly close to Dell's recommendation and competitive with the battery life results from the iPad Air 2. The Nexus 9 does hold a lead of a little over one hour, but in general any modern tablet that isn't the Stream 7 or a similar tablet is going to last you through the day adequately.
In our video playback battery test the Venue 8 really shines. The lower APL of films compared to black text on white webpages allows for a battery life of 12.77 hours which beats out both the iPad Air 2 and the Nexus 9, with a significant lead over the latter.
In BaseMark OS II we see that the Venue 8 does very well in both the overall time running as well as in the score given by BaseMark. Even with the CPU sustaining a high level of performance throughout the test, battery life is ahead of every other competing tablet.
In GFXBench we see a similar situation to BaseMark, but this time with the focus on the GPU. The Venue 8 takes the top spot in battery life, but comes out slightly below the middle of the results for its FPS in the final run of the test. Its FPS drops from 20.26FPS to 18.83FPS which means that there isn't much throttling going on with the GPU, but it also isn't putting nearly as much GPU power into a tablet as Apple, NVIDIA, and HTC are in their offerings.
Charge Time
Charge time is the other half of the battery life story. If you can charge a device very quickly, having a slightly shorter battery life may not be much of an issue. Conversely, an extremely long charge time can leave a device tethered to a wall for long periods even if it had great battery life while it was still charged. The Venue 8 comes with a 5V 2A charging block in the box, and it fortunately does not have any coil whine issues like I've experienced with other recent devices with high wattage chargers.
The Venue 8 does well in our charge time test. At 2.78hrs to reach 100%, it charges even quicker than many smartphones. There's not much else to be said beyond that Dell has gotten the best of both worlds with great battery life and a short time to recharge that battery once it's depleted.
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darkich - Thursday, March 12, 2015 - link
your Intel *bias*Michael Bay - Thursday, March 12, 2015 - link
Consider how faster Atom became when Baytrail came. That`s generational improvement the article is talking about.Intel also always will be on superior process node compared to everyone else.
It`s only a question of supplying better GPU part.
lucam - Thursday, March 12, 2015 - link
This GPU is good, but not enough maybe for a tablet.darkich - Friday, March 13, 2015 - link
Lol.Consider how faster Cortex became from A9-A72. Around 400%.
Astonishing achievement that Intel can only have pipe dreams about.
LukaP - Friday, March 13, 2015 - link
Considering Intel managed to get Broadwell into 4.5W space i wouldnt be too worried about them. Their next gen atoms will be on par with any arm design. Dont forget that they have atleast one node advantage (with 10nm that will be two nodes) and ALOT more money to pour into RND.Look at what they are doing with iGPU performance. they realised AMD was stealing their market there, and came up with the Gen8 Iris Pro.
Same will happen in mobile. when intel wants something it takes it. Plus it helps that they can rely on the Intel Inside branding.
pSupaNova - Friday, March 13, 2015 - link
Every generation we hear the same arguments spouted by the Intel Crowd, then when the mobile products hit the market ARM based Socs beat Intels hands down.Intel can't own this market big players like Samsung & Apple who manufacture devices and design ARM SOCS will not let them gain a big enough foothold in the market.
The Mobile SOC race is over ARM won and Intel are now scrambling for the scraps.
Michael Bay - Friday, March 13, 2015 - link
Samsung SoCs are the ones scrambling for the scraps even within Samsung lineup, and Apple will always will be a thing in itself.This battle is far from over, and rushing to proclaim someone a winner only uncovers one`s uncertainty.
darkich - Friday, March 13, 2015 - link
That 4.5W Broadwell costs over $250, and is matched(in raw computing performance) by a $50 2W Exynos 7420, and almost matched by last year's 20nm A8X..Seriously, there is no competition whatsoever. Facts are overwhelmingly in favor of ARM based chips.
darkich - Friday, March 13, 2015 - link
Also, so far Intel always had a node advantage but trailed behind ARM despite of that.Now even that advantage is melting away.
Samsung is actually the first to have tested a 10nm process
Michael Bay - Friday, March 13, 2015 - link
Intel process advantage "melting away"?Nice mantra.
It took them literally years and years to get where intel was two years ago process-wise, and then it`s not even real 14nm. You`ll get years after years of Samsung milking it completely dry, then TSMC yields will finally catch up and they`ll have to think about moving to 10.
Intel will be somewhere below 5 by then.