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
Display
The display is one of the most important aspects of a mobile device. This is even more true for tablets than smartphones, with tablets essentially being giant displays that you hold and interact with. Given that Dell has not had a massive presence in the mobile space in recent years, I had no idea what to expect from the display on the Venue 8. It's an 8.4" 2560x1600 AMOLED display, and with its thin bezels it shares the same Infinity Display branding as Dell's XPS 13. The display on the QHD+ XPS 13 has very good calibration, and so one would hope that this would apply to the Venue 8 as well.
Our first test is the maximum brightness of the device. As you can see, at 100% average picture level it's not looking good, with the Venue 8 having the absolute lowest brightness of any device we've tested in recent years. Indeed, when using the device in any environment with unforgiving lighting it could be difficult to see the display. What's also unfortunate is that the Venue 8 doesn't have any sort of brightness boost when auto brightness is enabled like on the Galaxy Note 4 and Moto X 2014.
One new chart that I'm introducing for AMOLED devices is a graph of the device's brightness at a given average picture level (APL), which is the percentage of the display that is lit compared to a 100% white display. Because AMOLED displays are able to turn pixels off, they are able to drive a higher brightness with a lower APL while staying within their target power usage. As you can see, the brightness of the Venue 8 will go as high as 430 nits when only 10% of the display is lit. Based on our previous testing, it can be said the APL for your average web page or app is somewhere around 80%, and so the brightness of the Venue 8 can be closer to 250 nits in normal use. Even so, 250 nits is quite dim when compared to other phones and tablets we've tested, and it's unfortunate to see all the recent AMOLED devices not made by Samsung hovering around that number.
The greyscale results on the Venue 8 are certainly not the worst of all the devices that we've tested, but with an average DeltaE of nearly five the errors are clearly visible for most shades of grey. When looking at the RGB balance for each shade we see that there's a fairly consistent lack of blue in the luminance which causes a noticable red shift in the device's whites and a resulting white point of 6203K.
In our saturation test, the Venue 8 performs exceptionally poorly, and comes in with the highest DeltaE of any device that we've tested in recent times. There's a large amount of saturation compression, with certain primary colors like green outputting what should be 100% saturated green with an input of only 60% saturation. In fact, some of the shades of red and green are more saturated than any color I have ever seen on a display before. While this could be a good thing on future devices with color management and Rec. 2020 content, at the moment it simply makes content designed for the sRGB gamut look wildly inaccurate.
With the large errors in greyscale and saturations, there's not much hope for accurate reproduction of color mixtures. With the color checker test we see an average error that is once again larger than any other device recently tested. What's even more frustrating is that the largest errors are in mixtures of green and red, which includes skin tones. Obvious errors in skin colors are visible in photos and when watching both animated and live action video on the Venue 8. While it's definitely not unusable, I would recommend pretty much any other device if looking at photos and watching videos is something a user wants to use a tablet for more than occasionally.
It's unfortunate that such a high end device is hampered by a relatively poor display. Every recent AMOLED device that isn't produced by Samsung has suffered from the same lack of calibration and low brightness, and on every single one of them it has a very negative impact on the user experience. In addition, the Venue 8 suffers from the color banding in darker shades of grey and green that exists on some AMOLED displays, and the PenTile subpixel pattern can be visible on the edges of smaller text even at a normal viewing distance. AMOLED displays have many benefits, but if manufacturers are unable to source calibrated panels of the same quality as those in Samsung's phones and tablets then they should seriously consider opting for a good IPS LCD display instead.
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Murloc - Thursday, March 12, 2015 - link
1. comfort and ergonomics (seating position, not having to hold it up, big screen and audio without spending even more $$$ in wireless gizmos)2. speed of writing and clicking when browsing the internet
WereCatf - Thursday, March 12, 2015 - link
As for comfort: I'd say it's actually a plus for tablets that you can use them in all sorts of positions and not be restricted to seated positions. As for "big screen:" not all activities require a big screen. If you always insist on doing everything on a big screen then that's on you, but obviously many people don't. Writing is faster on a proper keyboard, sure, but I don't see how clicking is any faster.Besides, nothing you said actually answer the question I asked: why is using a tablet specifically at home so ridiculous compared to using it elsewhere?
darkich - Thursday, March 12, 2015 - link
Thise arguments are utterly ridiculous.Have you ever actually used a tablet?
An 8" tablet is PERFECTY usable in a sitting position, its screen provides a perfectly natural focal area size from that viewing distance, when held on top of the lap.
Reading articles is in fact far superior than on a laptop even in that position since:
1}) articles are usually formatted towards visual focus of the eye(columns) and portrait screen of a tablet is a perfect fit for a column.
If you still fail to see the obvious and dont get why tablets are far better and convenient way for reading than a laptop is ,let me ask you - how many books and magazines have you read on a laptop??.
2) tablet screens are superior to laptop(unless you want to compare a $1300 laptop with a $400 tablet) screens in terms of quality.
3) tablet is incomparably more manageable and confortable to handle than a laptop due to vast weight and size differences.
4) tapping and swipping >>> using a touchpad for scrolling and clicking
p1esk - Thursday, March 12, 2015 - link
I've read a ton of pdfs (books and papers) on a laptop. I tend to agree with your points, however, one thing a laptop has got going for it is the screen size. On my 15" MBP I can display two pages at a time. Alternatively, when a text is really dense (some papers), on a 8" tablet the font is simply too small to read comfortably without zooming in all the time (with your zoom resetting every time you turn a page.darkich - Thursday, March 12, 2015 - link
Yeah I don't disagree with your points either, all you say stands but doesn't counter what I said.For some complex and rich context, a top notch laptop like MBP is a natural fit, but overall, Internet is about reading, and for reading a tablet will always be a more natural fit than a laptop.
It is no coincidence that devices specialized for reading have 6" screens, and are about as light as a magazine.
I actually by far prefer to surf on my Note 3(despite having an 8" tablet also) ..all context can be easily managed with one hand, and the screen is just the right size to cover the visual focus from one ft distance.
akdj - Friday, March 13, 2015 - link
Ah. You're on 'our side' lol. I misread. I love my Note 4 too. But pick up an iPad mini retina. The second iteration is a bargain right now and it's not much heavier than your NoteBut it's a HELLUVA lot easier to read whe your eyes get tired (I'm 44 & retina, HiDPI displays have changed everything for me when it comes to Legibility & Portability/Hand 'Hold-a-bility'
akdj - Friday, March 13, 2015 - link
Need to look at it differently. I'm with you as an rMBP owner myself and LOVE computing again...after three decades, HiDPI is phenomenalThat said, as darkich mentions...its a 'comfort' thing
The iPad Air2's display is phenomenal. The horsepower is finally here and in MANY cases, it's a perfect 'home' computer. Facebook, Twitter, email, SMS MMS, pics, reading, surfing and gaming ALL significantly more 'easy' to do with a one pound 6mm tablet without the keyboard in the way! While the last part may be one of the dislikes you've got with tablets ...you can always get a keyboard case for a hundred bucks ...that said, after time with an iPad you can type quick. Respond fast and get back to what you were reading, watching or playing. A laptop while hella more powerful invites distractions while 'reading a magazine, book or doing a crossword puzzle'
IMHO, it's always made me curious why others 'want' multitasking on a tabket OR user accounts. The former ...I've also been a Galaxy Note owner and currently use the Note 4 for our business, it's multi tasking system is still very flawed and much like in this article ...it's Google that isn't paying attention to their UI layouts pixel for pixel on individual devices
Probably an impossibility I know me the latter...a first world deal, but for my family our tablets, whether my son's iPad mini, wife's Air, employees' iPads or my own are VERY personal devices set up the way you're looking to set them up with your icons and apps distributed in the fashion you prefer
If you're unable to realize the benefits of tablet computing you're 'working too much!' Enjoyment, recreation and pleasure are how I use my iPad at home. On the Job site, it's all business! (& they're VERY capable devices now, today in this incarnation as a productivity piece too! $10/month and you've got 5TB of storage on OneDrive with a free word processor (Word), spreadsheet creator or editor (Excel) and a crappy presentation program in comparison to Keynote. Called PowerPoint;). Five tablets. Five computers. Mix n match as we do and it's a bargain!
Not to mention making music, editing photos, video work flow or entertainment. Games for a buck or two. Five or ten for the big ones and some IAPs the kids can 'earn'. Lot better than dropping the same amount on a console and $60/pop for a game they don't enjoy
Sushisamurai - Sunday, March 15, 2015 - link
I'm comparing a 13" MBP to say, a tablet like the Air 2 or retina mini. I actually find my laptop more comfortable than my tablets when sitting (couch or otherwise), eating (kitchen table), on the toilet (I have a small table in the washrooms dedicated for the placement of tablets and laptops).1) on my MBP, books and magazines are okay, and can match my tablet's viewing experience only if the app/program im using is optimized for viewing on a laptop. That being said, I prefer my tablets in this category because of the "curated" views books and magazines have done for the reader.
2)screen speaks for itself, but one thing to note is that for laptops, u can open a swathe of articles a lot easier and faster than a tablet can. If I'm spending an hour catching up on the news or some tech event, I could easily open 10-20 tabs for articles and related articles much faster than my tablet.
3) sure, there's a weight and size disadvantage, but there's also a keyboard and screen advantage
4)for my MBP, scrolling is a pretty easy two finger affair, which doesn't require me to reach my tablet each time. As for switching browser Tabs, I just use the keyboard short cut (same with closing/opening), and keyboard shortcut for switching programs. Zooming for text to fit to size is also an easy affair with "reader" setting on safari (removes adds, reformats text) for those websites with terrible layouts, or I could just double-tap my trackpad on the text I want to read and my browser automatically adjusts the zoom to fit my screen.
I'm not out to promote apple per say, but once u figure it out, their UI for some things is pretty amazing. It would be a nightmare to do the above in Windows IMO
Sushisamurai - Sunday, March 15, 2015 - link
I do prefer my tablet in some scenarios, such as lying down in bed (I have a canter lever tablet holder thing), and when my laptop doesn't fit the area required, like my current predicament of replying to this while in my bathtubSoCalBoomer - Thursday, March 12, 2015 - link
"The Venue 8 has an LTE variant, but most tablets operate purely over WiFi." Hmmmmm . . .