The Dell Venue 11 Pro 7000 Review
by Brett Howse on April 16, 2015 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Tablets
- Dell
- Windows 8.1
- Core M
Tablet Performance
So far we have compared the Venue 11 Pro with its Windows PC based brethren. And that is a fair comparison to make, since the Venue 11 Pro is offered with accessories to transform it into exactly that. But to complete the picture we should take a look at how it performs as a pure tablet.
We do not have all of the same benchmarks available on Windows as we do on iOS and Android, but we will make what comparisons we can to get a general feel for how this tablet compares against competing devices.
Web Performance
Core M offers a lot more performance than any of the ARM based tablets when it comes to CPU bound tasks. It is easily double the performance of the best ARM or Atom based devices. It is a pretty great achievement when you look at how far back Intel was in the mobile game a few years ago. Atom got them to somewhat competitive performance and TDP, but Core M has pushed them well past. Of course that is ignoring the huge price differential, with the Core M CPU having a tray price of more than many Android tablets, as well as the larger circuit board that Core M requires. Intel still has Atom, and for good reason. They can and do price Core M at a premium, but have Atom to provide the less expensive option.
3DMark Unlimited
Ice Storm Unlimited is rendered off-screen, so that it can be used to compare across devices and platforms. As we have seen in the PC comparison, the Venue 11 Pro can perform quite well if given such a short benchmark. This does show to capabilities of the GPU inside, but unfortunately it is more limited in performance when doing longer workloads.
GFXBench
On the CPU side, Core M dominates the ARM competition, but on the GPU front it is not the same story. As we saw in 3DMark, the GPU can perform very well, but on a test like this where sustained performance is required, the performance does drop off quite a bit. The GPU is not terrible, but it cannot compete with the top GPUs available in a tablet today. Perhaps that will change with Skylake. At the moment, it is only ok.
NAND Performance
The Venue 11 Pro has an older model of SSD, but it is still a SSD, where as most tablets are outfitted with some form of eMMC storage.
Building a tablet out of PC components still has its upsides, and storage performance is one of them. There is still quite a gap between a true SSD and eMMC storage. The Venue 11 Pro has the SanDisk X110 SSD, which is an older model drive, yet performance is still a good bit better than the average tablet.
Tablet Performance Summary
The Venue 11 Pro, with Windows 8.1, a Core M CPU, and a SSD, has very competetive performance compared to the standard tablets of today. There are certainly advantages to a true tablet, such as weight and thickness, but as far as performance, the Venue 11 Pro outclasses these devices in everything except GPU performance. The GPU performance is still good, but it is not class leading.
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NeatOman - Thursday, April 16, 2015 - link
I'm sorry, that thing is hideous... the border is from a crappy tablet from 2-3 years ago. I deployed Yogo Pro 2/3 and Surface Pro 3 (I'll try a Surface 3 once there out) but i know that no one will want that despite its functionality. Sorry Dell :-/Azurael - Thursday, April 16, 2015 - link
I think I'm glad I have a 7130 (Haswell-Y, active cooling) rather than the Core M 7140. The fan doesn't generally come on unless it's pretty heavily loaded, battery life is great, and even my base i3 model seems to outperform this one under sustained load. I hate the 16:9 aspect ratio and the way the capacitive Windows key wakes it (I think this is an MS requirement though?) - and Windows is still a poor tablet OS, but I do love this device. It runs Android really well, too :)Replaceable batteries, SSDs and Wireless cards are a boon (in fact, I had to replace the Dell Atheros card that came in mine with an AC-7265 for Android compatibility) and unheard-of in the tablet world,I hope they continued that...
I've got one of the silver active styluses too, I had an A01 black model, which was terrible - almost unusable since it would lose tracking mid-stroke but Dell sent me the silver one FOC and it's been great. Much better battery life, too (who thought AAAA batteries were a good idea?!) It's nice to use in Photoshop, but I'm not much good at drawing so I can't say how it compares to the Wacom digitiser on the Surface Pros...
awall13 - Thursday, April 16, 2015 - link
Regarding the port placement, I wanted to comment that I wish our Surface Pro 3 had its display and USB ports located lower... I rarely hold the tablet while it is plugged in to something; a more common use case is having it sitting on a desk plugged in, where lower ports seem advantageous so that there is less torque on the port from a hanging cable, and it is less cluttered. So I wouldn't take issue with Dell's choice of port placement, personally.metayoshi - Thursday, April 16, 2015 - link
Good to know that I probably would have made a good decision had I decided to go with this instead of the Surface 3. As much as Core M excites me, it really was the price range that pushed me to drop money on a Surface 3 instead of this. Sure, I lost Core M for Atom performance, but had I had that extra $200 in my budget, I would have jumped on the Dell Venue 11 Pro as soon as the 5Y71 version was released. I don't think I'll regret my decision for now, but something with that kind of power in a 4.5W TDP device is really enticing.eanazag - Thursday, April 16, 2015 - link
I think the battery measurements need to be reported with and without the mobile keyboard. We have no idea what the tablet does on its own in battery life.The dock with 10/100 is a regression. The WiFi is better than that. The dock does not support 3 monitors with integrated graphics.
I think Microsoft has a better polished solution in the Surface series.
Hulk - Thursday, April 16, 2015 - link
Don't know about this tablet but Imperial Walkers are very cool.And what are the little guys called again? Also very cool.
J_Hyde - Thursday, April 16, 2015 - link
The LTE version has been mentioned from the day this tablet was introduced, but it's not on Dell's website. It is mentioned in the user manual. I've chat'd with Dell Sales support and they are not aware of when it will be released.I suppose a WiFi hotspot, or a USB based LTE modem would work, but was really looking forward for a Windows tablet with LTE... At the moment, I'm still waiting
(By the way, the documentation on the site on whether there is an LTE modem is remarkably inconsistent)
lewisl9029 - Thursday, April 16, 2015 - link
I'd like to see a review of the HP Elite x2 1011, which has a similar form factor as this and offers similar accessories, except it has fans for active cooling, which I think might mean we can see the true performance potential of these M-5Y71 chips.Morawka - Thursday, April 16, 2015 - link
Last years model had a removable battery. are you sure this doesn't have one? It has the removable back just like last years, so one would think they would keep the removable battery, especially if this product is aimed at the enterprise market.JumpingJack - Friday, April 17, 2015 - link
"At 10.8 inches in screen diameter"Diameter is a term which describes an attribute associated to a circle. You mean "At 10.8 inches measured at the diagonal for the screen"