Dell is making quite a splash with its newest entry into the tablet market: the Dell Venue 8 7000, being called the ‘World’s Thinnest’ tablet.
Is it the world’s thinnest tablet?
For the moment, yes. The 7000 is only thinner than the iPad Air 2 by a very “thin” margin though, and these gadgets come out frequently. It’s probably not going to hold that title for long. You have to admit, it’s great to see companies giving a good fight in terms of “thinness” – we all get to benefit in the end.
Intel under the hood
Inside this tablet is a 2.3GHz quad-core Intel Atom Z3500 processor and Intel HD Graphics as well as 2GB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage. Similar to the new Asus phones and tablets line, Dell is making a smart choice by going with the far superior Intel under the hood. Intel has made noticeable leaps in improvement over the heat issues with its last generation Atom processors, and is beginning to have wide acceptance among gadget manufacturers.
Great display, so-so camera
In a word: OLED. This seems to be key with the new touchscreens coming out lately. It shows the best blacks, and the viewing angles are excellent. What Dell did to improve this is the very thin bezel that it calls “edge to edge,” with 2,560 x 1,600 resolution at 359 ppi. This high-resolution screen gives the iPad Air 2 a run for its money.
Its camera, however, is where Dell Venue 8 7000 falls flat. It has all the bells and whistles with 8 megapixels and seems to snap photos fine – but only when there’s ample light. Aside from being unpredictable, its camera under-performs in low-light conditions.
Still good value
At around $400, Dell Venue 8 7000 provides great value compared to Apple’s. If you don’t mind the camera that much the “Venue” is right where it’s at.
That really does look thin! It seems as though it’s a viable alternative to the iPad Air but for that kind of money, I’d still want a better camera. A great option for those who aren’t too bothered about this though.
The thinness makes it easier to move around in. It makes it more portable. However, with its thinness, it will be hard to hold it to take shots. It does make sense for the manufacturers to stick it with a so-so camera. It is also awkward to use tablets as cameras too much in my opinion.
It looks so thin that it definitely comes across as unwieldy, even fragile! I would probably have to take extra care in handling it to make sure I don’t bend or break it by accident…
Well you can’t ask for 2 things at once, can you? I don’t think it’s yet technologically possible to have such a thin tablet and a very good camera along with it. I’d personally trade thinness for a poorer camera quality since I don’t find myself very often taking pictures with my iPad at the moment.
I have to admit that these paper thin devices feel very weird in my hand, almost as if they’re gonna break if you squeeze it too hard. Besides that I got to say that I’m very impressed with the resolution and CPU choice, it’s guaranteed to last a while. Does anyone know how good is the battery life?
It is fine for teenagers and adults to hold. I think it will survive your hands. I agree with you with it feeling weird. It kinda reminds me of holding glass, that it will also shatter into a million pieces of I accidentally drop it.
This tablet is not child-friendly. I wonder how does it fare with the bend test. Hmm.
$400 is a great price. I’m impressed by the specifications in their own right, but then to have all of that for such a price is great value. I’d be a little worried about the battery life though for such a thin device, but the iPad has good battery life in a thin form factor. I say bring on the competition, we all benefit in the end!
Thin is fine, but thin for the sake of thin is not an excuse to skimp out on decent hardware. We can all agree that the processor, memory, storage is fine. The display is also very good; pretty good in fact. But I can guarantee you that the only reason these guys couldn’t fit a decent camera in is because of the thinness of the device. Paying for a high-end device with just one substandard component is a very painful prospect for me. It’s like paying for a great business laptop only to find out it has no HDMI support–incredibly frustrating, especially for power users like myself.
You read my mind! I’d never spend $400 on a tablet that has such a bad camera, specially if the excuse for that is the fact they wanted to make this tablet as thin as possible. It’d not feel right for me to spend that much cash on a tablet with such an inferior camera… specially because for me taking good pictures is important.
No, I could never spend that amount on something with a sub-standard camera either. I’d rather pay a little more for something with a much better specification.
Hmm, too bad this isn’t built using Intel’s latest Broadwell 14nm process. Battery life would be much better on the newer manufacturing process. Although, how big is the physical screen, 8″? I myself wouldn’t care about the weak camera, it’s not what I’d use the tablet for anyways…though what is the battery life on this device?
400 bucks for the world’s thinnest tablet? Heck yeah. Super glad someone’s finally giving apple a run for their money
I do not see the importance and the stress the tablet companies go through just to make their latest device “thinner”. As a consumer, I would rather have a tablet that performs better and is more durable than a tablet thinner than paper. The general population do not use their tablets to slice vegetables, so there is no reason for them to be so thin!
I think it’s more of a style thing rather than anything else. Plus Apple always incorporate how small/light/thin/etc their products are, which in turn, makes their competitors want to beat them at that
Now that is what I call a thin tablet! It looks really neat, but to be honest I don’t think I’d invest $400 for a tablet, specially after reading about its camera. I’d wait until more models are released 🙂 Waiting isn’t always easy, but in this cases is the best choice.
My Nexus 7 already feels too thin, and now they’re creating even thinner tablets! And for what? For having to keep our charger in our pockets.
I mean, we’ve reached a point where trying to make thinner and thinner devices has locked us into a cycle of “one-day-use” devices. I wouldn’t mind a device that was two times as fat as those existing today, but with two to three times their battery life.
It looks impressively thin. It makes me think about what I actually look for from a tablet. Is it a gadget for every assignment or project? Is it easily updated? Is it safe? And more things I could be considering when getting one myself. It’s good for our generation, I think, to get used to working with a lot of gadgets. If I didn’t fail to see the greater picture, Dell Venue is leading with its price and its spec.
Wow – that is a gorgeous, sleek piece of technology. I currently still use the first generation iPad, and this makes my iPad look like a brick. And those specs – I think I might have a laptop in my house that would be outperformed by this tablet. I really hope I get the opportunity to test drive this at some point. I wouldn’t be concerned with the camera personally, because when I go to snap a photo I grab my camera or my phone. The only thing that concerns me is the small amount of internal storage, at 16gb. I hope they allow for external storage devices.
This is pretty. Though, I’ll stick with my Surface for right now. I’m not really interested in having the ‘thinnest’ tablet, however if someone can come up with a tablet I can fold up and put in my pocket like a pocketmod? SOLD! 😉
I actually quite the look of it, though I’m not sure whether I’d spend $400 on it. And I didn’t realize that people still bought Dell 🙂 Not a brand that necessarily pops to mind these days for mobile devices.
Wow, in that photo it really does look extremely thin! Having said that, I still don’t think I would buy it. I have tried all different kinds of devices and for extensive work, I still want a full-fledged keyboard. For photo-taking, I would not want to lug around even a mini-tablet. A cell phone is plenty large enough to have to carry around for snapshots here and there. In a nutshell, I guess I want full size or miniature; nothing in between.
Given the huge market share that Apples Ipad has I’m glad to see innovation in the non-Apple tablet space. The ability to market it as “The” thinnest tablet will defiantly help attract attention. As a longtime fan of Android devices I see this as a definite step in the right direction.
It seems like technology is getting smaller and smaller. Also getting this small makes the product a bit less powerful but maybe I’m wrong. Dell has really stepped their game up with this one and the look is amazing. I wouldn’t buy it because the camera isn’t that sharp anyway.
In my personal opinion I prefer a more substantial “thicker” tablet versus a thinner one. I just like the hand feel so much more. The camera seems to be the downfall with most tablets. Its the one problem I have with tablets all together. I would honestly rather just use my smartphone than deal with the grainy pictures that most tablets take. It might be the world’s thinnest but it takes more than that to impress us.
I’ve never been a big fan of making tech extremely thin. I always feel like a drop would either break it, or damage the components in it. That being said, the specs on this tablet seem pretty good, and the resolution seems impressive. I’ll probably just stick with my Nexus 7 for development however.
I’m not quite sure what the obsession with thin is nowadays. I know Apple has always been trying to make their devices this way and it seems like other manufacturers have been getting on board as well. Right now though, I feel like the war should be on battery life not thinner devices.
That aside, I’m glad to see that Intel is getting more of their chips into mobile devices as of late. Perhaps competing with Qualcomm may encourage some real advancements beyond more ghz or cores.
It’s pretty amazing to see hardware like 2.3GHz quad-core Intel Atom Z3500 processor and Intel HD Graphics as well as 2GB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage getting put into such a thin tablet. Also 400$~ dollars is a pretty average price, especially for thin object like that.
Intel has worked wonders in this tablet. I am truly amazed that something so thin has so much power behind it. When manufacturers started to stress thinness over hardware, I was worried that we would see a decline in specs. However, the industry has gone to prove me wrong, making the technology thinner, but even more powerful than before.
It’s an interesting idea to come up with tablets this thin but it doesn’t really bring anything new to the table.
Nexus tablets are more reliable and much better produced, plus they are going to have much faster updates. It’s a good starting point though!
I have to agree with you, it seems like companies are more worried about the “new” design of the technological device nowadays making it more impressive at first sight I guess than they do when it comes to inventing something new. I think that the key to success (especially in this business) it’s creating something new, something that we don’t expect to see yet.
Wow that tablet looks really thin. I think I like these types of tablets, but maybe the specifications are amazing too. I think that if I had enough money, I would buy it for the design and specifications and not caring much about the functionality, as long as it has Android. Thank you Dell for this amazing tablet, lol.
I think that the thin tech trend needs to die down a little notch more. While I definitely find devices that have a slim shape attractive, you have to also ponder the battery life they are sacrificing for such craftsmanship. Still, this Dell tablet looks sleek.
Hmm… I’m not really a fan of android’s tablets, when it comes to be, they are kind of slow and the fact that the camera is not that great is definitely a red light for me. Also, I’m kind of worried about how thin it is, I think that it would be less resistant and more delicate-annoying.
I’m still looking forward to thin, but really resistant technological devices, something that apple still can’t do, I guess.