Dell Venue 8 7000: As slim as it gets

SINGAPORE — The Dell Venue 8 7000 is one eye-catching product. Billed as the world’s thinnest tablet, it measures only 6mm in thickness — 0.1mm thinner than Apple’s iPad Air 2 and 0.6mm thinner than the Samsung Galaxy Tab S 8.4.

Its biggest charm is its beauty and build. The Venue 8 has an anodised gunmetal grey aluminium finish that looks and feels sleek. Blunt but smooth edges line its chassis, with a tidily arranged power button and volume rockers on its side. Together with a near bezel-free surface, this may be the most aesthetically pleasing Dell product I have seen.

The Venue 8’s 8.4-inch, 2560 x 1600 resolution OLED screen leaves a lasting impression. Colours are crisp and deep, giving a sharp and vibrant viewing experience. Reading e-books was painless — words looked more defined and clearer, compared to other tablets I have used before.

The Venue 8 does relatively well in terms of its hardware. It has the latest network technologies (Dual-band 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0 LE, GPS, Near Field Communication) and a very handy microSD card slot that supports up to 512GB in additional storage on top of the built-in 16GB.

Battery life is noteworthy. Dell says the tablet can go for 10 hours before running out of juice. I managed to get nearly 24 hours of use, which included casual surfing on the Internet, a few intensive sessions on YouTube and some light gaming.

A promising feature is the camera, called the Intel RealSense Snapshot Depth Camera. The full set up has three cameras: Two 720p cameras on both sides on top of the main 8-megapixel shooter. It allows you to measure the depth and distance in a photo, as well as the length and width of an item you have taken a picture of.

This unique camera complements the Dell Gallery app, which seeks to fulfil all the user’s imaging needs. The downside is that while the camera offers decent images in the day, it produces grainy pictures under low-lighting.

While it does seem complicated to use during the initial stages, the potential of this camera can be unlocked with time and should be exciting for the techies.

The Venue 8 runs on a 2.3GHz Intel Atom Z3580 processor, with 2GB of RAM. I did not experience any noticeable lags during day-to-day use, nor did the tablet feel unreasonably slow. Dell also released a Lollipop 5.0.2 OS update to the KitKat OS a few weeks ago, which further enhances the gadget's intuitiveness.

Looks and reliability in the day-to-day use are to be the most outstanding features of this gadget. Although it possesses a unique camera, unfortunately it would not be much of a value-add to many users, and still quality really comes across as just a decent.

The Dell Venue 8 7000 retails at S$659 with a folio case and is available online at https://www.dell.com.sg and through official retailers.