Unboxed: Dell Venue 8 Pro Windows 8.1 tablet

The Dell Venue 8 Pro is among the few Windows 8.1 tablets running a quad-core Intel Atom. This is one of several items we ordered on Amazon during Cyber Monday sale a couple of weeks ago. It finally arrive a couple of days ago and we immediately unboxed it.

The main selling point of the Venue 8 Pro is the promise of full productivity packaged in a small form-factor and with very good battery life, thanks to that Atom chip. Unlike Android or iOS tablets, the Venue 8 Pro comes with a full version of Windows 8.1 so you basically have access to all of the software and applications you’d normally use when using a laptop or netbook.

What’s inside the box? The tablet, a charger, USB cable, warranty card and the Windows 8 License (which contains the serial number so don’t loose it).

The tablet looks pretty simple — hard polycarbonate body, textured backside, bright HD display, and a 5MP rear camera. The power button is on the right side together with the volume controls and the micro USB port.

The left side is where the microSD card slot is located and on the top side, there’s a Windows home button and the 3.5mm audio port. The speaker is found at the bottom end.

The device feels light on the hands and is actually fairly thin and sleek. The over-all deisgn and look is a little similar to the first-gen Nexus 7 although the build quality is certainly much better with the Venue 8 Pro.

The tablet runs on the new Intel Atom Bay Trail with 2GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage. Surprisingly, the system feels very snappy and responsive.

Dell Venue 8 Pro specs:
8.0-inch HD IPS display @ 1280×800 pixels, 189ppi
Intel Atom Z3740D Bay Trail 1.8GHz quad-core processor
Intel HD Graphics
2GB RAM
64GB internal flash drive storage
WiFi 802.11 b/g/n
Bluetooth 4.0
5MP rear camera
1.2MP front-facing camera
Windows 8.1

Dell claims the battery life can last up to 9.9 hours when watching movies. Although for the last 24 hours we’ve been using it, the battery does last very long, we doubt it’s close to the promised 10 hours (more on this on the full review).

There’s also an optional accessory, the Stylus Pen, that serves as a pointing device in lieu of a mouse. We’ll have to get that pen in a few weeks when we head to the US for CES.

We’ll also see if we can do some desktop gaming in this little tablet. For the meantime, we think it is best to have a Bluetooth keyboard paired with this when we’re doing some heavy writing or the like. Watch out for our full review in a week or two.