I’ve had the Venue Pro 8 for a few days now and have gotten in a decent amount of both play time and work time.I want to preface this, by saying that I’ve been through the following tablets over the past couple of years – 1st gen iPad, 3rd gen iPad, iPad mini, Kindle Fire, Nook HD, Samsung Galaxy tab, Surface RT, and Asus VivoTab RT. Up until I bought the Venue Pro 8, I was using the Surface RT as my primary tablet. My kids play their games on the iPads, and I honestly haven’t touched them for several months, except to install updates.

The thing that has always frustrated me about tablets is that they are great for consumption of content – books, videos, games, but awful for getting actual work done. And for a guy that works 60+ hour weeks and spends 4 months out of the year travelling, it sucks trying to do work on tablets.The Venue Pro 8, however, is the full version of Windows 8.I have the full version of Microsoft Office 2013 on here, Visio and Project (which are critical to my job), as well as other apps that I use, such as Mindjet MindManager, and MineCraft :)This tablet is literally a full PC in a tablet’s body. The battery life is compares to other tablets.I’m tracking around 10 hours of use so far.It’s turns on and off as quickly as any other tablet.

Last night, I was watching TV with the Dell Venue Pro 8 on the couch next to me, and during the commercials, I picked it up to check up on a couple of blogs and play a couple levels of some casual games.This morning, I turned on my Bluetooth Microsoft Wedge Keyboard and Wedge Mouse, and went out to Starbucks to work for the morning.My laptop stayed in my bag, and I only used the Venue Pro 8 – checking email, working on a Word doc, taking a conference call on Lync, etc. Yes, the screen is a little small for working on it non-stop, but the resolution is very good and you can compensate for the screen size by adjusting the font sizes in Windows.I haven’t had any issues working from the tablet for lengthy periods of time.

I two have two issues, though.The first is the pen. I bought the pen and case combo from Dell, and the pen holder is situated along the right side of the case, when it’s being held vertically. Because of this, the pen is close enough to the screen that it deactivates the touch input. This is really annoying, so I stopped carrying the pen in the case. Instead, I put the pen in my pocket. Then the other day, I took it out of my pocket to use it, and I noticed that the tip of the pen had broken off. That was a bit frustrating since the pen was $35.

The second issue is with the case. It’s a pretty nice case, but it’s bulky and the tablet is tough to get out of it once it’s in. When I’m using the case, it feels like the tablet is bulky and thick. When I take it out, it feels slim and light, so I prefer to use it out of the case.So my recommendation is that if you buy this tablet, don’t spend the money on the case and stylus – instead take the money and buy a Wedge Keyboard and Mouse – it makes it a lot more usable.

The last thing I’ll say is that I saw a video on YouTube of a guy who hooked up the Venue Pro 8 up to a couple of monitors to use it like a PC.I haven’t done that yet, but I did buy a Male B to Female A USB cable in order to do this.Once that arrives, I’m going to plug this into my USB docking station and try running this tablet as my primary PC.

Overall, this is the best tablet I’ve used to date.It really makes Windows shine and makes me more of a believer in the Microsoft vision –

Good:
– Small size, but not too small. It’s very comfortable
– It’s Windows so I can do work on it
– Screen resolution is nice

Bad:
– It updates at odd times, and often will not successfully reboot, so the screen stays on, but it’s black. During this time I am unable to turn it off (by holding the button for any length of time) or use it.I am forced to wait for the battery to drain, then recharge it to be able to turn it back on.A little frustrating to say the least, because you’re without the tablet for an indeterminate amount of time, but never shorter than a few hours.
– Lost the ability to connect to wi-fi a couple times. This is a common issue and there is a work around, but it’s annoying and time consuming to have to look it up, then follow the steps.
– Dell really wants me to connect to their service. I forget what, but it’s pops up from my tray every so often, then stays for days.
– The on screen keyboard has to be told to go back down, even after hitting enter and moving to another screen.This wouldn’t be bad on a larger screen, but on this little screen, it only leaves you with about 2 inches of viewable area in landscape mode.

Would I recommend it? No.

And don't worry that is ships with 4.2 Jelly Bean, and not the latest 4.4 Kit Kat, as soon as you boot up this tablet for the first time, simply go in to settings and then upgrade to 4.4 for free. You can upgrade quickly and without buying anything. It's completely automatic (see screenshot). I wish the manufacturer websites would tell you that but they don't. I had to find that out on my own.

Another little handy perk about this tablet, it didn't ship with a bunch of unwanted demo apps that couldn't be removed. There are some tablet brands out there that ship with pre-installed demo applications that cannot be uninstalled. That was very upsetting to me, therefore I was very happy when I found out this Dell tablet did not ship with these types of non-removable demo applications. Based on this purchase, I would definitely buy another one of these tablets as technology evolves.

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I am an AMD cpu guy.I have extensive knowledge of the Intel Atom series of cpus in "executive" laptops.They suck.It's underpowered for real world use.It does deliver battery life, which is it's big selling point, but at the expense of horrible performance.

I have 3 small children.A 10yo boy.A 8yo boy.A 6yo girl.All 3 received this tablet for Christmas in 2013.I opened each up and configured them for our wifi and set up restrictions on the Google Play store, prior to gift wrapping them.Every tablet was flawless and extremely responsive.Like, I use a lot of gear and have owned every Samsung S-series phone and I was completely take back by the performance of this Venue tablet.It is that fast and that responsive and the screen is that good.Now factor in the cost....The cost makes it a no brainer.Buy it.

3 months later, and I haven't had to factory reset or perform any maintence at all on any of the tablets.The charging ports are all still working fine and none of them have cracked or chipped screens.My children don't baby them and they install a few hundred apps each on their tablets and it's all that spam loaded kid stuff... and the tablets are just as fast and responsive as when I set them up 3 months ago.That's the really impressive part.Tablets tend to slow down alot when they get bloated.

I think the atom series of cpus has finally found the right niche.I will look to dell tablets for my next purchase and I will look to intel's atom cpu to power it.

I will be buying this series of tablets again and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this table to friends and family.

Right out of the box, I put it through some testing and it a very capable device for basic use such as web browsing or media consumption. No problems playing 720 HD videos. However I found that the touch screen can at times be less responsive, or not quite snappy - May need to tap/touch or drag multiple times.

I found this touchscreen lag very prevalent not long after starting up a more graphically intense game, Telltale's Game of Thrones series available on the Amazon App store. Yes, the game does look great and runs smoothly on the Venue which I was very impressed with - HOWEVER after 5-10 minutes of gameplay, I've found that the Venue warms up on the rear of the tablet and that it indeed affects the touch screen response, rendering it unresponsive at all and requires a fell restart of the device. I can confirm this happens each session that I've tried playing this game.

Another issue I have is with battery life. Just in stand-by mode, about 4-5 hours of non-usage, wi-fi off, (I'm asleep), the battery dropped 15%. What would drain battery life so quickly in stand-by? Furthermore, it takes excruciatingly long to charge it up - 2 hours on 2a adapter to gain that 15% back. For light use, I suppose the venue is acceptable, but if you use it a lot, be prepared to charge it daily if not multiple times a day. A powerbank would be handy if you plan to travel with it.

For the price this is a capable device for basic browsing and media consumption, and lighter 2D gaming. The screen is decent, the speaker is terrible, battery life is questionable. It has its problems, but I do think specwise it's probably still currently better than any other tablet on Amazon in this price range. Not bad 2-3 year old tablet.

That said, I am not quite satisfied with this purchase. I plan on returning it and getting something that will likely age better from this point.

**UPDATE**

Another reason that personally adds to my dislike for this tablet is that it does not screen cast, or at least it does not cast to the Nvidia Shield Android TV. My 1st gen Lenovo Yoga 8 Tablet, which this Venue is supposed to be replacing, and which was also released at roughly the same time casts with no problem.

On the brighter side...

Pre-Android Lollipop, I used a fantastic app called Juice Defender that worked brilliantly on reducing battery consumption by programming your android phone or tablet to turn on wifi/data and fetch updates (from twitter etc.) at whatever timed intervals you choose. I say "pre-lollipop" because this app doesn't work beyond Kit-Kat, which thankfully is the final OS build of this model Venue. So the ridiculous stand-by power degradation that I talked about in the initial review has been remedied thanks to Juice Defender. However, it does still take an abnormally long time to charge.

**UPDATE 2**

On two occasions, the Venue suddenly dropped in battery life. I wish I took a screen capture to show the battery diagram. It has been returned and refunded, and I am awaiting the arrival of my Shield K1.