Dell Venue 11 Pro review

Dell’s business-focused tablet, the Venue Pro 11, is deceptive. It isn’t as lithe as Nokia’s Lumia 2520, nor as stylish as Apple’s iPad Air, yet behind its mild-mannered exterior lies one of the most promising tablets we’ve seen. Boasting Windows 8.1, a Full HD display, generous connectivity and even a removable battery, the Venue 11 Pro is a serious contender. See also: what’s the best laptop you can buy in 2014?

It would be easy to overlook the Dell’s talents, though. The dowdy, 11mm-thick body is cast in a muted palette of black and grey, and it’s only once you cradle the tablet in your hands that the build quality becomes evident. At 760g, it’s no lightweight, but the plastic body feels reassuringly stout and well constructed.

The Venue 11 Pro is unmatched for practicality. There’s a mini-HDMI output; a 3.5mm headset jack; a full-sized USB 3 port; a volume rocker switch; and a Kensington lock slot.The rear panel pops off to allow access to the 32Wh battery, and in a welcome change from its predecessor, the Latitude 10, the Venue 11 Pro charges via micro-USB.

The centre of attention is the 10.8in, Full HD display. It’s as good as any tablet display we’ve seen. The panel boosts right up to a maximum brightness of 508cd/m2 – more than enough for outdoor use – and the contrast ratio of 1,058:1 is excellent. What’s more, Dell has calibrated the panel to provide an unusual level of colour accuracy. Every shade is deftly reproduced, and the panel covers almost the entire gamut of sRGB colour. With an average Delta E of 2.4, colour fidelity is bang on.

Dell has equipped the most affordable Venue 11 Pro with an Intel Bay Trail Atom CPU. The quad-core 1.46GHz Atom Z3770 is aided by 2GB of DDR3 RAM and a 64GB eMMC (embedded multimedia card) drive, and this combination is surprisingly fleet of foot. Startup and application load times are swift, and the Samsung-made eMMC drive is much faster than others we’ve encountered. Sequential read and write speeds of 151MB/sec and 50MB/sec respectively in the AS SSD benchmark are respectable.

Thanks to its faster Atom processor, the Dell leaves the Bay Trail-based Asus Transformer Book T100 behind in the performance stakes. In our Real World Benchmarks, we recorded an overall score of 0.38, well ahead of the Asus’ result of 0.32. This is impressive when you consider the demands of the Dell’s higher-resolution, Full HD screen. As you might expect, the presence of Bay Trail also delivers great battery life: the Venue 11 Pro lasted 10hrs 25mins in our light-use battery test.

The Venue 11 Pro is nothing if not flexible. If you crave more power than Bay Trail can muster, the Dell is available with a Core i3-4020Y processor, 4GB of RAM and a 128GB SSD for around £650 inc VAT. Stretch to £780 and the top-end model swaps the Core i3 for a 1.6GHz Core i5-4300Y.

The only differences between the Atom- and Core-equipped models is that the latter comes with a larger, 37Wh battery – swelling the chassis by a couple of millimetres. Whichever model you choose, an active stylus is available for an extra £37. We’ll test these models (and the stylus) when they’re available, so keep an eye on the PC Pro website.

Dell wants the Venue to be more than just a tablet, though. Two optional docking keyboards transform it into a fully fledged hybrid, and a matching docking station allows it to masquerade as a desktop, too.

These accessories don’t come cheap, though. The sturdy docking station costs £139 and adds three USB 3 ports, full-sized DisplayPort and HDMI, a 3.5mm headset jack and Gigabit Ethernet. The docking keyboard (we tested an early production sample) packs a superb Scrabble-tile keyboard, a decent touchpad and an extra battery into a finely formed 676g slab of metal and plastic for £160. That’s pricey, but it’s much better than the Microsoft Surface Pro 2’s £110 Type Cover: it’s similar to a laptop, with a spacious layout and a more usable touchpad.

The cost of the accessories means the Dell struggles to go toe to toe with the Transformer Book T100, at least in terms of value for money – and that’s without considering the free copy of Office included with the Asus. This is no netbook substitute.

In terms of flexibility, features and quality, however, the Venue 11 Pro comes out swinging. Whether you want an affordable Windows 8.1 tablet, a classy hybrid or an all-round business machine with the accessories to match, the Venue 11 Pro has it covered.

Related Posts

How to Screenshot on a Dell PC or Laptop What to Do if Your MacBook Pro Won’t Turn On How to Screenshot in Mac Pro How to Improve AirPods Pro Sound Quality How To Use the AirPods Pro With an Android Device Microsoft Copilot vs Copilot Pro: What’s the Difference? Samsung Galaxy S7 Review: A Great Phone in its Day, but Don’t Buy One “Your Payment Requires Additional Review” in Zelle – What Does it Mean? Private Internet Access Review