Dell’s Venue 8 7000 Series tablet gives the iPad Mini a run for its money

By Malarie Gokey January 6, 2015

We first caught a glimpse of Dell’s Venue 8 7000 Series tablet during Intel’s Developer Forum keynote in San Francisco this past September. Now, the device is official with a full spec sheet and price.

Dell’s Venue 8 7000 Series tablet sports a 8.4-inch OLED screen with a super high-resolution 2560 x 1600 pixel resolution and edge to edge infinity display. There’s almost no bezel around the top of the device, though the bottom edge is thick enough to accommodate the MaxxAudio Waves speakers.

The gorgeous screen is housed in a machined aluminum casing, which also holds an Intel Atom Z3580 quad-core processor that clocks in at up to 2.3GHz, along with 2GB of RAM. Currently, Dell’s Venue runs Android 4.4 KitKat, but it should get the Lollipop upgrade sooner rather than later.

Dell-Venue-8-7000-7-press-image — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Dell put 16GB of storage inside the 6mm thin tablet, but a MicroSD card slot allows for storage expansion up to 512GB. An 8-megapixel Intel RealSense Snapshot Depth camera sits on the back of the device, and a 2-megapixel shooter rests on the front.

As far as connectivity goes, Dell’s thin tablet offers Intel 7260 1x1ac 802.11 ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, and Miracast. It’s also got the aforementioned MicroSD Card slot, a Micro USB 2.0, as well as a headphone and microphone combo jack. Dell even packed a massive 5900mAh battery inside the slim Venue 8 7000, while keeping the weight down to 305 grams.

Given its size and high-end specifications, the Dell Venue 8 7000 Series tablet is a direct iPad Mini competitor, and with its super sharp screen and fast processor, it’s bound to put up a good fight. The new Venue will be available on January 6 on Dell’s website in the U.S. for $400 and up.

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Former Digital Trends Contributor

As DT's Mobile Editor, Malarie runs the Mobile and Wearables sections, which cover smartphones, tablets, smartwatches, and…

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