Dell Venue 11 Pro (7139) Review

Introduction

Dell Venue 11 Pro (7139) with the price tag of $1253 is the latest high-end slate tablet by dell which is designed for business-class consumers. It comes with some of the premium features of ultrabook including a slim and light yet rigid design and an ultrabook-class processor. It is Dell’s top of the line tablet and comes with security features like a fingerprint scanner and Trusted Platform Module. All these make the Dell Venue 11 Pro (7139) one of the better options in high-end business tablets category.

Design and Features

On the outside Dell Venue 11 Pro (7139) is similar to the cheaper model of Venue 11 Pro and comes with a magnesium alloy body and soft-touch finish on the back. It is one of the few tablets that feature a removable back cover. As a tablet, it is only 0.61 inches thick and weighs only 1.8 pounds. The tablet has a robust design and easy to use with active stylus (sold separately). With the tablet attached to the keyboard dock, the screen does not tilt back beyond 95 degrees while most of the competition, including Surface Pro 3 tilt back further than 95 degrees. It is equipped with a micro USB port for charging the device. It also features a mircoSD card reader, a USB 3.0 port and a mini HDMI port.

Dell Venue 11 Pro (7139) comes with a 10.8-inch capacitive touchscreen display with 1920 x 1080 pixels full HD resolution and a pixel density of 204ppi. The display of Venue 11 Pro (7139) features IPS technology and offers great viewing angles and reduced glare. The display is bright and maxes out at 389 nits and it can recognize touch from up to 10 fingers simultaneously. The display produces highly accurate, rich and vibrant colors. Venue 11 Pro (7139) comes with stereo speakers which are loud, but lacks quality and clarity. At max volume there is distortion and the bass is totally absent. For wireless connectivity it features Bluetooth 4.0 and 802.11ac Wi-Fi. It features an 8-megapixel camera on the back and a 2 mega-pixel camera on the front for video calls.

The keyboard dock clips on the tablet with a locking mechanism and once attached the tablet becomes a clamshell laptop and it can be detached by the press of a button. The keyboard has large Scrabble-tile keys which are well spaced and It is better suited for long typing sessions as compared to on-screen keyboard. The keyboard is comfortable to use and provide reasonable tactile feedback. Keyboard dock also features a multi-touch trackpad with gesture support. The trackpad has smooth surface but it is made from cheap plastic. Dell Venue 11 Pro (7139) can also be used with a stylus which works like a charm with most graphics programs. The stylus also supports features like palm rejection and mouse hover to view text on websites. Being a business class tablet, Venue 11 Pro (7139) is mostly free of bloatware aside from a trial version of Microsoft Office and other Windows 8 applications. The tablet is covered under one-year of Dell ProSupport which is enterprise-level tech support in addition to the usual warranty.

Performance

On the inside, it features an Intel Core i5-4300Y processor with Intel HD Graphics 4200 and 4GB of memory. For storage, it comes equipped with a 128GB SSD from which only 82GB is available for use. With this amazing combination of hardware, Venue 11 Pro (7139) produced great scores in different benchmark tests. It scored a reasonable 2407 points in the PCMark 8 Work Conventional test, while the Microsoft Surface Pro 3 scored 2704 points. In multimedia tests, Venue 11 Pro (7139) completed handbrake test in 6 minutes 54 seconds, and Adobe Photoshop CS6 test in6 minutes 19 seconds. Surface Pro 3 completed these tests in 2 minutes 59 seconds and 4 minutes 48 seconds, respectively. Even the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch completed these tests in 3 minutes 41 seconds and 5 minutes 3 seconds, respectively.

It has more than enough horsepower to handle any day to day tasks, including video conference and web browsing. For a business class slatebook, long lasting battery is very important and Dell kept that in mind. During the battery test, Venue 11 Pro (7139) lasted 6 hours 29 minutes on the internal battery and 9 hours and 18 minutes with the keyboard dock attached. Which is much better than the competition where Vaio Tap 11 lasted only 3 hours 55 minutes during the same test.

Conclusion

Dell Venue 11 Pro (7139) is an excellent machine with robust design and the only tablet with a removable back cover and battery. It provides performance of an ultrabook in the form of a tablet PC. Thanks to its ultrabook-like performance, enhanced security features and long lasting battery, Dell Venue 11 Pro (7139) is considered one of the best high-end business tablets.