Dell Venue 8 7000: Serious iPad mini 3 Competitor

The new Dell Venue 8 7000 is an Android-powered tablet that comes equipped with a number of enticing features including a ridiculously thin 6mm metal design and a gorgeous 8.4-inch display. These features and more help to make Dell’s brand new Venue 8 7000 a serious Apple iPad mini 3 competitor.

At CES 2015 in Las Vegas, Dell showed off a brand new addition to its Venue tablet lineup dubbed Venue 8 7000. The company’s all new tablet is a step in the right direction as combines horsepower with an impossibly thin design. The company has positioned the Venue 8 7000 as a serious contender to the iPad mini’s throne and not without good reason. It has all of the tools to compete with the best slates on the market.

Dell’s put together an extremely attractive package that includes an anodized aluminum design that checks in at a mere 6mm thin. It’s 1.5mm thinner than the iPad mini 3 and the difference is noticeable. The slate also comes with a stunning “edge-to-edge” 8.4-inch OLED display that features 2560 x 1600 resolution. Images and video look stunning, especially in widescreen.

The Venue 8 7000 series also comes with a host of other top notch features including a 2.3GHz quad-core Intel processor, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of internal storage with a microSD card slot that can handle 128GB microSD cards, two cameras including a rear camera that offers Intel’s RealSense Snapshot Depth technology, a massive 5,900 mAh battery, and front-facing speakers, something that the iPad mini 3 does not have.

Currently, the Dell Venue 8 7000 runs Android 4.4 KitKat though we suspect that Dell will, at some point, outfit the device with Google’s new Android 5.0 Lollipop operating system. The device does not run stock Android software and includes an array of software features from Dell including Dell Gallery and powerful camera features like depth editing. It also features Dell Cast that allows users to “organize tiles, open multiple browsers and edit and create documents, with a connection to a monitor, keyboard and mouse.”

If Dell’s intentions weren’t abundantly clear already, the company’s put the Venue 8 7000 price at $399, the starting price of the base iPad mini 3 model. Instead of making consumers wait for the new Venue 8 7000 series to arrive, the company’s going to make the “world’s thinnest tablet” available starting today January 6th through its website. The device is still not on sale though we expect that to change in the near future.

We came away from our time with the Dell Venue 8 7000 series impressed and it’s a device that consumers in the hunt will need to rule out before opting for the iPad mini 3, iPad mini 2, Google Nexus 9, or the Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.4-inch.