Dell's ultra-thin Venue 8 7000 tablet is now available

It can't get much thinner than this

By Micah Singleton
on January 6, 2015 01:00 pm
@MicahSingleton

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Dell has finally released the long-awaited Dell Venue 8 7000, which was first shown off back in September at Intel's Developer Forum. Dell hasn't cut any corners here — this is one of the most well-designed tablets on the market. At 6mm, the Venue 8 7000 is the thinnest tablet in the world, and the first with Intel's Real Sense 3D camera.

The 8.4-inch tablet has an excellent QHD 2,560 x 1,600 OLED edge-to-edge display, which Dell is labeling an infinity display. Thanks to the reduced bezels, the Venue 8 7000 is actually narrower than the smaller 7.9-inch iPad mini 3. The rear 8MP camera which is near the bottom of the device and two 720p stereoscopic sensors above it make up Intel's new RealSense Snapshot Depth Camera. Intel's 3D camera is being put in a number of laptops, but Dell is the first company we've seen to actually take advantage of the software with Dell Gallery, its new photo manager.

Combined with the RealSense camera which allows you to captures images with much more depth, Dell Gallery gives you more control over images in post-processing and allows you to refocus images, a feature previously implemented by Lytro. Altering the background color of a shot is also possible — you can change the background of a portrait to black and white while leaving the face in full color. You can even decipher dimensions of objects or distances between areas within the shot.

The Intel integration doesn't end with the camera — the Venue 8 7000 is fitted with a 2.3GHz Intel Atom quad-core processor, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of storage, and a MicroSD slot that can expand storage by 512GB. An LTE version will also be available soon. Currently running Android KitKat 4.4, Dell tells us that an upgrade to Android Lollipop will be available shortly, but noted that users could upgrade to Lollipop themselves, as the tablet ships unlocked.

Currently available in the US and in Canada later this week, the Dell Venue 8 7000 comes in at $399, and can be purchased on Dell.com and in Best Buy stores. Dell tells us it will make the tablet available in Australia, New Zealand, China, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, India, Germany, and the UK in "early 2015."

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