• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

$300 8" tablets: Thin+light, fast web browsing w/Flash, 8-10 hours...and Steam

Mendrox

Member
The Dell is nice at that price point and size, while ASUS having free office, slighty faster CPU, and double the storage does make it useful in some cases.

I'll be joining the tablet party soon with my ThinkPad Twist. The Omni is about $100 away from the cost of a refurb Twist I got, but the twist has a regular disk drive rather than SSD unless I install one later.

Office 2013 is also included when you buy a Dell Venue.

Preordered the Dell Venue 8 pro for 250€. Stupid that it doesn't have a HDMI Port, but I guess with micro hdmi usb you will be able to do anything. Don't care about anything else. :)
 
I was going to get an Asus T100TA this Friday, however the HP Omni sounds like it's a better product. It's $399 right now. I like the idea of having better performance and a FullHD screen. If it goes down to $350 or less this week, I'm buying it. I like that the Asus comes with the kb already, but I can't find any information about using a stylus with it, and that's pretty important to me. I assume the HP will be able to use a stylus just fine. A random assumption, but one I'm going to make anyway. I can't do the 8" or smaller tabs, because I want to do a lot of productivity work on this tab. PEACE.

It does not have an active digitizer, so any stylus would be the kind you'd find on an iphone or ipad.

Then again, the Dell active digitizer does have some issues atm, but they are improving it.
 

Funky Papa

FUNK-Y-PPA-4
Man... we need to make a Candy Swap thread, only for electronics. Those Dell Venue 8 Pro deals over the States are fucking ridiculous, even more so when you consider the exchange rate.
 

diablos991

Can’t stump the diablos
How is the display on these devices

Can they be overclocked

From the videos I have seen, the display gets a lot of praise for viewing angles and sharpness. It gets negative marks for not being higher resolution, but that isn't a big issue for me since it would negatively impact the performance of games if the screen were 1080p.

I read the internal memory and SD card memory can be sped up by messing with the bios, but I'm not so sure about the processor.

I doubt one would want to overclock the processor in this too much as heat would become an issue pretty quick.
 

TaroYamada

Member
Anybody tried running STALKER on one of these?

I'm really impressed by the performance:

PPSSPP running FF Crisis Core http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRLLi6ujc5g
HL2 Lost Coast http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uzbmwyt6q6Q
SC2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hVpgzaRNgk

Impressive, earlier I asked how it would run DesMume and ePSX, seeing PPSSPP it should be able to run both of those other two with ease.

@Gestureworks owners, how does the trial work? It doesn't tell me how long it lasts?
 

border

Member
Was listening to a podcast where they discuss they Dell Venue 8 -- apparently the 32GB model only has a couple gigs of usable space after Windows 8 and MS Office are installed.

Total bonerkill.
 

Somnid

Member
Was listening to a podcast where they discuss they Dell Venue 8 -- apparently the 32GB model only has a couple gigs of usable space after Windows 8 and MS Office are installed.

Total bonerkill.

You'll run into this with most tablets. I guess the upshot is SD card support and USB sticks are also usable but in the end you may just want to store less on the device itself and utilize the network where possible.

I've been looking into something like this myself: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DR8LAE2/?tag=neogaf0e-20. I don't know if it natively supports Windows (I can't see why not) but it basically would give you portable NAS.
 

TaroYamada

Member
You can free up quite a bit of space by uninstalling MS Office and pushing the recovery partition onto a thumb drive. According to OP after pushing recovery onto a thumb drive he got around 20GB.

If I get one I'm probably gonna take the extra step and remove office too though, no use for it on a tablet of this size.
 

border

Member
Yeah I imagine there's workarounds to deal with the limited storage space, but between that and the lack of an HDMI-Out I think I'd rather just wait until there are cheap Win8 tablets with 64GB and HDMI.
 

kmfdmpig

Member
Yeah I imagine there's workarounds to deal with the limited storage space, but between that and the lack of an HDMI-Out I think I'd rather just wait until there are cheap Win8 tablets with 64GB and HDMI.

What about the 100 one? It's larger (10 vs. 8 inch) $300 for 64 GB on sale. Roughly the same performance, but it comes with a keyboard + full USB slot + HDMI out.
 

this_guy

Member
How is the standby battery life on these things? Do you always leave it on like an iPad or Nexus tablet and have it last for days with minimal use?
 

TaroYamada

Member
Yeah, I may get a t100, I'm still undecided really. I think I'd prefer the 8" form factor but the t100's keyboard, larger SSD, hdmi out and regularly sized USB port could make up for that.
 

aaaaa0

Member
How is the standby battery life on these things? Do you always leave it on like an iPad or Nexus tablet and have it last for days with minimal use?

You treat it like an iPad or Nexus.

The Dell should be able to get between 4 and 10 days on standby, depending on if the WiFi is connected, and what apps you allow to run in the background, and what email accounts you have setup to sync.
 

diablos991

Can’t stump the diablos
Just got my DV8P and a 64gb SD card.

I'm installing Steam and Hearthstone as I type this in Chrome.

This is the most powerful 8" tablet I've ever used.
 

kmfdmpig

Member
I keep missing out on the t100 for $300

Me too. I'm hoping to grab it at the local retail store so I can use a student discount and/or one note demo discount. Somehow the store in their genius accidentally mailed back their full shipment and are now waiting for resupply.
 

bdouble

Member
I bit on the Asus t100 from Amazon 379. The HDMI out was a deal breaker and I am without a PC or laptop right now so it will serve me well until I build a PC. Then it will continue to be an amazing media machine.
 

Anti Green

Neo Member
I saw the T100 at Best Buy today. They finally put it out on display. The keyboard was nowhere to be seen but it didn't seem like it would be THAT small. The tablet itself though weighs about nothing. The materials feel very cheap, and the plastic back doesn't feel super solid. The screen is good.
 

diablos991

Can’t stump the diablos
I saw the T100 at Best Buy today. They finally put it out on display. The keyboard was nowhere to be seen but it didn't seem like it would be THAT small. The tablet itself though weighs about nothing. The materials feel very cheap, and the plastic back doesn't feel super solid. The screen is good.

Did you check out the Dell Venu Pro 8? I've been impressed with the build quality thus far.
 

wanders

Member
Me too. I'm hoping to grab it at the local retail store so I can use a student discount and/or one note demo discount. Somehow the store in their genius accidentally mailed back their full shipment and are now waiting for resupply.

Check this link often as they usually have it on sale for 329

pcrichard.com/Asus/Asus-Transformer-Book-10-1inch-Intel-Atom-Quad-Core-Processor-Ultraportable-Notebook-with-Detachable-Tablet-with-Windows-8-1-Gray/T100TA-C1-GR.pcrp
 

kitch9

Banned
Was listening to a podcast where they discuss they Dell Venue 8 -- apparently the 32GB model only has a couple gigs of usable space after Windows 8 and MS Office are installed.

Total bonerkill.

if by a couple of gigs you mean 15 then yeah, sure.
 

Hex

Banned
Ok, how bad is the surface 1 compared to newer windows 8 tablets.
The Microsoft store has it for 199 (32gb)
 

diablos991

Can’t stump the diablos
Ok, how bad is the surface 1 compared to newer windows 8 tablets.
The Microsoft store has it for 199 (32gb)

The Surface 1 is pretty terrible. I had one on launch and will never again use a Windows RT tablet.
 

Nevasleep

Member
Ok, how bad is the surface 1 compared to newer windows 8 tablets.
The Microsoft store has it for 199 (32gb)
Also its RT vs proper Windows.

I'm torn between the Dell Venue 8 Pro or the Toshiba Encore.
Leaning towards the Dell, as I wouldn't use the HDMI much anyway.
 

Totakeke

Member
Surface RT is perfectly fine. It has a great screen, good battery life, good build quality, they fixed the low sound volumes, and it runs 8.1 RT pretty good too.

That said, it's still Windows RT. If RT is acceptable to you, you can do much worse than Surface RT at 200.
 

TaroYamada

Member
What games work well with touch? Skulls of Shogun's steam version even has poor touch controls, bought Halo Spartan Assault. Crayon Physics is ok.

edit: just realized I double posted, sorry folks.
 

kmfdmpig

Member
Grabbed a T100 yesterday. With a 1 minute One Note Demo I saved $25 and then I was able to use a student discount as well to save another $30.
It seems like a nice unit so far. Much more capable and lighter than I would have thought. Free office will come in handy for me when I travel and need to do work.
I can't wait until I get a HDMI cable and hook it up to my TV.
 
Top Bottom