Dell Venue 10 7000 review

The Dell Venue 10 7000 comes with a fairly unadulterated version of Android Lollipop 5.0.2. Here you won't find any tacky icons or skins messing with the app drawer and notifications tray. In fact, it looks almost completely standard save for a few preloaded apps and a little tag to access the McAfee tools located on the right side of the screen.

Of what comes preloaded on the Venue 10, you'll most likely gravitate toward the Dell Gallery app. It works just as fast as Android's built in Gallery and Photos app, and it will even pull images from your Facebook and other social media accounts.

More importantly, though, it's the only app that lets you fully utilize the tablet's Intel RealSense Snapshot Depth camera. Rather than a single snapper in the back, the Venue 10 comes with three cameras. These take multiple shots of the same frame, so you can go back and change the focusing point of the final image as well as measure the distance between two points in photos.

There's also a Dell MyCast app, which is a handy screen sharing tool that projects the tablet screen onto a TV or monitor. The only caveat is it requires a Dell Cast dongle that's sold separately for a cool $80 (£70, AU$149).

Unfortunately, I did not have the optional accessory on hand for my review, but I'm confident it would have worked just as seamlessly as it did in our Dell Venue 8 7000 review. With the Venue keyboard attached, I can easily see how this 10.5-inch tablet would be a fine device to control while blowing up your presentation onto a conference room display.

Movies and music

Stuck with a 16:10 aspect ratio, the Venue 10 doesn't lend itself well to movie watching. Widescreen movies produce noticeable-enough black bars along the top and bottom of the screen, and films formatted in 21:9 look downright tiny.

The good news? The colorful screen makes any media look great no matter how badly the aspect ratios match up.

In case the picture weren't impressive enough, the Venue 10's barrel hinge hides an impressively booming set of speakers. Every explosion in Live Die Repeat: Edge of Tomorrow rang true with plenty of bass and impact.

Sadly, the Venue 10 does not come with any free media already preloaded on the machine or in the form of a digital voucher. But opening up the Google Play app should give you a digital copy of All Creatures Big and Small for free.

Games

Though Dell is calling the Venue 10 a productivity tablet, there's nothing hindering this slate from playing games. Hearthstone ran flawlessly without any of the jittery animations you would expect on a lower-end slate.

Once again, the gorgeous display proves to be a boon by helping colorful games, like Crossy Road, really pop off the screen.