Dell Venue 8 7000 review

The Dell Venue 8 7000 has fairly good battery life for such a compact tablet, thanks to its 5,900 mAh power pack that is squeezed into the 6mm-thin aluminum frame.

It's supposed to last 10 hours, according to the official specs from Dell, and that squares with the amount of time it took our review unit to drain: roughly 9 hours. This in-real-life testing would have likely yielded better results had not been for Intel's Sensing Assist feature, which turned the tablet screen on when it detected motion. It was enabled by default.

Running TechRadar's 90-minute battery test, which every phone and tablet goes through at full brightness, the Dell Venue 8 7000 battery drained to 84% from a full charge. That beat the Sony Xperia Z3 Tablet Compact (70%), but couldn't match the Samsung Galaxy Tab S (87%).

The reason that Samsung's 8.4 inch tablet only dropped 13% by the end of the looped video is because it has a larger 7,900 mAh battery. The trade-off is that, instead of an sleek-looking all-metal design, Samsung owners get a slightly bulkier tablet in an unsightly plastic shell.

Newer tablets, like the Motorola-made Nexus 9, come with faster charging capabilities care of the Snapdragon energy-efficient processor and an extra-chunky charger. Intel is backing a similar technology for certain phones and tablets, but this Intel-based devices isn't on the list. So far, we've seen the Asus Zenfone 2 take advantage of this time saver.

The good news is that Dell's 8.4-inch tablet only takes 3 hours and 10 minutes to go from 0% battery life to a full charge. It's not Qualcomm's QuickCharge, but it's quick enough.