Review: Dell Venue 11 Pro 7140 Detachable Tablet

Dell's latest 10.8" Windows tablet gets a newly designed fanless Core M system. The performance of these Core M processors are very competitive against the Y-series Haswells of previous generation, even though their thermals are 4.5W TDP vs. 11.5W TDP of Y-series Haswells. This is indeed a great achievement by Intel. It enables Dell to remove the fan from previous generation Venue 11 Pro.

Dell Venue 11 Pro 7140 (Core M)

On the back of the tablet there appears a removable back panel. But wait, how to get this thing off?

Back side

Docking keyboard and touchpad with 20Wh secondary battery

Dell offers a docking keyboard to convert the tablet into a laptop. This keyboard contains a 20Wh secondary battery that extends running time, while also balancing the laptop so it does not tip over.

Dual-monitor desktop replacement! Hmm...

Dell also offers desktop docking solutions with dual display and ethernet, which enables the tablet to become a desktop replacement solution. The Core M excels here and I think a lot of users especially the office desks could potentially lose the old-time desktop PC! The future of desktop ATX form factor has just become even more bleak.

Docking ports and latch

Micro USB charging, micro HDMI and USB 3.0

Micro SD slot, power button

There is a screw hiding somewhere to defeat our attempt to release the back panel.

Little screw hiding beside SD slot

Finally!

Dell's inner beauty. Do you see the clip ports along the edges? That's where
you need to pryyyyy!

There are about 18 or so clips along the edges of the back panel. One would need a little help from some plastic prying tool to gently release these clips one by one, before the back panel can be set free.

Did we mention this beauty is fanless? The large copper heatsink in the picture tells the story. It would give you zero noise and keep the inside clean as its first day.

From the picture the serviceable components are the battery, SSD (M.2), wireless LAN (wifi), wireless WAN (4G). This type of maintenance is typically not considered for average users, but it does look like Venue 11 Pro 7140 is among the easier tablets, allowing a significant number of users to replace battery or upgrade SSD on their own.

We rather like the user removable battery in the previous model 7130 a lot. That elder brother has a 36Wh battery than the 38Wh battery equipped with 7140, and 7140 is 10.75mm thick vs. 12.2mm with 7130. It's not clear how much importance having a non user-removable battery plays into the space savings, I would think it's more due to design improvements in many different things. But even if that's the only factor in play, we would still rather have a user-removable battery than a slightly thinner design. This is because it extends service life of the product thus reducing cost of ownership, by having a longer useful life or a better resale value. The 7140 most definitely loses some points in the serviceability aspect here.

User-removable battery in older model 7130: Nostalgia from a bygone era?

The top spec'ed model has 8GB soldered RAM and 256GB SSD. 8GB RAM should be sufficient for most users in the next couple years.

Bottom line:

Fanless 10.8" ultraportable convertible tablet/laptop. Dell is back to its finest with a vengeance.

Score Card:

Upgradability: 6/10

Serviceability: 7/10

Connnectivity: 8/10

Portability: 9/10

Earth Spirit: 7/10

Expected service life: 5 years

(Pictures courtesy of NotebookCheck, LMRoss Inc and Trusted Reviews.)

Review: Compulab fit-PC3 Mini Desktop PC

Compulab specializes in very compact size computers, beginning with its tiny fit pc introduced in July 2007. Before the arrival of Intel NUC in 2013, the 'mini' desktop computers market was a bit ahead of its time. Still there were already quite a few choices, among them Apple's Mac mini, and many designs from Taiwan that targeted more toward industrial applications.

Compulab's fit-PC3, a little cuter than other fanless, no?

fit-PC3 is already the 3rd generation of Compulab's fit PC series. It was introduced in 2012, with a fanless model using a cast aluminum 'heatsink' case design. This case design has been shared in other models of the company as well, such as the Intense PC series. It's more or less designed as a 20+ watt power platform for the company.

In the fit-PC3 model, it uses AMD's Brazos processor G-T56N, a dual core APU, which was AMD's first generation low power design competing against Intel's low end platforms. In terms of processing power, it should be comparable to Intel's ULV Celeron processors around the same time, for example, the Celeron 847 used in Compulab's Intense PC Value.

One screw access to service door

One of the attractions of mini desktops are their ease on labors, both installation and maintenance. This is embodied in Compulab's systems, and better than most other mini computer manufactures. Compulab went one step further, as it favors fanless designs so one less maintenance item. Although this would require a higher standard for thermal design and parts. Compulab backs its reputation by an excellent 5-year warranty, a lot better than the now typical 1-year manufacture warranty in the consumer market.

A single screw and a little push, removes the service door on the bottom of fit-PC3.

SATA 2.5" hidden under the service door

Once the service door is open, we can access the RAM slots, SATA 2.5", mSATA slot and a half mini-pcie occupied with wifi card. The service door can hold a SATA 2.5" drive, which would sit into the slot when the door is installed back. Clever, saves the SATA cable. This arrangement demonstrates the amount of thoughts the designer put into ease of user access.

mSATA slot is on the lower right corner, with a black clip to the left

Pretty neat, no? The only cables seen are the two wires connecting the wifi card to antenna ports. Do you see what I mean? The installation of RAM and storage is straightforward. Say goodbye to ATX's intensive labor and part galore. We used to get this treat with laptops. But nowadays it's getting harder and harder to just extract the battery from most consumer laptops, let alone the soldered on-board RAM or storage.

RAM capacity is 16GB. Storage capacity is now in the terabytes even for mSATA, let alone SATA 2.5". So in terms of RAM and storage, the system is quite upgradable. The mSATA clip could be made better though, it sticks out among the general high build quality of the unit as a whole. The plastic clip doesn't hold mSATA card very tightly, and feels fragile. I can understand that the choice of using a clip instead of two tiny screw holes, to ease on installation labor. But there are much better clip designs out there such as those used in Addonics AD25MSD mSATA to SATA 2.5" adapter. Though if this clip mechanism doesn't work out well, one can still work around it with a mSATA to SATA 2.5" adapter. In the next decade it is expected that SSD would basically replace traditional hard drive, it is thus a legitimate service backup plan for mSATA card if it turns out that the clip does not last as long as the rest of the unit.

The fit PC3 has been updated to fit PC4 in 2014 with the latest embedded platform from AMD. The performance has significantly improved over fit PC3, now into Intel's mobile Core i3 territory. Fit PC4 now features quad-core 2GHz APU from AMD, and available on Amazon. Compulab also updated its Intense PC line to IPC2 in 2014, with processor options ranging from Celeron up to Core i7.

Bottom Line:

A solidly-made low maintenance and low power consumption mini computer, with long service life in mind.

Score Card:

Upgradability: 9/10

Serviceability: 9/10

Connectivity: 9/10

Earth Spirit: 9/10

Expected service life: 10+ years

(Pictures courtesy of Todo HTPC)