Thursday 28 April 2016

Dell Venue 10 Pro 5056

Dell Venue 10 Pro 5056

A business-class Windows 10 tablet, with a very good display

The Venue 10 Pro 5056 series is the updated generation of Dell's business line of Windows 10 tablets. As the name suggests this is a 10" tablet built around the classic Dell Venue chassis, but with a slight improvement when it comes to what's going on inside.


The Venue 10 Pro is powered by an Intel Atom x5-Z8500 1.44GHz processor and 4GB of DDR3L-RS memory. Although that's not going to set the world alight in terms of performance, running the pre-installed version of Windows 10 Pro 64-bit is perfectly fine along with a selection of productivity/Office-type products. Just don't expect the Venue 10 Pro to deal with anything too processor hungry. The storage specifications depend greatly on the different models available, the model we had available for testing boasted a decent 120GB eMMC SSD, but you can drop down to as little as 32GB.

The display is a very good 1920 x 1200 IPS multi-touch that's remarkably accurate and smooth to use. It offers a crisp output, with a good level of colour depth and higher than average brightness level too. Again it's good for most common business duties, but those who want a finer degree of image and video quality may need to look elsewhere.

The design of the Venue 10 Pro hasn't altered for some time now. This mean that the unit seems a little thick these days compared to many Android-based tablet, but it does manage to pack in mini-HDMI, a full sized USB 2.0 port, a USB Type-С port (used to charge the tablet), and a micro SD card slot. There's also connectivity on the bottom of the tablet for pairing with a keyboard section.

Naturally you also get 802.11ac, Bluetooth 4.0, a front facing 5MP camera and a further rear facing 8MP camera, and on this particular model there's even a Dell wireless 5809e Gobi 4G LTE mobile Broadband card. Suffice to say, there's ample connectivity for every user type.

The battery life on the Venue 10 Pro 5056 was reasonably good. With average use - browsing, word processing and so on - we managed eight hours. So it'll happily last a commute or a business trip without needing to get recharged too regularly.

We've seen better Windows 10 tablets in the past, even though the OS never feels particularly great when in Tablet Mode, but the Dell Venue 10 Pro 5056 is a good model to consider for those who require a mobile business tablet option. Prices start from £350, with the review model going for a higher £450. That's not too bad, and if you're locked into Dell purchases then you won't go far wrong with the Venue 10 Pro 5056. David Hayward

A good enough tablet for business purposes.