My Thoughts On My Switch From Android To x86 Windows 10 for a tablet

iamdarkyoshi · August 24, 2016

Or a comparison between the 2013 Nexus 7 32GB and the Dell Venue 8 Pro.

I had the chance to buy the dell tablet for 60 bucks, so I figured I might as well try it.

And I am glad I did.

I will compare some things between the two devices, some of them are more the tablet than the OS, however.

Battery:

Dell tablet, hands down. The internal battery is enough for a full day's use, without a batterybank. The nexus 7 struggled to make it through the day without a charge at some point, but I find my venue's battery to be over 25% by the time I go to bed.

Screen:

Nexus 7 all day. The 1920x1200 screen was perfect. The 1280x800 on the venue tablet leaves a lot to be desired, HOWEVER, I can use windows at a 100% screen scale, which is good as windows' display scaling sucks.

Apps:

Kinda disappointed here. Android needs 3rd party apps to do basic things (like a freaking FILE EXPLORER) but windows doesn't have 1st party apps for everything, either. Like youtube.

Games:

Fuck off android. Those aren't games. Steam has plenty of games that actually do work on the venue tablet, such as the DESKTOP VERSION OF TERRARIA. Yup. Terraria plays on an intel atom CPU with 2GB of RAM. Steam in home streaming also works great, so I can actually play GFX heavy games through it, latency is low enough that I could comfortably play rocket league at 60fps.

Storage:

Google, this is an SD card:

Fuck's sake, USE IT ALREADY.

Dell tablet has an SD card slot, which can be used as a secondary drive (yes you can use it for steam games)

Keyboard/Controls:

I think android wins here, but not by much. Android was designed for a touch based UI, windows had to adapt it into a desktop UI (which by the way, I am using, not tablet mode)

Stability: Android. And freaking roid.

First venue tablet I got wouldnt upgrade to windows 10 from 8, just kept BSODing. My second one already had 10 on it and its fairly reliable, but I do have at least one time a day when it locks up and wont wake up. I also am having issues with the camera, known to me as "reboot" as it causes an instant BSOD as soon as the camera app is opened.

External hardware support:

Fucks sake android, shouldn't need to BUY an app so I can use my PS3 controller. The dell tablet, I can just use SCP server, which is free. I can't stress how much I hated apps on android because EVERYTHING is either riddled with ads or costs money. I wish the dell tablet had a USB output port for things so I don't need to carry an OTG adapter with me. It does support it though, as well as OTG and charging at the same time.

Final thoughts: Running x86 applications is freaking awesome. Android just doesn't really support anything easily to be honest. If you are thinking of making the switch, do it. Also chrome with shitloads of tabs is perfectly fine. Fight me.