The Venturer EliteWin 11KT is a solidly built little tablet-netbook hybrid. Its industrial-strength look and feel is reinforced by a robust keyboard which is a pleasure to type on while on the go.
What we think
Although Windows 10 still doesn’t give a perfect tablet experience, access to productivity programs like Word help to make up for it. This, coupled with the Venturer’s great keyboard and stable build mean that it is a great device for word processing, especially on-the-go, but not much more.
- Robust build
- Keyboard
- Boot time
- Microsoft Office trial
Pros
- Windows 10 for tablets
- Speaker
- Touchpad
- Camera
Cons
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- Features:[usr 3 size=25]
- Design: [usr 3 size=25]
- Value:[usr 3.5 size=25]
Rating
Features
The Venturer 11KT is a tablet with an 11.6 inch screen with a 1366 x 768 display. It is bright and crisp enough to be pleasing to look at. In terms of size, it is more than adequate for use in the landscape orientation, but is a bit narrow to be using portrait.
However, the best feature that comes with the Venturer is the keyboard. With this attached, (and why would you have it detached?) you have to use it landscape, so the narrow portrait width has never really become an issue.
Speaking of the keyboard, it comes included and turns the tablet into a much more useful little netbook. It attaches to the screen via a pretty robust looking hinge, using two metal, magnetic prongs to hold it in place against the copper electrical connection. This setup is symmetrical, and so the screen can be attached either way round, making it possible to turn the keyboard into a stand.
The keys themselves are spaced well and are responsive, offering a nice click with every tap. However, the trackpad is pretty aggravating to use, a surprise considering the quality of the keyboard. There are no buttons to click left or right, relying just on taps. It is a bit unresponsive and difficult to use, and it seems to be crammed on the edge of the keyboard, almost as an afterthought. There is the touchscreen to use to navigate, however, so the trackpad isn’t a deal breaker.
It has standard forward and backward facing cameras which aren’t going to win you any photography contests, but are there if you need them. Likewise, the Venturer has a speaker, but it isn’t very impressive, and won’t be great for listening to music, but it is there if you need it to view a video in a pinch and your headphones aren’t in range.
Performance
In terms of performance, the Venturer packs 2GB DDR3 RAM and an Atom 1.3GHz processor. The boot up time is roughly 45 seconds, and it went from being completely turned off to me typing on Word in about 1 minute 10 seconds; not too bad in the grand scheme of things.
Having said this, turning the device on can be annoyingly finicky, as can waking it from sleep mode. The power button doesn’t always register, and it takes a few seconds to re-awaken.
The device has a USB, Mini-USB, Mini-HDMI and an SD memory-card slot of up to 64GB, offering expandable memory.
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Touch screen use
As a tablet-netbook hybrid, the screen of the Venturer EliteWin obviously has to be touchscreen.
Windows 10, in my opinion, is not very touchscreen friendly (although I prefer it to when Windows 8 tried too hard to be touch friendly). The icons are a bit small and fiddly, even when you set it to have large icons, or in the tablet mode of the operating system.
This is just a limit of the OS however. The touchscreen of the Venturer is adequate, as far as touchscreens go. When the CPU is strained, it does affect the touch input, and it can have some difficulty registering taps when the device is too preoccupied, but most of the time it is fine.
Who is it useful for?
Word processing definitely seems to be the Venturer EliteWin’s forte. The free trial of the Office package combined with the decent keyboard really angles it towards this type of use.
Therefore, the people who will benefit most from it will be those doing a lot of typing. High school, college, or university students who need something to type with on-the-go, will make good use out of the EliteWin, especially because it is quite robust, as will anyone with a commute on public transport who fancies cranking out a bit of work while they are travelling.
Value
The Venturer EliteWin 11KT currently costs £199.99 on Amazon
Verdict
The Venturer EliteWin is a decent tablet as long as you know what you are getting. It is functional, and will happily see you through pages and pages of word processing, and although it isn’t the flashiest of tablet-notebook combos in other areas, this is partially down to the awkward Windows 10 operating system working on a tablet, and the stripped back, ‘focused-on-work’ feel to the device.
