14 DAY TRIAL // A few months back when Dell introduced the Dell Venue 8 Pro and Venue 11 Pro tablets, we were told the slates could be coupled with optional Active Styluses, in order to maximize the overall tablet experience. But months after the devices have been available the styluses are nowhere to be found.
The official Dell website no longer lists the products, which constitutes quite a paradox, bearing in mind that the tablets’ presentation pages still highlight the stylus as an integral part of what’s being offered.
Users who have ordered an Active Stylus for the tablets in the past (when it was still available in shop) have complained of its inefficiency. Here is what sj3vans says on the Dell official community forums:
"I just received the Stylus on Dec 20th. Unfortunately, it performs very poorly. I've been reading posts about this on these and other forums and I'm trying to figure out if I can get this fixed or not."
"Unlike most, the Stylus option is very important to me as I primarily use my current tablet (iPad gen 1) for taking notes in meetings and for doing remote white boarding of the technical solutions I sells as a Sales Engineer."
"The iPad's capacitive touch stylus’ are just not what I'm looking for. I want a tablet that has an active stylus, runs windows so I can use OneNote and Lync, and is under $400. The Dell Venue 8 Pro meets all of these requirements except the stylus I have is misbehaving."
According to some notebooks dealers, reported by Tabtech.de the problem seems to lie with some faulty pins, but new improved ones are expected to arrive at the end of January (although this is a relative date that may change soon).
Dell has probably stopped ordering Active Stylus because the pins do not work correctly, but currently we don’t know when an accessory restock might happen. We certainly hope for sooner rather than later, because this won't make a lot of Venue Pro users happy.