Venturer EliteWin 11KT Review
There’s a mark of whether a piece of tech is good in my household, and it’s my kids. It’s whether I can get hold of the damn thing long enough to write this very article about it, and if that’s anything to go by, then the Venturer EliteWin 11KT is the best thing since sliced bread, because the only time I got to play with it was when they were asleep or at school. But aside from my woes, what you need to know about this laptop is that it’s not entirely a laptop. You could, if you choose, use it as a laptop and never know or care about the not so well hidden secret about the Venturer series: it’s also a Windows netbook.
Pull from left to right on the screen and out it pops from the hinges, and you’ve a fully enabled PC now in tablet form – and it works very well indeed.
It’s ready to go right out of the box, and can be suspended just like any normal tablet, but it’s also responsive and quick for a laptop. It marries features from both worlds, and mostly, it’s successful at it. The 11.6 inch screen with a 1366×768 resolution can’t quite match up to the best in class tablets, and it’s certainly not a gaming PC – indeed, think more of this device as a netbook with a bit more speed under its belt: we’re talking 2GB of RAM and a 1.3Ghz processor, with an Intel Gen7 GPU. But what it lacks in power it makes up for in battery life. I couldn’t kill this thing. It got to the point where I was purposefully looking for an excuse to plug it in, because I never seemed to run its battery down. Obviously that’s a a mark of a good tablet, because you wouldn’t charge an iPad every hour, either, but this is also a laptop.
And aside from telling you that the capacative touch screen is quick to response to touch, has a USB port so you can connect a full mouse and keyboard, there’s not much to else to say. This laptop/tablet does everything it needs to do, and is quiet about it, even down to the inoffensive 2MP front and rear cameras (which, let’s be honest, are low-spec cameras) that means you can use it for Skype, or other video calling software. The thing that constantly surprised me, is how quick it is. For a relatively low spec “PC”, it’s really fast to boot up, and software loads quickly, too. Sure, it doesn’t have the best speaker for music, but you’ll be plugging in headphones, anyway, right? And yeah, it’s not a powerful PC, and probably can’t even run iPad equivalent software that the new ones can run, but it can run Minecraft (it’ll run perfectly using the Windows 10 Beta edition, but the frame rate isn’t great on the old fashioned original executable), and thus makes it a perfect entry level netbook/tablet for a youngster – more than anything, because it can be suspended like a tablet and instantly come back on.
One thing I would note, though, is that it has virtual mouse buttons rather than clickable ones. While we ended up using an external mouse and keyboard (nobody likes laptop mouse/keys, you’re only lying to yourself if you say you do) via the USB port, it is a bit annoying that clicking on things isn’t as intuitive as it could be. With the touch screen you don’t need mouse buttons, really, but if you’re playing Minecraft you do, unless you’re using a GamePad.
But here’s the killer thing about it: Windows 10. Including that as an OS means that if you’ve got an Xbox One, you can stream your games directly to the Venturer 11KT as if they were on the console, meaning you can free up the TV and keep the peace if the kids are always asking “can I play on the Xbox One?”. Of course, it’s dependent on the quality of your internet, but isn’t everything nowadays? On top of all that, this model comes bundled with a month trial for Office 365, meaning you get Excel, PowerPoint, Word, OneNote, Publisher, Outlook, and Access as part of the deal – and that adds to the idea that it’s a great entry level computer for a youngster. Add in all the bells and whistles you’d expect (bluetooth, a small but big enough for a kid 32GB HDD) and it seals the deal for that age bracket.
It’s flexible and light as a feather (compared to other devices of its ilk) and it’s small enough to be fit into a small bag. With this model, Venturer are sticking two fingers up at the iPad generation and saying “Hey, PCs were always the daddy”, while having its cake and eating it. A tablet-come-laptop indeed, and the first device in ages that have made my kids want to keep it over a iPad or Android tablet. Undercutting some very expensive modern tablet devices, the Venturer is a candidate if you’re looking for a jack of all trades type solution, just don’t expect it to run any graphically intensive games. What this is, though, is the absolute ideal, nay, perfect first computer for someone who’s interested in getting involved, and is especially brilliant for kids, too.
