Many months ago I bought a Dell Venue 8 Pro tablet and I love it. While the DV8 Pro is a nearly perfect and flawless device, it does have one minor annoyance, it only has one USB port. And that USB port is used for charging, as well as for hooking up peripherals. One doesn’t need a Ph.D. in Math see the problem there, you can’t hook up any peripherals if you need to charge the tablet. Over time, a few solutions have popped up for that problem. I outlined one in this blog post. While that worked, it wasn’t elegant. Plugable to the rescue!
I’ve been using a Plugable UD-3900 with my Surface Pro 2 since I got it and I’ve been very happy with it. I was pretty excited earlier this year when Plugable started a Kickstarter project for a dock specific to the DV8 Pro, the Pro 8 Dock. It charges the DV8 Pro, and has all the common dock accoutrements. It sounded too good to be true, but it wasn’t. I jumped in pretty early at the $50 level and patiently (or not so patiently) waited for it to be released. This week all that waiting paid off and the dock came in. Here’s a picture of it sitting on my desk, begging me to open it so we could play.
I did open it, and I did play with it. I recorded it all though so you could enjoy it too. Here’s my unboxing and setup video:
YouTube Link
If you’ve been considering a Dell Venue 8 Pro (at Amazon) and a Plugable Pro 8 Dock ($89 on Amazon) that video will give you a good idea what they’re capable of. You can get them both on Amazon with the links in the preceding sentence.
I have a couple different Windows Tablets, so I tried the Pro 8 Dock with another one, my Toshiba Encore Mini. I recently did a video on how to create a Recovery Drive with it and it was asking for more camera time. I decided now was a good time. While Plugable designed the Pro 8 Dock to work with the Dell Venue 8 Pro they have tested it with other tablets. My beloved Encore Mini was not on the approved list. I decided to test it for them. 
I put my director’s hat back on and recorded a video of what happens when you hook this dock to that tablet. I don’t want to spoil the ending for you, so you’ll have to watch the video to see if I let the magic smoke out or not.
YouTube Link
There you go. I hope you enjoy the videos. If there are other things like you like see videos of, let me know. I’d like to extend a thanks to the folks at Plugable for making such fun products.
tk
ShortURL: http://www.toddklindt.com/PlugablePro8Review