My Dell Venue 8 Pro has been having major issues and sent out to Dell twice now. Since I do not know when or if it will be fixed at this point, and I had a need for a tablet for a trip to be made, I decided to try out WinBook TW802, which is sold through Microcenter for $130 or so.
TW802’s display is OK for an economical tablet (800x1280 IPS panel), but not the best thing for my aging eyes, so, the first thing I did was to plug in to my UD-Pro8 to hook up to an external display. I have not tested all the functions, but it was able to extend display to an external monitor, both microphone and speaker jacks were recognized (but not tested yet), and all USB ports works as they should.
One thing is that it charges TW802 through mini-USB/charging port, but apparently not enough juice is coming in. Thus, although LED light is on and the battery icon tells me that it is charging, the % charge has been dropping steadily. I was wondering why it is not able to charge. If I remember right, both Dell Venue 8 Pro and TW802 have 5V 10W AC adapter…
Hello,
Unfortunately we’ve not had a chance to test the TW802 here but we did have a customer confirm his TW801 didn’t work with our Pro8 as shown on our compatibility chart here: http://plugable.com/products/ud-pro8#…
One thing to try is just unplugging the dock and plugging it back in while the tablet is on. The HP Stream 7 and Nextbook 8 tablets require this “hotplug” of the dock after a reboot or they have the same battery drain issue.
If that doesn’t work, ultimately it sounds like your tablet just isn’t compatible with our dock either if it’s losing ground on the battery. I suspect your tablet is only pulling about 500mA of power from our dock (capable of up to 2000mA to the tablet). It’s up to the tablet to decide how much power to draw and if it’s going to charge at all. Most likely your tablet isn’t pulling enough power while also using external USB devices as it was not designed to do so.
Best wishes,
Josh
Hi Josh
Thanks for your reply. Yes, I was aware of the fact that TW801 was not supported, but I had to try. 
Here are some updates on this topic.
- Hotplug method did not work. Too bad.
- After updating Windows 8.1 several times, now the battery status says “plugged in, not charging”, which is the correct message. (previously it was saying “charging”)
- Unlike Dell Venue 8, TW801 has a USB2 port, so, I was able to use that to plug into UD-Pro8, and it works!
3.1) Then all I had to do was to plug in the AC adapter to the mini USB, right? Now it still says that it is not charging. Unpluging the docking station did not make any difference.
So, I have a feeling that it may be my unit having some charging issue. I will keep you updated
Hi Josh,
Yes, there are some!
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I hooked a charger on the micro USB, and plugged UD-8Pro to the full USB that TW802 has. It works.
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I also tried Dell’s Micro USB dongle for data and charging
http://accessories.dell.com/sna/produ…
I plug this into the micro USB port of TW802, and used the full USB on the dongle for UD-8Pro. It worked like a charm. Now I have an extra full USB on the TW802. (plus, I can tack wires better)
For both 1 and 2, I have noticed a few thing. It looks like TW802 let go the battery charge even when it is plugged into its own charger, until say, 94% battery charge. Then once the charge go below that, it starts to charge. But even with the official charger, the charge speed is rather slow. Also, on both cases, battery has fully charged in the morning, if I put TW802 into sleep (not shut down) at the end of the day.
Right now, I am trying to plug in UD-8Pro directly onto the micro USB again. The reason why I am doing it is because I have noticed that the charging behavior became better (or more reasonable) after a series of Windows updates. We will see how it goes.
I will give you more updates once I spent a few more days with the current settings.
OK, I used TW802 for two days at home to see if the direct plug in works. It does say it is charging, but it is not drawing enough power, I guess. I can get a whole day of work, but the battery charge keep dropping. (It will recharge once I am done with the use and put it into sleep mode, though.)
The options 1 and 2 listed above works fine, and I am pretty happy with what I got, especially after sending my Dell Venue 8 Pro for 2 times to Dell to fix it… and it is now in its way to go back for the 3rd time! I have no idea why, but they are making the same mistake (fail to put the LCD panel correctly) each time they “fix” my tablet…
One more update!
The option 2 (Dell’s dongle) ended up doing the same thing as direct plugin of UD-8PR. It slowly drain the battery, even though it says it is charging.
Thus, only option at this point is the #1: UD-8Pro into the full USB, and charger onto the micro USB. It has been very stable for last two days.
Thanks for this information!