Gadgetory

so tablets are definitely a big part of our Android world but especially because there are so many of them they try to be Jack's of all trades and do basically everything our smartphones can do except with larger screens but what happens when you narrow the focus you make a tablet really made for one particular purpose and thus you construct the entire thing based upon that focus well recently I've been using a tablet that does just that and I have to tell you I really enjoy it hey it's Josh or Garth majora thority what's going out of your body and this is my review of the Nvidia shield tablet so when we talk about design we do have to talk about the backing first up to roll we have that shield logo proudly displayed on the back and it is surrounded by a soft touch plastic but once you get the tablet in your hand you're going to find that this is a very substantial device not only in terms of looks but in terms of its feel what we have here is a thick device that is made of like I said soft touch plastic it has a very industrial design about it you have the button layout over on the top if you're using it in landscape mode or on the right side if you're using in portrait they have power and volume buttons and right below all of that is a micro SD card slot look at the top of the device if you're using in portrait mode and you'll find the mini HDMI ports the audio jack and of course a micro USB charging port and right in front of you when you actually use the tablet or some front-facing speakers but those aren't the only ones that are available because there's a great speaker setup on here that includes two on the sides so that you really have an immersive audio experience but we'll get into that a little bit later have the tablet in your hands and you'll see that even though there is a pretty sizable bezel around this 8 inch screen it is actually there so that the handling and when in landscape mode is a lot easier you will be covering up those speakers a little bit when you're using this tablet in landscape mode but really doesn't detract from the audio quality one bit and it is still quite gripa belen one hand if you use it in portrait mode I really do enjoy the look and feel of this device but I will tell you this despite there being already some tablets out there that are much slimmer in their profile after all this is a pretty beefy tablet to hold the shield tablet really from the design all the way down to the specs and everything underneath really screams to you that it's supposed to be a gaming tablet and right to the design you really get the sense of that the moment you take it out of the box a 1080p 8 inch display is what you get on the Nvidia shield tablet but unfortunately it might be the only real hole in an otherwise great overall package the reason why is because despite bringing the kind of specifications that you would expect out of a tablet like this with the high resolution and the high pixel density it actually has a little bit of lacking color reproduction it should use a little bit more vividness and also some more contrast in the colors but overall it does provide a pretty decent experience what I will tell you though is that if you don't really like the tablet display experience on here you can always connect the tablet to an HDTV using the HDMI port on the side and that should alleviate a lot of the problems that you're probably going to have when it comes to really looking at this display and then we get to the performance in which the Nvidia shield tablet really is the coming-out party for the Tegra k1 and here is a quad-core cortex processor that comes with a kepler GPU all of which comes together with two gigabytes of RAM in order to bring you one of the best gaming experiences available that as Nvidia says should be like a console experience and I showed you a lot of different examples of how awesome the gaming is on this tablet whether you're looking at it on here or on TV as you can see I'm already playing real boxing on a tee HDTV right here and really there's no slowdown at all now mind you I am playing a lot of these games at the high performance setting inside of the power saving features but you should probably be doing that already anyways in order to get the most out of all of the gaming and performance in this tablet now one thing I will tell you is that game streaming using an Nvidia graphics card on your computer is definitely possible on here and it is one of the marquee features of the shield but on my particular laptop that I use for all of my work unfortunately I have a 760 M which just doesn't cut it when it comes to true game streaming and it really doesn't provide a very good experience but that is where the Nvidia grid cloud gaming comes in it is a surface that Nvidia is creating in order for you to have some cloud gaming and currently it is free but that's because it's in beta and you will be able to connect to San Jose servers where NVIDIA has a bunch of games available for you including Street Fighter 4 like you're seeing right here in order for you to enjoy some streaming without having to use your laptop or a computer we couldn't help but really put this thing through its paces with a bunch of different benchmarking applications and we start off with m22 and if you really want to know what the power of this tablet is well take a look at the result there this tablet is at the top of the heap consistently and even when it heats up we do still have the same kinds of scores throughout and then head on over to 3d mark where we pretty much see in the ice storm extreme benchmark that this thing gets maxed out we'll start off in hardware with one of the better more prevalent features in the hardware aspect which is the speaker layouts you have two in the front and two on the sides that provide altogether a great sound experience there's actually quite a bit of nuance and richness inside of the sound quality of the Nvidia shield tablet and it really provides a pretty immersive experience if that is the way that you're going to be listening to the music or the sounds inside of any gaming experience that you have the follow-on ruins they came to a great big steaming swamp speaking of gaming yes the touch screen is pretty good when it comes to its responsiveness is really no complaints there but when it comes to touchscreens you probably don't want to just use touchscreen controls for all of the major games that you're going to be playing that's where a controller comes in well luckily Nvidia made a shield wireless controller this is a beefy controller that comes with a lot of features and I made a video just about it and you can see all of the features that it has and how awesome it is when it comes to gaming it connects via Wi-Fi direct and it brings a one-to-one experience when it comes to your controls and what you see on the screen it's a wonderful controller that actually is worth at $60 price tag if you're only thinking about the build quality which is stellar on the Nvidia shield wireless controller now the Nvidia tablet does come with a stylus this is the direct stylus to and you're going to see that it has a bit of a unique tip it's not just a typical tip that you would see on a bunch of other stylus is it has a bit of a brush to it you can point anywhere type anywhere using the stylus or even write using any of the included applications like let's say Evernote but also Nvidia put in their own sketching application that allows you to release have some creative fun battery life unfortunately it doesn't really provide the kind of stellar performance I was hoping for I did do a test first with Netflix and I got about 6 hours out of it and that is pretty standard for a high performing tablet like this but then I only got half the time when playing games at the high performance rating now it's not that much of a surprise but it would be great to see great battery life on a tablet like this so you can game as much as you want but when you think about it this is a gaming tablet made by Nvidia which is a gaming company and when you think about gaming apparatuses like let's say gaming laptops you know that battery life is not necessarily something you're going to be getting when you buy a laptop like that and that's something that we kind of know already as geeks and nerds and the same goes for the Nvidia shield tablet so I can't fault it too much but it is something that you should know that the battery life is not quite as great as you might be hoping it to be for a tablet now we don't have to give a whole lot consideration on cameras when it comes to tablets the reason why is because they just pale in comparison to smartphone counterparts and they don't come with too many features and after all you're going to be holding up that huge tablet in order to take a picture but on the Nvidia shield tablet you get a five megapixel rear and five megapixel front facing camera that does provide some functionality if you still want to get some photos using this tablet you will be able to use things like software stabilization burst burst modes 1080p video capture and there's actually a mode called awesome eyes that allows you to tweak the settings of the photo in order to make it look even better that can be everything from just the exposure to cropping to even filters so there are some things you are able to do with your photos if you do happen to take photos with the Nvidia shield tablets and of course the five megapixel front facing camera has a pretty lifes resolution if you just want to take photos of you taunting the people that you've just pwned on the other line in your game now gaming might be the focus of the Nvidia shield tablet and I would say that having that perspective really makes this tablet great but it is still great at being just a tablet to after all having a tablet you need to have the right kind of software in order for you to perform all the general tasks that you really need to do even if it's not gaming or media consumption and that's exactly what you get in the Nvidia shield tablet Android 4.4.2 kitkat is what you get on here with all of the general bells and whistles that you would expect from a stock ish like Android experience and that includes the app drawers the notification drop-down with a couple of extra features built in but other than that it is pretty much the kind of Android experience you would expect from one that looks like it's stock from there any of the additions that are put into the Nvidia shield tablet pretty much include Nvidia zone applications that includes the already after mentioned a direct stylus to application for doodling and then of course you have the Nvidia hub the Nvidia hub is a nice way of taking a look at all of the games that are available and are optimized for the Tegra experience but from there you will be able to download or buy those games and be able to select from them easily as well as the games from your PC or from the Nvidia grid which are all available inside of the Nvidia hub whether you're looking at it on your tablet or on your television and it kind of rounds out the experience of the Nvidia shield tablet because while NVIDIA has the gaming experience down pat you also get the kind of experience that you the Android user still wants and that is a stock like experience that is a canvas for your customization and everything you want to do to it so for $2.99 you get the 16 gigabyte version that we used in this review but for 399 you get 32 gigabytes and it has LTE but on top of all of that you still are able to expand the storage obviously with that microSD card slot that is on the side the competitors for the Nvidia shield tablet include well the Nexus 7 which is the main Google competitor at the moment that provides the same type of software experience even if it can't provide the same kind of gaming experience but then again which tablet can well there is one other tablet that might be able to and that is the Samsung Galaxy Tab s with its super high resolution screen and a very good processing package underneath but I will tell you this if you just want the general tablet experience the Samsung Galaxy Tab s 8.4 definitely gives the Nvidia shield a run for its money especially because it has a thinner slimmer and somewhat more attractive profile to some of you out there but the industrial look of the Nvidia shield tablet really points to the fact that its focus is very particular and therein lies the reason why I absolutely adore the Nvidia shield tablet I really do think that tablets recently have been bombarding us with all of the different features that they have after all they have to be Jack's of all trades but the thing is once you change the perspective you narrow the focus and you get very precise with what a tablet is supposed to do it shifts your perspective it makes you realise that when a tablet sets out to do something like this gaming and performs it so well it makes you fall in love with what it's capable of doing and and so consequence it makes you fall in love with it what we find is that the performance what it is sets out to do is so good that it makes you forget the little flaws that are available and it makes you look at the whole package and realize that it is really great and that is the reason why the Nvidia shield tablet does get our editors choice award for being one of the best tablet experiences ever and providing an experience that is accessible to anybody who really just wants to have some fun on their tablets whether it's on the screen here or on the big screen that you connect it to so check out the Nvidia shield tablet like I said it's $2.99 for 16 gigabytes and you also have the Nvidia shield controller that you can use the wireless controller for $60 that I actually do think is worth the price tag and you can see videos about those right over on the side so keep it 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