Gadgetory

hey guys this is Austin and today I'm here with a review of the Nvidia shield now the shield is an interesting mix of a game console and a way for nvidia to show off Tegra 4 but the question is is it for you take one look at the shield and you'll realize it's big really big the best way to describe it is to throw a folding screen onto an Xbox 360 controller and call it a day and that's not really a bad thing it has nearly all the same buttons as the Xbox controller and because of that it feels rock-solid when gaming my only minor complaint is that the home and back buttons are a little too easy to accidentally bump while gaming but everything else from the triggers to the thumb sticks feel console-quality that's good because the trade-off is that it's really too big to be pocketable easily an Nvidia even sells a carrying case for it so you can toss it in a bag it's not something I'd really worry about though the shield is well-built and feels like I could take some abuse even though it's basically all plastic its sturdy with no crashing there flex anywhere and it does have a definite heft to it that's mostly to do with the big battery inside which makes it a bit heavier than I'd like but it really wasn't a big deal the hinge for the screen is also solid which is I'll get into in a minute is more important than you might think there are lots of nice little touches around the device including an LED to show when it's charging the shield logo on the power adapter and USB cable and the interchangeable shields or tags as Nvidia calls them it comes with a silver one which attaches neatly with magnets however you can customise your shield with other tags it's a nice little touch but too bad they cost 20 bucks each something I didn't realize until I got it is that there's a fan to keep the Tegra 4 cool along with a pair of vents you can't hear normally unless you're in a very quiet room and it does do a good job of keeping the shield cool it also comes with a stereo speakers which are a lot better than most phones and tablets and do a great job when gaming listening to music or watching video rounding out the hardware you'll find a mini HDMI which will even work over 4k micro USB for charging a headphone jack and a micro SD card slot unfortunately the shield only comes with 16 gigabytes of internal storage and you can't use the microSD card to store games just yet although it should be coming soon the screen comes in at 5 inches with a 1280 by 720 resolution and it's pretty good 1080p would just be a strain for gaming and the panel gets nice and bright with good color and contrast however considering the size of the shield I feel like they could have made it a bit bigger there's no camera at all which really isn't a problem for me but you will find a microphone for using apps like Google now the main reason the shield exists I feel is for Nvidia to demo what Tegra 4 is capable of and it is definitely capable inside we're looking at a quad core cortex a15 setup clocked at 1.9 gigahertz with a v low powered core 72 core GPU and 2 gigabytes of RAM in normal use it absolutely screams I've never seen Android running as smoothly before which is awesome to see the benchmarks back this up it easily Cleaves the fastest phones and tablets I've ever tested which is exactly what I want to see in a gaming device there are three main ways to game on the shield the first or native Android games and while the selection is hardly anything amazing there are definitely some good games in here shadow gun is a good example of a game that's made to take advantage of Tegra 4 as well as use the physical controls and with Google Play games real-time multiplayer is actually pretty seamless and fun for games like Riptide GP the only problem is that a lot of games are made to work for a touchscreen only and it gets awkward holding the shield by the screen although it is definitely nice that the hinge can't hold the weight of the handheld where it gets more tricky is with games like temple run which has to be used in portrait which is nearly unplayable since it runs basically stock Android 4.2 you can also use any other Android app you like which is a huge plus over something like a 3ds or Vita however a lot of things are a bit weird to use in landscape the second way to play games with the shield is with emulators put simply this is the killer app for me as we've got plenty of power to emulate everything from the NES to the Nintendo DS on here I can never really get behind playing old console games with virtual keys on phones and tablets but the shield has all the buttons you need for playing even ps1 and n64 games the huge catalog of awesome older titles you can play is basically enough to keep me busy with the shield lastly you can stream PC games this requires you to have a gaming PC with an NVIDIA GTX 650 or better which limits you to only be using a new Nvidia card but if you've got one it's a sweet deal not all games will work but it's a surprisingly seamless experience dishonored ran smoothly with only the occasional hiccup and practically no lag which was awesome the shield streams everything over Wi-Fi so you'll want to make sure you have a decent dual band router as well as stay within 10 to 20 feet of it to keep a good signal the quality is really impressive though instead up is almost entirely automatic the only problem I had was with Metro last light which while a supported game ran at a poor frame rate even at 720p with the power-hungry CPU cores and a fan to run battery life was really impressive thanks to that huge 73 50 milliamp hour battery I was able to get five to six hours of mixed Android and emulator use and slightly more when streaming PC games the shield is an interesting device it's by far one of the best ways to play games on Android especially if they are able to use the physical controls being able to stream games from the PC is a nice feature it's well built has good battery life and is absolutely screaming fast unfortunately it's going to run you with steep $300 and because of the design of the shield of a game isn't made to take advantage of physical controls it's going to get awkward to hold and if you don't have a new Nvidia card in your PC the game string is going to be a no-go it might not be perfect and the cheaper Nexus 7 is probably a better choice for a lot of people but if you're looking for a badass little game console the shield is absolutely worth a look however what do you guys think would you go for the shield would you prefer something like the 3ds or Vita definitely be sure to let me know what you think in the comments below I also want to thank the sponsor for this video Squarespace Squarespace is the all-in-one platform that makes it fast and easy to create your own professional website or online portfolio I've been using Squarespace to build my own site and they really do make it super simple for you to build your own website in no time there are lots of great-looking templates to choose from so you don't need to know code or anything like that and your site will even automatically resize for everything from phones to tablets to desktops and if you need a little help they do have 24/7 customer support based out of New York City it all starts in just $8 a month however for free trial and 10% off go to Squarespace comm and use offer code austin 8 that squarespace.com and offer code austin 8 anyway thank you so much for watching if you haven't already be sure to subscribe to the channel so you're always kept up to date with my latest videos anyway guys I will catch you next time