Gadgetory

Kable mod premium cable sets offer a variety of colors and combinations for your build compatible with over 80 power supplies and utilize the best sleeving on the market click now to learn more hello everyone this is Dimitri with hardware canucks and this is the new Nvidia shield alright so let's take a few steps back and review how the shield ecosystem has a ball so we first got the shield portable and awesome and your gaming device that introduced us to game stream or the ability to stream PC games to the portable a year later we got the shield tablet following in the same footsteps as the portable delivering even more features taking directly from their desktop class GPUs like shadow play allowing you to video capture your screen with minimal impact on performance and streaming to twitch we got grid gaming invidious proprietary game streaming service and even improved console mode allowing you to play Android games at 1080p with a controller connected to a TV so the latest shield Android TV takes this Android living room experience even further being the first device in its class capable of streaming 4k now designed to be a stationary device in a way the shield Android TV will be available in two flavors a 16 gigabyte model for $1.99 or a 500 gigabyte model for $2.99 incorporating a two and a half inch hybrid drive inside that model for proper storage of all of your media and games the Tegra x1 processor makes an appearance with 256 CUDA cores three gigabytes of RAM dual band Wi-Fi and the whole load of other impressive features like 10-bit color output at 3840 by 2160 unboxing our 16 gigabyte model inside we find the shield itself a controller with now redesigned Android capacitive buttons to complement the shift to Android lollipop 5.1 and the rest are HDMI and USB cables along with the power prick and with a new shield come new accessories so a $29 base and the $49 shield remote sold separately and are not exactly necessary for proper experience but I do appreciate the consistency of the design language I think the base seems a little bit overpriced but it's a hefty aluminum piece designed very well for insertion of the shield Android TV to keep the device standing in the upright position the bottom adhesive fab can be uncovered for a more permanent mounting solution the shield itself is a great looking device with glossy parts some brushed plastic and matte pieces it's surprisingly thin here is next to my iPhone and you can see the effort that has been put to design a discreet device if needed allowing both vertical and horizontal orientation that would depend on your setup the green LED on the side is very subtle non distracting and the angular shape helps to identify the power state regardless of which side you're looking at it from given the shield is laying flat the spacing from the LED is a capacitive power button allowing a really seamless power on process without needing to handle any physical buttons the diversity of the ports of the back is excellent with power input HDMI 2.0 Gigabit Ethernet 2 USB 3 ports and the micro USB to get access to the internal storage on the shield and the micro SD card slot for expandable storage definitely useful for the 16 gigabyte model and right above the port's is your exhaust that's right the shield Android TV is actively cooled with a fan inside that has remained completely silent throughout our testing and further take a look inside the chassis you can see where the two and a half inch drive would go and one thing to notice is the lack of any SATA ports so if you thought of adding in your own drive to the 16 gigabyte version you're out of luck and before we talk about the experience let's check out the shield remote I'm very excited about this this is very unique so I love what Nvidia has done here it feels very solid with aluminum body it's light enough for comfortable holding and buttons have a satisfying clicking registration the circular wheel is a four directional trackpad don't be confused it does not rotate like you would think from your iPod experience maybe but instead there is a capacitor strip available to change volume it is responsive but it could be smoother the button inside the wheel acts as your enter and the two buttons below are back and home for Android plus we have a dedicated voice command button thanks to a built-in microphone that is sensitive so you don't need to bring this up to all your face all the time plus we get a micro USB at the bottom for charging that lasts up to four weeks where in my case the battery status went from good to low in just two days but it's got capacitive sensing that automatically turns off the remote when not in your hands so that's pretty cool and decide that is a headphone jack for private listening so there is plenty of functionality built into the remote the only thing I would say is missing is cursor like navigation but that's more of a limitation on the Android TV sign and on the shield itself and because the remote is Bluetooth direct line-of-sight of the shield is not required and so now let's talk Android TV UI and how it handles as a livingroom edition what's the weather delay in Celsius today's forecast for Toronto is 24 degrees Celsius with scattered thunderstorms show me my calendar nope open Leo's fortune all right so there are two is to turn on the shield actually using the remote or pressing the button on the shield itself there we go it woke up so the top row is all your trending things it feels kind of random and it doesn't fully tailor to your usage history it displays commonly used apps top TV shows you get the idea the update cycle feels kind of slow and these were the exact same cards the night before below is the shield hub you can access Nvidia grid cloud gaming and their current massive selection of PC titles that requires a good connection for 1080p at 60fps service with low latency in my experience playing a racing game was acceptable with great framerate and jumping into fear 3 maintained a good quality image but the latency was quite high for a first-person shooter and I realize how terrible I am with the controller as well but not to worry mouse and keyboard input is fully supported and you can properly enjoy shooters through grid heading into download games or Google Play games opens suggested or featured games and I think the coming soon tab was just a huge tease something Nvidia has shown off to run off the Tegra x1 with games like Talos principle borderlands series half-life episode 2 but here's the caveat not all Android games are supported on Android TV and thus titles like half-life 2 that are available on the shield tablet are not yet supported on the Android TV and just to be clear this is not a limitation of the shield but the lack of Google's compatibility rollout moving along here you can access game stream streaming games off your GeForce powered local PC on the same network and finally Netflix capable of 4k streaming on a premium account making the shield the first Smart TV box to do 60 FPS at 4k video the next line gives us install games and I would be lying if I didn't just jump into bomb squad because the game is a lot of fun with multi controller support which means multiplayer equals fun so the last line our apps organized an order of use all the standard Google Play stuff but wait a minute no Chrome and no Google Drive yeah so that's the biggest limitation of Android TV it seems to lack useful apps like a browser or any social media integration and check out this hilariously bad browser app not a fault of Nvidia but Android TV is just not a fully developed ecosystem just yet and it will get better for example here are my android games on my account that would be amazing for living room entertainment but not available for this device not available for this device it's an on TV app and you'll stumble upon many of these in the initial stage of this rollout even the Google Play Store feels kind of limiting but we have to remember the sole purpose of the Android TV ecosystem and that's TV features with apps like Netflix Hulu Plus Google's live channels when combined with an antenna and a stream box there's sling TV and some others so further incentivizing users to cut the cord and jumping into YouTube app the voice command says sure comes in handy and is much faster than typing on the on-screen keyboard from our experience 4k playback is absolutely gorgeous and most importantly no hiccups here with loading and they're processing the footage Plus Google cast integration means easy streaming from an Android device that supports that or an iOS device as well for quick and convenient content sharing and if you are wondering about performance Tiger x1 does not disappoint especially compared to the k1 on the shield tablet that is already a very powerful device and the shield Android TV scores significantly higher on all fronts and so the release of the new shield should pave the way for proper integration of Android TV and they've done an excellent job with the form factor complementing accessories albeit a little bit pricey the hardware is very strong for this rollout handles 4k streaming like a champ all the Android gaming was I really can't wait for all the coming soon titles that are demanding but the x1 should handle that as well we have the 500 gigabyte option available to future-proof your media and games unfortunately you cannot install an additional drive if you get the 16 gigabyte model and it really comes down to further refinement of Android TV ecosystem for this to become more in sync to what we already have with standard Android and that means better game support the social media integration and Google Chrome please that would turn the shield Android TV into a future-proof TV box that has all these other features just in case and while that concludes our review of the new shield let us know what you think of this iteration and your thoughts on the Android TV ecosystem as a whole I'd love to hear if you would consider cutting your cable cord and use your Android TV as a full-time replacement so make sure to subscribe for more similar content and give us a like if you found this review helpful and we'll see you in the next one