Gadgetory

hey what is up guys I'm Kim PhD here and over the past couple of days I've been asked a lot about the Nvidia shield tablet now if you've seen any of the ads or if you know anything about this it's basically a gaming tablet a lot of people are buying this specifically for the gaming features and it's really good at that but if you know me I'm really not much of a gamer at all I don't play that many games on my phone or tablet but I didn't want to ignore this just because I don't game so I decided to check it out I picked it up anyway and I've been using it a lot and turns out when you take away a lot of the gaming features and a lot of the stuff that it's really good at for gaming it just becomes an 8 inch pure Android sort of a Nexus 8 kind of tablet so this is a short video just going over the stuff that you'll get on this tablet if you don't game kind of proving that it's a good tablet even without those awesome features let's take a look so first of all this shield tablet is made by Nvidia and besides all the awesome accessories it works with and all the other cool gaming tricks it has it has some pretty beastly specs so it's packing Nvidia's latest and greatest k1 chip inside so a 2.2 gigahertz quad-core processor 192 core GPU 2 gigabytes of RAM 16 gigs of storage and all the rest of the hardware is geared towards showcasing that new k1 chip in fact that's really what this whole tablet is all about so nothing too flashy going on with the design it's pretty compact it's got a pretty solid weight to it a bit heavier than the Nexus 7 and just small enough that I can hold it with one hand although I guess most people will two-handed since it is bigger than the Nexus 7 but I gotta say the build quality is pretty decent again it's not the best build in the world but you can see it's it's solid it's got a pretty standard array of ports headphone jack USB and HDMI on one side with a speaker port and the other speaker port on the other side and speaking of speakers yes this is one of a few tablets just a few with front-facing speakers I probably said this when talking about just about every device with this but it really should be standard especially in tablets where you have all this space to work with I mean this isn't even a premium price tablet it's pretty mid-range and these speaker drivers really aren't even that good but there's still miles better sounding than anything else with back facing speakers and you got to love that for media and of course you can see inside that left speaker grill is the front-facing camera it has a 5 megapixel front facing camera and a 5 megapixel rear facing camera both of which are actually pretty good quality but I don't think you should be using them much anyway so really my only complaint well with the shield hardware is just the buttons the power and volume buttons they're pretty awful they're really stiff and have almost zero travel so they're a pain to use and I've been using this tablet for weeks and I still can't even change the volume without picking up the tablet and looking at it so the buttons are my only gripe so anyway this tablet is clearly meant for gaming and I almost feel bad not talking about all these gaming features because they're totally badass there's a wireless controller there's dedicated software hub and everything but like I said I'm not a gamer and I wouldn't know best about that so I'm actually going to leave a link or two repla the like button to videos that do a good job of showcasing these gaming features but for me this is an Android 4.4 tablet running almost pure stock Android with a few Nvidia improvements and I really like that I put the Google experience launcher on here and not only does it feel really familiar and comfortable but because it's stock Android with no skin and that beastly NVIDIA k1 everything is fast fluid and smooth and the k1 really shows off your even when you're just doing regular multitasking or web browsing it's not a super high resolution display so you're not pushing a ton of pixels it's a 1080p eight inch display so it's pretty sharp but again the panel is just mid-range it's a little on the warm side it's just it's really about showing off the Nvidia k1 and it's just killing it and just to make sure it wasn't just me giving stock Android too much credit I fired up an application that honestly on any other Android tablet lags and stutters and drop streams like crazy and that's Google Earth a very old app but you've probably experienced yourself I opened it up here on the shield tablet and the k1 handled it like a boss almost zero dropped frames beautiful fluid movement might actually finally be the first Android tablet that I can showcase this app on and it doesn't lag and stutter and crash so I guess it's kind of crazy that Google or has remained a benchmark for so long so yeah with this awesome graphical performance since Nvidia is doing such a good job with that of course using a tablet with general everyday use is very smooth you get fast performance it's kind of kind of what you look for when you're buying a tablet and this basically nails it now there are a few additions and Vidya has thrown in again mostly for gaming but some of the stuff is pretty cool one of them and I guess this is the most major is the stylus yes they added a stylus to the back of this tablet something you won't find on a nexus but it is a pretty advanced stylus so when you remove it you get a couple of stylus ready apps you can choose to launch and the really impressive one here is an Nvidia dabbler it's made just for the shield I guess Nvidia just made this for this new device and it uses and recognizes the shape of the stylus it's like a felt-tip pen and it kind of rocks it's awesome it has this really detailed precise watercolor effect if you choose to use that brush a whole bunch of different brush effects I mean I felt like I can mess with this thing all day until I legitimately create works of art like this alright I'm kidding that one came pre-loaded but this stylus recognition is definitely advanced as anything you'll find on any you know iPad or any other tablet okay another thing NVIDIA has added to the stock Android experience was some performance modes and I really couldn't even tell the difference I didn't look behind the scenes at what it was doing to the CPU but again the main purpose to show off to the NVIDIA k1 so they added those modes to be able to change how that throttles they also added HDMI settings since there's a mini HDMI port and of course settings for any controller you might have added but again probably an videos dedicated shield wireless controller for gaming because all these features are for gaming and all the stuff is built right into Android settings so very conveniently tucked away where you know you can find them when you want to look for them there's also in the quick settings a toggle for full screen mode which is basically Android 4.4 is immersion mode but full-time for the entire operating system like on demand so I guess if you just hate seeing the notifications or you just need a force the full screen game to happen you can do that so yeah really this tablet is full-featured it's packed it's legit I've enjoyed using it over the Nexus 7 mostly for the front-facing speakers because again I love hearing a sound to move across your face as the image moves across the screen that kind of stuff you just can't get with rear-facing speakers and it makes media so much better and tablets are really all about media if you're gaming or watching a video or whatever you're doing and you know if you're going to look for the software updates over in Nexus I have faith because the Nvidia shield the og shield actually got quite a few updates on the software department so that's a good sign for this new tablet I think they'll also get a few software updates maybe see Android L soon you know what those rumors of an 8-inch volantis Nexus tablet with front-facing speakers we've all been dreaming about you know even if that doesn't happen this will always be an option and it's a pretty good one props Nvidia keep it up thanks for watching guys and I'll talk to you in the next one peace