Gadgetory

so the war for the best set-top box continues with Apple's introduction of their new Apple TV as you guys might have seen in my ultimate living room tour I've got the Nvidia shield in my set up so I wanted to compare the two and see who should claim the HDMI slot on my TV so first things first let's talk about looks these are gonna be present in your living room and if you're like me you want them to look good the shield has a bit of an abstract design but overall it has a rectangular shape I kind of like the triangles all over the top of it and I'm especially fond of the glowing green strip you can even grab a stand to make it sit upright which I think makes it look pretty cool with the Apple TV you get a subtle compact design that makes it very easy for it to fade into the shadows of your setup it's a very minimalist design as you'd expect from Apple and I think that most people will be pretty happy with that although I love the glowing green strip I think the Apple TV will have a better time blending in with most set ups now let's move on to the specs and what's actually powering these two the shield is packing some pretty impressive hardware it uses in videos Tegra x1 quad-core 64-bit processor who has three gigs of RAM comes with a default 16 gigabytes of storage but there's also a 500 gigabyte option as well and it has an SD card slot to expand your storage hdmi 2.0 and the ability to output 4k content you'll also find two USB 3.0 ports which can be used for external storage or some accessories as for the Apple TV we've got apples a8 chip which is a dual core 64-bit processor it has 2 gigs of RAM and it comes with two default 32 gigs of storage yet they can't do this with the iPhone as well as a 64 gigabyte option and no options for expandable storage it also comes with HDMI 1.4 and even though it has a USB C port it's only used for servicing and repairs so you won't be able to use it for any accessories in the specs and hardware department the shield pretty much Trump's the Apple TV in every way possible speaking of hardware and accessories the shield comes with a console style controller which you as a remote and if you plan on playing games with someone else you can grab a second controller to add to the system they also offer a more standard remote if you want something smaller and you can also grab that stand for the shield if you decide you want to change its orientation as for the Apple TV it comes with a single remote with no options for additional accessories yet I can make an entire video going over the differences between the remote options for the shield or the Apple TV but here's what stood out to me the most while it's kind of cool Apple added a touchpad to its remote I often find myself passing by the option I'd like to select and this usually leads to more swiping around and I'd like so it feels less accurate than the simple button style of the shield remote and even the older Apple TV remotes a pretty nice bonus the shield remotes have over apple's is the inclusion of a headphone jack for private listening this is an excellent feature if you want to listen to your audio through your headphones instead of your speakers or through your TV this is especially helpful at night when people are sleeping and you don't want to wake them up now we've talked a bit about hardware but let's get into the software side of things the shield is running Google's Android TV with some added bells and whistles from Nvidia and the Apple TV is running Apple's new TV OS and it has a pretty clean and simple interface as you'd expect while Android TV does its best to show you all the things you may be interested in and give you recommendations as well as showing you all of your apps this can definitely be pretty helpful but I gotta admit I do like to clean a look of the TV OS interface both these operating systems offer things like apps games voice commands and search but who does it better as of right now you'll find more apps in the Google Play Store since it's been out quite a bit longer and all your typical apps are present like Netflix Hulu YouTube but only the shield can output 4k content while the new Apple TV is still rocking 1080p as a 4k TV owner and content creator 4k is a must a pretty cool feature these both have is the ability to stream content from your phone or tablet to your TV the shield TV uses google cast and the apps that support it will have a little streaming icon that lets you send over whatever you're watching this works for both iOS and Android which is awesome because it doesn't limit who can cast here TV the Apple TV can do the same with airplay but it actually has quite a bit more functionality you can stream any video to your TV and even completely mirror your device this is pretty cool if you want to show something off to a group of people or just want to play one of your favorite games on the big screen there are two pretty big limitations to airplay however and the first being that you need strong Wi-Fi for the best results and the second is that you're limited to iOS so if you're an Android or even Windows Phone user you get no love here you also get some pretty cool voice features with both devices Apple has brought C over to their TV OS and she works just like the iPhone or iPad only difference here is she doesn't speak she's pretty responsive and it can be pretty helpful to access her even when you're watching something or in an app you can use her to search for shows different actors and even some genres but I found that you have to be pretty specific with what you ask to turn up any solid results sadly this functionality also seems pretty limited to shows and movies so if you want to ask you any questions that would require a web search she'll let you know she can't figure it out since there is a music app it would have been nice to see them tie it in to her search capabilities now with the shield running Android TV you've got the power of Google search at your fingertips and just like Google now the voice search is impressive you can even ask normal questions that don't limit you to just finding content like this when is the next solar eclipse August 21st 2017 something I really like with the voice search here is that it'll go through most of the apps you have so you're bound to find what you're looking for and if you guys know me you know it comes down to just one search result and where the Apple TV failed the shield didn't and gaming is definitely a thing on both the shield and the Apple TV and while Apple has some interesting and pretty fun games controls can feel a bit awkward the remote feels a bit small and unnatural when it comes to games that include steering which are usually very fun for me and because the shield comes with a more traditional styled console controller it feels more natural in playing games apples also limited to just a few available games since its platform is new but the shield offers quite a selection to choose from you've got games like war thunder Game of Thrones HD and a bunch more and they also have GeForce now which is a cloud gaming service was a bunch of alias games that can stream straight to your device with the ability to stream up to 1080p at 60 frames per second of course depending on your internet speeds and honestly I couldn't even tell it with streaming rather than having an actual copy it's super smooth and being able to play like this with two players is amazing it is a membership service but they give you three months free so you definitely only got enough time to try it out so if you're into gaming this is another big bonus for the shield over the Apple TV now we've compared hardware and a ton of features but which will I keep for my living room setup I'm gonna have to go with the shield I love the options it provides through its hardware as well as the stronger voice commands which you guys know is a big deal for me not to mention it's amazing gaming capabilities while I love the simplicity of the Apple TV and it's unobtrusive design I don't think it's quite there yet in the future Department and not being able to use it to watch 4k content makes it lose quite a few points for me and as typical conversations go when it comes to Apple vs. Android if you want something more feature packed with much better hardware go for Nvidia shield TV with Android TV OS but if you want something really really simple you might want to take a look at the Apple TV but to be completely honest I really can't say that simplicity is worth going with such a weaker system unless you just really need airplay