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SHIELD Tablet Review, the ultimate tablet for gamers?

XTankSlayerX

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The SHIELD Tablet came as sort of a god send. Before my SHIELD I had a iPad, which got old really quickly and never really was made for a PC Gamer in the first place.

So I set my eyes on the SHIELD Tablet, Sold my iPad, and ordered a SHIELD Tab from NCIX and waited... Through a long weekend, cause that’s my luck. Every time I order something online...

Its always perfectly aligned so the delivery day is on Monday. Anyways, Welcome to my Nvidia SHIELD Tablet review!

 

 

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The Nvidia shield is powered by Nvidia's own K1 192 core Kepler GPU and a ARM Cortex A15 clocked at 2.2GHz of full glory, 2GB of RAM,  a 8-Inch 1920 X 1200 multi-touch display, Wireless AC Dual Band, 2 front facing speaks and 2 bass ports on the sides, 16GB Of storage (Unless you opt for the 32GB Version with LTE) expandable via Micro SD cards up to 64GB, and a 5MP camera on the rear and a  5MP on the front, 4K Ready Mini HDMI, and Nvidia's DirectStylus 2. All of this powered by a 5197 mAh battery with a charge time of 3 hours... Sadly it doesn't have Quick charge.

 

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The Nvidia SHIELD isn't a iPad, its not made out of aluminum (Thankfully) but the plastic build is nice and makes it very light weight and usable with one hand. The first models of the SHIELD Tablet had a issue where the corners of the tablet would crack, Nvida decided to step up and accept RMA's for the affected tablets; Good guy Nvidia. Support was great, all you needed to do is provide some serial codes and pictures of the cracks, a quote from support stated "Doesn't matter if there one or many cracks. We make sure that our customer gets a perfect product.". Support was amazing and my new tablet arrived within 2 days, on a weekend as well and I didn't pay a dime. Kudos to you Nvidia.

 

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Its nothing special, no flashy 1440p screen, just a normal IPS 1920 X 1200 Screen which looks good and performs well. You can interact with the screen using Nvidia's DirectStylus. Colors are great and color shift isn't noticeable until you get to ridiculous viewing angles, Although the screen does get a little dark when viewing from said angles.

 

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A lot of other reviewers have glanced over the stylus (@LinusTech  is guilty /s), merely mentioning it sometimes. The stylus is housed on the top right of the tablet, making it easy to reach if you're using their magnetic cover or if you have it resting on something. When you take out the stylus from the compartment you're prompted with a selection of apps that you can use with the stylus, you can even choose to launch a certain app, and have a stylus only and a image clip options added to the software based back, home and recent apps bar. The levels of pressure and latency are both where you want them to be: High pressure accuracy and very low latency. Now I wont be able to do a full review of the stylus from the perspective of a writer or painter (Both of which I'm terrible at) All I can say is that the features that Nvidia's Dabbler 2.0 has are amazing for drawing and are very useful. 

 

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1080p on both sides, has slow motion, has a Shadowplay like feature for the front camera (Where you can save the last 10 seconds of the video feed), you can use the front camera feed as a cam when streaming to Twitch when playing games. Other than that, Your really shouldn’t use it in my opinion, your phone probably has a better camera and you wont look silly using it.

 

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What I can remember from Android Kitkat: it was nice, It was nice and quick, it worked and never really lagged, although I would sometimes need to restart the tablet; it got a little slow after using it for a while (RAM probably got full). Game stream worked, but WiFi would sometimes get dropped. 

 

What I feel about Lollipop: Probably the worst thing that could of happened to the SHIELD Tablet, Its slow, very slow at times and using the recent apps menus is like waiting for a snail to slide an inch. Its terrible and slower than Touch Wiz. Other than that it hasn’t really brought anything exciting, at least Lollipop hasn’t; While Nvidia's gaming apps have. the Nvidia GRID App got integrated with the SHIELD Hub app and is out of beta and working as smooth as butter. Dabbler also got an update, which introduced layers, and a load of other things to it. Along with Lollipop it also got HDMI set for 4K output. So if you're rich and have a 4K TV... Your covered with full 4K out put and you can game for longer with the added support for a OTG Y cable so you can use a wired controller or Ethernet all while charging your tablet.

 

 

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The Nvidia SHIELD Tablet has, a few features that run deep. This is what makes it go from a 300 dollar tablet that you should buy, to a gamers wet dream.

 

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Gamestream is probably going to be the most used feature if you have a Nvidia Graphics card in your gaming rig upstairs. What this app does for those of you who don’t know is stream your games that’s you play on your PC to your SHIELD Tablet (Portable too!) via Ethernet or WiFi (5GHz recommended). You can choose weather to play your games with Nvidia's own SHILED Controller or a 3rd party controller from your favorite console (PS4/PS3/Xbox 360) or keyboard and mouse if you've already sold your soul to keyboard and mouse. Games run without any hick ups on a good network, they run at @ 1080p 30 FPS while on wireless, and they feel great. Very little latency, so little you cant really feel any when using a controller. Keyboard and mouse may be a different story. Overall great if you want to keep gaming when you cant be at your PC, it delivers a great experience; although you may need to have somewhere to set your tablet. Linus pointed this out on his review. But when you do have a solid surface to place the SHIELD On you will have an absolute blast!

 

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This is witchcraft simply put. Games run at 720p @ 30FPS, and on a 50 Down 10 up connection I get no noticeable lag or latency while running off of Ethernet. There are more titles being added each week and you have some really great titles to choose from, my personal favorite being Saints Row 3 at the moment. Other great titles include: Darksiders 2, Borderlands 2, Batman Arkham Origins, DiRT 2, and a lot of Lego games, which would make this a great gift for kids or a Lego loving man or woman. This is the best "Netflix for games" I've ever used, its free until June 30th 2015. There are servers in different parts of the world, so the closer you are to one of them the better.

 

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Dabbler is really good, I'm not much of a arty person my self (Or at least with a pen or brush) But I will say this does seem to stand out from the other painting apps out there. You have layer support (added in Ver. 2.0) and a "Shapes Mode" which allows you to draw perfect shapes and straight lines. There's too many things that you can do within the app that I simply don’t really understand but those things are things artists and painters will like. 

 

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If you're like me (A broke 15 year old with a i3 and a 770) Then you will probably be asking yourself "Do I really have to use Nvidia's SHIELD Controller?" Answer is: Of course not, You can virtually any controller you'd like. As long as you have a OTG cable and a compatible controller you could use one form a PS4, or a wireless Xbox 360 one with the wireless dongle (Yes, the same one you use on your PC). I've personally have used a PS3 and PS4 controller to play my games. It works great and your probably already have one.  

 

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If you’re a die hard gamer who has a gaming rig with a Nvida GPU In it and want to make  your PC gaming but don’t want to invest into a $3000 dollar laptop to get a similar experience and also want a heck of a good tablet then the Nvidia SHILED Is for you. As long as your willing to forgive some of the not so great things about lollipop

 

 

 

High-Res Warning!

Pictures:

Sorry for the dust! D:

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So, what do you guys think? 

Next reviewee is the Logitech G27 Racing Wheel.

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wow thats a great looking post... :)

needs pics of the shield though...

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Nice graphics and headings, did you do them yourself?

@XTankSlayerX

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wow thats a great looking post... :)

needs pics of the shield though...

Ah yes! I knew i forgot something! Will post some in a moment

 

 

Nice graphics and headings, did you do them yourself?

@XTankSlayerX

Yes sir! 

 

I like to think of myself as a jack of most trades. I have enough passion to both write out a review of 1.3K words and have have enough knowledge to make some pretty banners :)

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Yes sir! I like to think of myself as a jack of most trades. I have enough passion to both write out a review of 1.3K words and have have enough knowledge to make some pretty banners :)

Well you've done good captain! B)

Just to note, you need to put a cantal "T" on Linus' username if you want him to be tagged. ;)

One more thing, you finally got a 'News Reporter" badge, well done! I knew all those 500 news PPD would pay off for you eventually. :P

ON A 7 MONTH BREAK FROM THESE LTT FORUMS. WILL BE BACK ON NOVEMBER 5th.


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  Tech Tips Christian Fellowship Founder & Coordinator 

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@XTankSlayerX as your personal spelling and grammar moderator :D, I have to tell you that there are a fair few spelling and grammar issues in that review as well as a couple of missed words here and there. I'm guessing that you were in a rush and that's why you accidentally made those mistakes. But to take this review go from mediocre to professional I'd encourage you to fix those several issues. ;)

ON A 7 MONTH BREAK FROM THESE LTT FORUMS. WILL BE BACK ON NOVEMBER 5th.


Advisor in the 'Displays' Sub-forum | Sony Vegas Pro Enthusiast & Advisor


  Tech Tips Christian Fellowship Founder & Coordinator 

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@XTankSlayerX as your personal spelling and grammar moderator :D, I have to tell you that there are a fair few spelling and grammar issues in that review as well as a couple of missed words here and there. I'm guessing that you were in a rush and that's why you accidentally made those mistakes. But to take this review go from mediocre to professional I'd encourage you to fix those several issues. ;)

Haha, I wish i could. I've read over it a few times and i cant see any errors :P 

 

Other than lower case "i"s i cant find anything D:

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great review :) its a really nice well priced tablet! and well specced too

 

but I still think I prefer my shield handheld, just having physical controls on the device for games is amazing (plus it still does streaming)

 

and for a tablet I still prefer my iPad, because it has some killer games on it (better than Android in this repsect, and I prefer the OS)

 

Though I did almost buy one, I don't think I would use it very much

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Great review :) :)  could we have pics?

Really good review but it needs pictures.

wow thats a great looking post... :)

needs pics of the shield though...

Added pictures! Sorry, i meant to add them last night!

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Haha, I wish i could. I've read over it a few times and i cant see any errors :P 

 

Other than lower case "i"s i cant find anything D:

Well, we can just leave it then. ;)

BTW, I like your wall colour with the white floors, reminds me of cake with cream in the middle. :P

ON A 7 MONTH BREAK FROM THESE LTT FORUMS. WILL BE BACK ON NOVEMBER 5th.


Advisor in the 'Displays' Sub-forum | Sony Vegas Pro Enthusiast & Advisor


  Tech Tips Christian Fellowship Founder & Coordinator 

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IMO. Shield Tablet is excellent in terms of general content consumtion. Try to find another tablet with front-facing speakers, and a HDMI out.

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  • 2 months later...
  • 2 weeks later...

Looking at this and the Tab S 8.4. I like the almost stock Android, better design and stylus of the Shield, but I like the slightly bigger, higher-resolution SAMOLED display of the Tab S along with the extra 1GB of RAM, physical buttons, fingerprint reader and multitasking features. This would be for reading, note taking and other general use stuff, not gaming, so the Tab S's weak GPU isn't a problem, and the Shield's GPU isn't really a selling point.

 

Is 5.0. on the Shield really as slow as some make it out to be?

 

Really anything will be faster than the iPad 3 with iOS 8 I currently have. ;_;

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"Build quality" is spelled wrong.

 

/s

 

Great review my friend.

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  • 5 weeks later...

Would love to have one, but I don't really see how good it would be without a Nvidia GPU.

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Would love to have one, but I don't really see how good it would be without a Nvidia GPU.

 

Well except for using gamestream you can still use it as a very powerful android tablet

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Well except for using gamestream you can still use it as a very powerful android tablet

 

Sure, but my couple year old Galaxy S4 runs them quite fine, atleast the games I play. I am not knocking the device or anything, its a nice little machine, but I believe that to really harness it's true power you need gamestream.

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Sure, but my couple year old Galaxy S4 runs them quite fine, atleast the games I play. I am not knocking the device or anything, its a nice little machine, but I believe that to really harness it's true power you need gamestream.

 

pretty much the point of it - although this might run some of the more powerful emulators out there very well! also stuff like the stylus etc is great too!

 

still prefer the shield portable

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pretty much the point of it - although this might run some of the more powerful emulators out there very well! also stuff like the stylus etc is great too!

 

still prefer the shield portable

 

Yea. If i happen to find some spare cash lying around I may give it a go, but otherwise its another device to do the same thing. Great review OP.

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Yea. If i happen to find some spare cash lying around I may give it a go, but otherwise its another device to do the same thing. Great review OP.

 

thats why I hope they make a 2nd gen portable! physical controls ftw

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