Nvidia Shield First Impressions

[Hyp0xia]

As you may or may not be aware of, I work for a certain electronics retailer. This morning, I was tickled to have hands-on access with the Nvidia Shield and I just want to say I was very impressed. These were some of my initial impressions:

 

 

• The device fits the hands like a glove. I can foresee it remaining comfortable for lengthy gaming sessions.
• The screen has seemingly infinite viewing angles.
• The graphics are very impressive for a mobile gaming device.
• While the device can currently only be used to talk to computers on the local network, I understand Nvidia is working on a way to get them to talk to computers on external networks.
• It may be a driver or port forwarding issue, but the unit I used was unable to talk with the local network to identify any computers running GeForce graphics.
• The Shield with which I had hands-on access was running on a non-proprietary 32GB SD card. I understand that no cap has been set on what size SD cards the device will accept.
• The audio is shockingly good for a device of its size.

[Frozr]

Define "seemingly infinite viewing angles".

[Hyp0xia]

Define "seemingly infinite viewing angles".

Regardless of what angle I viewed the screen from, it remained crystal clear.

[rashdanml]

Think a requirement for it a GeForce 600 series card or better. That could have been a factor.

[Hyp0xia]

Think a requirement for it a GeForce 600 series card or better. That could have been a factor.

Definitely not since there were GeForce 600 systems on the network, including one with GTX 670s in three-way SLI.

[obsidian1200]

This thing looks pretty baller. I can't wait to see the PC Game streaming performance once that bit gets out of beta. I may have to consider a GPU upgrade to the green team if this thing works really well.

[wkronbaek]

You have to install some program on the pc you want to stream from i'm pretty sure

 

This is epicly executed as a product, but very gimmicky.

[brownninja97]

Define "seemingly infinite viewing angles".

Sometimes with crappy screens looking from an angle such as above 30oc from the screen in an direction it can wash out the colours.

[brownninja97]

Do you know how well it reacts to glare and battery duration during gaming and or standby such as listening to music or watching a video/movie.

[Hyp0xia]

Do you know how well it reacts to glare and battery duration during gaming and or standby such as listening to music or watching a video/movie.

I have only had my hands on one indoors, so I didn't experience any glare. Also, my time with it was brief, so I can't answer any battery questions. I neglected to ask about that during the product training I attended. :(

[brownninja97]

I have only had my hands on one indoors, so I didn't experience any glare. Also, my time with it was brief, so I can't answer any battery questions. I neglected to ask about that during the product training I attended. :(

Those are quite importent questions that i normally ask as backlight destroys a battery and I like to know how the batteries.

[pwest15]

Honestly, I really wouldn't buy it unless I could stream my PC games outside of LAN. Like maybe at a friends house or something (somewhere with good, reliable, fast wifi). And maybe airports in the future. I really don't see the point of having one for streaming games unless you have a big house with no living room PC and you want to play on your big TV. Still not sure you'd get too great of performance doing that. Maybe streaming is just better for SP games like Skyrim.

[rashdanml]

Honestly, I really wouldn't buy it unless I could stream my PC games outside of LAN. Like maybe at a friends house or something (somewhere with good, reliable, fast wifi). And maybe airports in the future. I really don't see the point of having one for streaming games unless you have a big house with no living room PC and you want to play on your big TV. Still not sure you'd get too great of performance doing that. Maybe streaming is just better for SP games like Skyrim.

Streaming over Wifi from anywhere may be a lot more problematic than local Wifi due to latency. Airport Wifi is not always stable, would lead to awful gaming experience overall. Streaming at a friend's house (with the PC back at yours) might be a bit better.

[rmonty]

I reckon that in a few generations, when the screen is 1080+ p resolution and it can stream of mobile networks, it will really take off.

However at the moment I don't think that mobile networks i.e. 3G or public Wi-Fi are anywhere near good enough to play without any/ much lag.

[maazster]

To really use the most out of the shield I would need to get my self a new graphics card, a new router and the shield itself.