Nvidia Shield Gaming Tablet Review

news · November 4, 2014

The Nvidia Shield was and still is one of the coolest gadgets I have

ever reviewed and owned; I still use it regularly when I want to break

away from my desk and it has also become my vital travel buddy for

longÃ‚Â journeys. Gaming on the go is a great way to pass the time and

mobile phones and tablets now take up a massive part of that market,

but most phones and tablets come with one major drawback; touch screen

displays. The original Shield solved this touch screen gaming problem

by integrating a controller into the Android device; in a way that's

not all that dissimilar to other dedicated hand-held games consoles

such as the 3DS and the PlayStation Vita.

The new Shield Tablet drops the integrated controller to turn the

Shield into an Android tablet, this worries me somewhat as I love the

integrated controller of the Shield console as it's perfect for

holding when you're on the bus, train, plane, or anywhere else for

that matter. Of course there will be pros and cons to dropping the

integrated controller and that's what I aim to find out; is the Shield

better or worse for the new design choices?

A separate controller isn't the only thing Nvidia have changed, in

fact pretty much everything has been tweaked, revised or created from

scratch for the Shield Tablet. The screen size and resolution has been

increased, the device now features two 5MP HDR cameras, a stylus and

more. The biggest feature change of all is the CPU/GPU upgrade; the

Tegra 4 in the Shield was impressive, but it's no match for the new

Tegra K1 GPU and ARM Cortex A15 CPU combo.

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