NVIDIA SHIELD Unboxing & Overview
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2014-05-07
·
2,843 words · ~14 min read
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buy a qualifying Intel product and get entered in the Intel Dynamic ticket
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giveaway for a chance to win great prizes visit Intel gaming promo.com to
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learn more to give you guys some idea how excited I am to be having a look at
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the NVIDIA Shield number one is I built myself a ghetto Shield which you can
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check out and number two is
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this that is how excited I am about NVIDIA Shield I know video is getting a
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lot of flack about this product from the Enthusiast saying if I wanted to play
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those games I'd play them on my PC or saying if I wanted to play those other
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games I'd play them on my smartphone or saying it's too expensive or saying
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whatever whatever and whatever else personally I am extremely excited about
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it for a number of reasons number one is this is the first consumer grade device
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that features a Tegra 4 processor so Tegra 4 might not necessarily be all
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about the CPU aspect of the performance but it is all about GPU and early
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benchmarks of Shield seem to be indicating that compared particularly to
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the gpus you can get in most modern smartphones these days even things like
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the Samsung Galaxy S4 it is very very
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powerful so it's a capable little gaming platform and number two is the fact that
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it enables not only the ability to play
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Android devices or to Android devices to play Android games on a dedicated device
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but also your PC games and last but not least with what I'd consider to be a
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console grade controller now I've had my
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Hands-On Shield before uh back when we did an episode of netlink weekly so I
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already know what the fit and finish is like and guys it is absolutely fantastic
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so included with the Box you get the shield device itself you get the
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wallwart which has uh NVIDIA's well
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NVIDIA logo on it so there's not really much to say there and then you also get
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a micro USB charging cable I still hate micro USB I understand why they're using
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it but that won't make me stop hating it you also get a quick start guide that
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acts as a product tour although NVIDIA has some great videos on their YouTube
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channel that can walk you through the whole process of setting it up it comes
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with on the back here a mini HDMI out so
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you can run it directly to your TV if you wanted to do that for whatever
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reason although personally i' expect most people to use it handheld it has
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micro USB right there for charging a headphone microphone Jack this is the
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one ergonomic thing that I think is a little bit strange about Shield I wouldn't have minded seeing this perhaps
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on the bottom of the device so it's a little bit closer to you and it's not
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coming out the back of it and then finally on the back you have a micro SD
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slot so Shield only has 16 gigs of memory but you can add up to 64 gigs
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with a an s or micro SD XC in fact we
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have one that's a very high performance SanDisk one that runs at about 80
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megabytes per second so I'm super stoked on using that now the exhaust vent I've
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seen it in action like I said before doesn't interfere with where your
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fingers sit which is nice because there is a fair bit of power in there so it
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does need active cooling so that's the only exhaust vent right there but it
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exhausts away from your finger so you've got the two shoulder buttons right here
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left and right as well as two trigger buttons so those are nice analog buttons
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with varying uh sensitivity levels just
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like that also on the back here you've got what they're calling I think they
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call them tags or something like that whatever whatever branding they have for
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them you can basically swap out these top I think they were calling them
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Shields at the beginning and that was part of where the name came from but at
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any rate you can get carbon fiber ones or whatever it's not the kind of thing
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that I would be likely to replace but if I did want to customize my shield and I
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knew someone who happens to be sort of crafty then I would probably just get
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them to like paint this or something that would be kind of a neat way to customize your Shield without actually
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spending more money on it the bottom of the device has a very nice rubberized
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grip hopefully that's not going to come off over time it doesn't really feel
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like it's uh like it's got any come offness to it so feels very very good
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the one thing about the feeling of Shield that um sort of put me off a
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little bit at first particularly I'm going to have to let you guys know once
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I spend more time with it this is a device that I'll be taking home and I'll
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be using and I will be doing a more extensive followup on letting you guys
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know exactly what I think of NVIDIA Shield but the one thing that puts me
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off a little bit about it is the weight it's quite heavy compared to something
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like a smartphone or other Android device compared to to what you might be
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used to however with that weight comes
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solidity so you can see when I shake it around that hinge doesn't move the hinge
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is strong a crappy hinge can take what otherwise might be a beautiful ID or a
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really nice device and turn it into something that is annoying and then
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finally useless when the thing actually breaks so I'm glad to see that they've
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invested in making the hinge correct I also know speaking of investing in
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making things correctly that they've gone through a ton of revisions on this
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game pad since CES which was the first time I was handson with Shield so it's
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got an eight-way d-pad up here on the left it's got two analog joysticks right
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here that feel very actually that's quite nice they've got a bit quite a
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linear feel to them okay yeah excited about that
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Android navigation buttons here so home back the custom NVIDIA button which
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loads up the uh NVIDIA interface so it takes you to like teger Zone and you can
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uh play Android games from there or you can buy Android games or you can uh fire
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up the PC streaming so PC streaming requires a few different things number
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one is you need a shield number two is you need the latest drivers and GeForce
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experience for your desktop number three is you need a Kepler GPU so that's
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NVIDIA 600 series 650 TI and up I
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believe don't maybe don't quote me on that um but honestly I'd recommend
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anything from sort of a 660 and up if you want to have a great experience
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whether it's on the desktop or below 650 TI boost actually isn't bad either
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though okay anyway you need a game that you need the latest beta version of
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steam so you have to enable beta builds of steam and then you should pretty much
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be ready to go you just have to make sure you've launch the game at least
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once and then you have to have the shield running on the same Wi-Fi network
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as the network that your PC is attached to contrary to NVIDIA setup video where
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they show both the PC and shield
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connected via Wi-Fi you don't have to have them both on Wi-Fi they just have to
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be connected through the same router so you press the NVIDIA button in the
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middle to fire it up you can see they have a helpful instruction thing here on
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the uh cover the one thing that bothers me and other people that I've seen
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already a little bit about Shield is that the 5in 720p display multi-touch
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blah blah blah I'm giving you guys the specs in the unboxing like I usually do
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has a very large frame around it I kind of wish that they'd gone with something
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more like maybe a 5 and 1/2 in and they'd reduced the uh the bezel space a
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little bit because having a big bezel around a monitor really does make it
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look smaller than it is 720p and 5 in
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isn't that small compared to what we're used to on our phones in fact it's quite
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large but I think what happens is you're used to here here here's what happens
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here's why it feels small so besides the larger bezel people hold their phones
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like this so there's no interface here
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so you hold your phone you like this you sit this far away from it with a shield
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you're going to hold it in a similar position but look how much farther the
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screen is from your face so that's why the 5-in screen ends up feeling a little
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bit on the smaller side it's also because of the bulkiness of the device
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itself this contrasts sharply with something like the steel Series 3 which
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is their little Bluetooth uh controller that you compare to your phone and
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didn't end up being a very successful product but with the shield NVIDIA's
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gone well no we're not going to make it small we're going to make it ergonomic
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and everything else sort of well so much
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so much for that there's a couple tuned speakers here actually I never did
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finish the uh the the guided tour there's a microphone Port right there
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and then abxy buttons so you can actually use not only the touch screen
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up here for interfacing with the shield but also the button so I'm going to walk
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you through that in a moment once I go through the startup process so as you
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guys can see the screen is quite glossy so if you prefer mat screens uh this is
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not one but we've we've come to expect that from touch screens there's also a
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quick get getting started guide so it shows you the NVIDIA Button as well as
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walking you through the navigation buttons and well okay so the abxy button
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showing you the functionality that they mostly have so a is usually confirmed B
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is usually back and then finally aha yes
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you can actually use the right joystick check that out as a virtual Mouse
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pointer for precision movements and this is the kind of thing I may end up
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actually using a fair bit so that's uh that's that's actually pretty cool and
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then you can actually click just by pressing that down I don't know if it's
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going to allow me to click on continue here whoop whoop it's kind of awkward to
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yeah there we go that that worked not bad or press y to agree there we go so
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I'm just going to set up my Android here so if you've ever set up an Android
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device before you'll have probably seen all the stuff that I just did because
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this is a completely stock Android device in fact one of the things that
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NVIDIA is committed to on their web page for shield is timely upgrades to the
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latest Android operating systems so they've only really made a couple small
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changes to it and that is well pretty much this so pressing the NVIDIA button
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gives you Shield games that you have installed the shield store PC games so
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you can navigate in all the ways that you're used to so you can go touchcreen
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okay you can use the d-pad just like
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that you can use the left analog stick
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okay especially if you're not clumsy about it and finally you can use the
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shoulder buttons to navigate through the different menus so you have almost so
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many options that my mother would find it confusing but it's okay I'm not my
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mother so I think I can handle that it comes pre-loaded with a couple of Shield
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games so we're going to go ahead and go up Shield games so we have real boxing
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Riptide gp2 Beach Buggy Blitz Sonic 4 Episode 2 and so these are this
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particularly is a Tegra HD game you can tell from the little logo in the top and
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if you want to shop for more of them you can check out the shield store there so
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they have everything from free games to paid games and you can of course use the
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regular Google Play Store as well it also comes pre-loaded with a couple of
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other applications including Twitch TV if you're a gamer who's got something
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like a shield there's a good chance you watch game streams on Twitch or maybe the line of tech tips when show on
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Twitch that's another option as well and I just want to cover a couple of other
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hardware specs before I give you guys sort of the followup so actually no I'll
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tell you what we're going to follow up with first we're going to be doing get Shield versus our actual shield in terms
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of latency comparison so guys stay tuned for that that's going to be really
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exciting remember that Shield has a very
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excellent Wireless implementation so it's Wireless N but it's mimo so that is
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um pretty much an effective doubling of the available bandwidth and also because
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it uses the 5 gahz band it is able to potentially reduce interference with
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random household devices so there's that there's also the fact that it uses the
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built-in h264 encoding on Kepler in order to reduce the file sizes of the
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images that are being beamed to it when you're using the beta right now it's
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beta game streaming from your desktop so we want to compare latency as well as
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image quality to our ghetto Shield that we built using an HTC1 and an Xbox 360
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controller um it does have GPS built in it has 2 gigs of RAM and I think that's
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pretty much it for the stuff that I'd forgotten so far and then the second
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follow-up will be more of a long-term review I don't do many reviews but this
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is something that I'm going to spend probably a good month with and give you
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guys some idea once I have it how much do I actually use the bloody thing
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because I have an Android phone I have a PC so what am I going to use this for I
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don't know maybe that'll give you guys some idea if it's something that you'll use as well but I find the form factor
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very comfortable Shield has outstanding battery life better than pretty much any
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phone so it's great for watching things like movies in theory which I haven't
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done yet it's also more ergonomic to hold than something like a tablet
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necessarily when you're carrying it around with you you know put it down like that there see there's your movie
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whereas tablets you have to carry them around with what are often very awkward
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see like look at this this is uh sort of what I'd consider to be like a typical
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tablet case this is an Iconia W7 and you
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kind of like prop it up on this thing
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but I I never quite trust them whereas something like a shield makes a lot of
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sense to me but of course it has a smaller screen than most tablets at any
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rate guys that's it for the shield unboxing don't forget to subscribe to lus Tech tips for more unboxings reviews
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if you disliked it and definitely leave a comment if there's anything that you
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want me to particularly talk about when I'm giving my longer term impressions of
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NVIDIA Shield in an upcoming video