A powerful Android tablet with the latest technology at a surprisingly low price
Nvidia is best known for graphics cards found in loads of PCs and laptops made by other manufacturers. It therefore came as a surprise to learn that Nvidia had made the Shield, an 8in Android tablet, until you realise it acts as something of a showcase for the company’s various technologies. Although most of these are aimed at gamers, the Shield still has plenty to offer those with no interest in games - starting with its low price of just £240 for the 16GB Wi-Fi-only model. A 32GB 4G variant is available for just £60 more.
Build quality and performance
While the Shield has a name to remember, its plain, black plastic casing is nothing to write home about. Although it’s not as rigid as the metal casing of the iPad Mini 2, it’s still sturdy. The thin borders on either side of the screen (when held in portrait orientation) made it tricky to get a firm grip on the tablet without accidentally activating an onscreen control, while the edges tended to dig into our flesh.
Its 350g weight is about average for an 8in tablet, although the bulk should be more evenly distributed to make more it comfortable to hold for long periods of time. We’d also prefer it if the mushy power and volume buttons gave more feedback when pressed.
While the Shield has ergonomic weaknesses, it performs well, due in no small measure to Nvidia’s own Tegra K1 processor. Although it shares its name with the dual-core 64bit processor in Google’s Nexus 9 tablet, it’s actually a quad-core 32bit variant. So while it won’t be able to run 64bit apps, 32bit apps will be available for a long time to come and for now there’s little practical difference. It performed to a similar level as its 64bit counterpart, blitzing through our demanding benchmark tests. It’s one of the fastest tablets we’ve tested.
Display, responsiveness and battery life
The 8in screen is dazzlingly bright and has a resolution of 1920x1080 pixels, so text looks razor-sharp. Colour accuracy and contrast aren’t quite up to the standard of other tablet screens, but they are still very good.
We were initially confounded by the incredible lag in the responsiveness of its touchscreen. Disabling Nvidia’s ultra power-saving mode increased the touchscreen’s reaction times significantly, although it has an annoying habit of turning itself back on. Given its negative impact, it’s baffling that the power-saving mode is turned on by default. You’d have to be in desperate need of extra battery life to put up with the dreadful lag that it imposes. Even with this mode off, there remained a slight delay between swiping and response that you won’t find on more expensive Android mini tablets, such as the Sony Xperia Z3 Tablet Compact. Overall the delay is bearable, and certainly less irritating than the more pronounced lag on many cheaper tablets.
In any case, there’s little need to use Nvidia’s power-saving mode. The battery lasted just over 10 and a half hours when playing videos continuously, the sort of score we’d expect from an 8in tablet.
Android Lollipop
The Shield is one of the first Android devices we’ve seen, along with the Nexus 9, to come installed with 5.0 Lollipop (the latest version of Android). This is quite an achievement and, besides the annoying ultra power-saving mode, Nvidia has made only light modifications to the Lollipop interface. And if you don’t need Nvidia’s extra features, they can easily be ignored, though some can be useful. For example, you can record what’s happening onscreen, either with or without you speaking a commentary. The recording is saved like any other video file, which you can then share. This would be used to create tutorials on how to use Android for friends and family who are new to the operating system.
As with Samsung’s Galaxy Note range of tablets, a stylus is included. Slide it out of its nook and a small window automatically appears on screen for launching Nvidia’s note-taking and painting apps. The note-taking app is very basic. While the painting app can be confusing to use with its cryptic, unlabelled icons, it’s surprisingly versatile, offering a variety of canvases and brushes.
Impressively, the touchscreen is smart enough to ignore the palm of your hand, which rests upon it as you write or draw with the stylus. This is a feature we’ve only otherwise seen in the much more expensive Microsoft Surface Pro 3. What’s more, the stylus is pressure-sensitive so pressing down harder on the screen makes a thicker or darker mark in the painting app, depending on what tool you’re using at the time.
We did encounter a rather odd and infuriating bug not found in the Nexus 9 or any of our Android 4.4 KitKat devices. None of the user accounts, other than the master account, could access external storage (microSD cards or USB sticks connected using a USB On-The-Go adapter).
Play your PC games
You can use the tablet to play your PC games as long as both the Shield and computer are connected to a dual-band 802.11n wireless network at 5GHz. The PC streams the graphics and sound to the Shield, which in turn sends your control decisions back to the PC.
This worked surprisingly well in practice, although the occasional lag when sending control decisions back to the PC meant that we sometimes lost out in fast-paced games. It’s a shame the Shield doesn’t support 802.11ac because its extra speed would’ve really helped here. Disappointingly, your PC can’t be used by another person while you play games on the Shield, reducing the usefulness of this feature. Plus, your PC or laptop will need to have a specific Nvidia GeForce graphics card for this feature to work.
Somewhat less successful is the Grid feature. This lets you play a small selection of popular PC games on the Shield without a PC at all - the graphics are instead streamed from Nvidia’s servers over the internet. This not only requires a 5GHz 802.11n network, but a very fast broadband connection with low latency. A 10Mbps residential ADSL connection just didn’t cut it. We had to use a friend’s 50Mbps cable connection and even then we couldn’t stray from the same room as the router, further limiting the usefulness of the Grid feature.
If you’re still not put off by these restrictions, then you may want to buy some accessories to optimise your gaming experience. A controller that connects via Wi-Fi costs another £50, while an iPad-style screen cover that doubles as a stand costs an extra £25. The cover isn’t particularly well designed though; its chunky hinge makes holding the tablet even more uncomfortable.
Conclusion
Gaming features aside, the Nvidia Shield has a few annoying design quirks that prevent it from securing our five-star Buy It award and an unconditional recommendation. It’s still a good tablet though, neatly filling the hole left by the now discontinued Nexus 7. It’s a powerful, generously equipped Android mini tablet at a very reasonable price.
VERDICT
Despite its flaws, this fast, quality tablet is great value whether you’re into gaming or not.
SPECIFICATIONS
8in 1920x1200-pixel touchscreen • 2.2GHz Nvidia Tegra K1 quad-core processor • 2GB memory • 16GB storage • Nvidia Kepler graphics chip • Android 5.0 Lollipop • 350g • 221x126x9mm (HxWxD) • One-year warranty