Review of the tablet NVIDIA SHIELD Tablet

Introduction

Usually when the title sound of the phrase “killer iPhone», «gaming smartphone”, “gamepad” I am personally a little cringe as well understand that the iPhone is the iPhone and there is nothing close to it did not come up, and as gaming phones “tablets”, it is a kind of fiction: in all these gadgets in some way you can play.

The situation with the tablet NVIDIA SHIELD Tablet is quite different. Do you offer a machine that not only “digest” the usual standard Android games and “Gama”, optimized for the chipset NVIDIA, but also able to stream high-grade toys from your PC to the “pill”, as well as trigger ports of console games or broadcast what is happening on the screen in Twitch.

Package Includes:

• Tablet
• AC Adapter with USB-cable
• Warranty Card

Separately will be offered to cover the magnetic clasps, and a controller.

Design, size, controls

Appearance of most tablet about the same, but NVIDIA SHIELD Tablet reminds me of a mixture of Microsoft Surface and Google Nexus 7. typical aspect ratio – 16: 9, sloping angles. There’s a fine gloss beveled edge around the perimeter of the facial. All lateral faces are made of matte plastic, black, slightly skewed toward the rear panel, which is made of “soft touch” plastic dark gray. The surface of the back of the flat.

Dimensions of the tablet following – 221h126h9,2 mm and weighs 8-inch gadget 390 grams. Display frame is quite thick: the top and bottom (when held horizontally SHIELD) to 9 mm, and the left and right, by virtue of the fact that there is a speaker – 23 mm. By modern standards, it is the usual size.

On the official website, or anywhere else does not say what type of glass protects the front surface. A couple of weeks is nothing wrong with it did not happen. Apparently, there is an oleophobic coating as fingerprints although remain, but unobtrusive. Finger across the display to slide easily.

Assembly does not cause any problems all monolithic, no squeaks and do not play, back does not bend to the battery.

In general, the ergonomics of the design of the tablet I liked the device looked sternly and inspires confidence that the case is made with high quality.

The front panel on the right and the left, the speakers covered a thin perforated plastic bezel. On the sides of the hole speakers also duplicated, closed metal mesh dark colors is right in the middle, and the left is slightly shifted to the right, as would interfere with the placement of the front camera.

Below are two holes for the fitting of the cover on the magnets.

Above left – the power button. It is a thin, long, has a soft pressing. Right – the key-volume rocker. Further there is a slot for memory cards microSD. If you purchased a version of the device with LTE, on the right – microSD-slot for microSIM. Version without LTE with a plug.

On the right corner you can find a stylus inserted into the body of the tablet. On it I will talk about later.

On the left side: 3.5 mm audio jack, mini-HDMI and micro-USB.

Display

When I first heard about the game pad NVIDIA, for some reason, thought that this device should have a larger screen size as the previous device NVIDIA SHIELD Tablet could boast only five-inch display. In my understanding of the game – it is primarily a comfortable “gameplay” at a decent display and convenient control.

It turned out that the new product has only an 8-inch diagonal display. The physical size – 172h108 mm. Anti-reflection coating, if it is there at all, it is extremely weak: the surrounding area too is clearly reflected in the glass.

Matrix screen is IPS technology. Resolution – 1920×1200 pixels. The viewing angles are great, but the picture is a little distorted, becomes light purple hue. If you’ve seen the screen Nexus 5, you will realize what is at stake: nothing seems to have the quality, but it was felt that something saved.

Backlight brightness matrix screen average. Indoor picture looks good, the light is a little lacking in the brightness level, the picture fades in the sun, but it’s something with the display can be.

Layer capacitance type supports up to 10 simultaneous touches. Sensitivity is great.

Briefly about the stylus. It is securely attached to one of the edges of the device and relatively easily removed. Passive stylus, the tablet does not have the features of the digitizer, but at the expense of powerful hardware can be drawn in a special supplement with varying degrees of depression, apply different effects, use of light and shade, and then adjust their lighting setups.

As soon as you remove the stylus, run the menu with a choice of programs:

• NVIDIA Direct Stylus. That is the coolest app that is easy to make cool pictures
• Write. Something like handwritten notes
• Evernote
• JustWhite. This organizer based pen input

Interestingly, the image is formed in real-time: spending a brush on the canvas, you see how the paint flows on the edges of the texture.The chip is a fun and original, but it is probably the more colorful effect, rather than a real necessary thing. However, this is only my personal opinion.

Battery

The tablet is equipped with a non-removable lithium-polymer (Li-Pol) battery capacity of 5200 mAh. The manufacturer claims that the battery is fully charged NVIDIA SHIELD Tablet should be enough for 10 hours of HD-video and up to 4 hours of play.

When playing HD-video at full brightness and volume unit lasted 7.5 hours. But toys will put the battery in just 3.5 hours (maximum brightness played in everything that is installed in the unit), at a constant data transmission (e-mail, Twitter, Skype) battery runs for 9 hours.

On average, the battery was discharged 12 hours the next tablet mode: automatic brightness, one hour of games, a permanent connection to Wi-Fi, a half-hour watching videos on YouTube.

The USB device is charging for a long time, but at least it is charging. From the AC adapter – about 3 hours.

Communication features

On sale are two versions of “pills» SHIELD: one works with LTE (own Icera-chip with a range of 1, 2, 5, 8), that is, it has a slot for a SIM-card (LTE 2100/1800/2600/800 MHz , HSPA + 2100/1900/850/900 MHz, 3G, EDGE, GPRS), the second – only Wi-Fi.

There is Wi-Fi 802.11n 2,4 and 5 GHz with Mimo 2×2 (the spatial signal encoding, allowing to increase the channel bandwidth), Bluetooth 4.0 LE, mini-HDMI 1.4a, USB 2.0 function “yusb host», GPS / GLONASS (very high sensitivity, easy to determine the 10-15 satellites, even near a window) and Miracast.

Memory and memory card

RAM in this machine 2 GB. Available on the average about 1 GB of RAM, with a heavy load (running a few games in the background) – less than 600 MB, but even in this case, the tablet does not slow down or lag. I do not know for what purpose the company Samsung has used 3 GB of RAM in Note 3, but NVIDIA SHIELD Tabletsuch amount is clearly not enough. So, we will wait some SHIELD 2 with 3 GB of RAM, a large screen and other bells and whistles.

Built-in memory – 16/32 GB, depending on the version: for example, the device «Wi-Fi + LTE» – 32 GB, and in «Wi-Fi» – only 16 GB. We visited on a review of the gadget has 16 GB of Flash. Available to the user at least 12 GB. There is a slot for memory cards microSD. Its maximum capacity – 128 GB.

Tablet NVIDIA SHIELD Tablet supports multiple USB-device, including earphones, speakers, keyboard, mouse, and can also be connected to another device, such as a PC for file transfer.

Luggage

Traditionally, for any modern device – two camera modules: basic – 5 megapixel with autofocus and aperture F1.4, wheel – 5 megapixel with fixed focus and aperture F1.7. No flash.

The quality of the photos I was pleasantly surprised: accurate white balance, great sharpness, good natural color reproduction, low noise even in low light. Did not quite live up to the flagship cameras from other manufacturers of smartphones, but for a tablet “clicks” transcripts! It is likely that the lens aperture is completely different, but the minimum amount of noise and a strong background blur suggest otherwise. Of the minuses – slow focusing.

The front camera also takes good quality, for example, in Skype pleased.

The device can record video in FullHD resolution at 30 frames / second. The quality is slightly above average, focusing is “Clicking” on the display. Double “tap” – fix the focus and exposure. The sound is crisp, but not the cleanest.

“Frontalka” can only work with HD-resolution. Before shooting, it should be cleaned, otherwise you will be troubled.

At the top left are the settings below – net (thirds, the golden section, the trisection and square), the level of the entrance to the gallery.Right at the top there is a separate button – photo “big button”, continuous shooting, timer, Interval timer shooting, stabilization and panorama. Next – to switch between photos and video, adjust the white balance and exposure, switching on and off of the front camera.

Performance

And now the most interesting – the chipset that is used in the new tablet NVIDIA SHIELD. So, it stands NVIDIA Tegra K1 codenamed NVIDIA Logan.

What is this “beast”, we detail meets Wikipedia:

“The fifth generation of the family system-on-chip NVIDIA Tegra, developed by the American company NVIDIA for smartphones, tablets, smartbooks, game consoles and other devices. This chip is the first time in the history of the family does not use special microarchitecture graphics accelerator for mobile devices, and micro-architecture of Kepler, which began to be used in video cards of class GeForce 600 and Tesla. In addition, the company is the first in a family of Tegra announced the transition to architecture ARMv8 special kernel NVIDIA Denver, although all previous Tegra chips used architecture ARMv7 ».

Chip Tegra K1 has two versions with different micro-processor: the first, the one that applied in SHIELD, – a quad-core ARM Cortex-A15 “r3” (28 nm) with the architecture of NVIDIA 4-Plus-1 with the shadow kernel companion, the second – dual ARMv8-compatible processor at 2.5 GHz.

More details about the chip you can find on the official website of NVIDIA . Here summarized the essence of architecture NVIDIA Kepler.

Graphics processor – NVIDIA Kepler with 192 cores NVIDIA CUDA . 5 ULP GeForce GPU supports DirectX version 11.1, OpenGL 4.4 and ES 3.1, OpenCL 1.2.

In this section, we would like to share what can a tablet based on NVIDIA in terms of game options:

1. Play on the tablet in the usual Android app without glitches and brakes
2. Use the wireless controller SHIELD
3. Connect the tablet to a TV in console mode
4. “Stream” of the game from the PC to the tablet
5. Syndicate toys Twitch – leading site videostrimingovoy platform where the main topic of streaming – video game tournaments and streaming cyber

It is important to understand that for “streaming” toys need certain system requirements for the PC.

The main requirements of a Wi-Fi router and a modern gaming PC based GeForce® GTX ™ 650 or later GPU for desktop PCs. For more detailed system requirements:

• GPU: Desktop: GeForce GTX 650 or higher desktop GPU
• Notebook: NVIDIA Kepler ™ -based GeForce GTX 600M or more productive
• CPU is: Intel Core i3-2100 with a clock speed of 3.1 GHz or AMD Athlon II X4 630 2.8 GHz or higher
• System Memory: 4 GB or more
• OC: Windows 8 or Windows 7
• Software: application GeForce Experience ™ and the latest GeForce drivers
• Router: Router standard 802.11a / g (minimum). Dual Band Router 802.11n (recommended).

In order to transmit the game in console mode with a resolution of 1080p and frame rate of 60 FPS, your PC must meet the following requirements (NOTE: These requirements are slightly higher than the standard requirements for technology GameStream streaming data in the resolution of 720p):

• GPU: GeForce® GTX ™ 660 or higher GPU
• CPU: Intel Core i5 or higher, AMD FX 6-Core or higher
• Micro USB Ethernet-adapter: Connect your wired Ethernet-cable from your router to the plate SHIELD.

If you want to know what PC games are played on the tablet, then check out this page .

To plate can easily connect the controller. It does not work over Bluetooth, and on Wi-Fi Direct. The fact that the speed Bluetooth lacks appear delay. To “tie” the plate and the controller, you need to hold your finger on the logo NVIDIA (gamepad) a few seconds until it starts flashing, and the NVIDIA SHIELD Tablet go to settings and select “Connect the wireless controller.” After binding to the status bar, an appropriate icon-battery indicator.

On the most difficult to me to speak to the controller, as I am not an active console gamers. Seemed comfortable.

In the device installed quite a number of games: Trine 2 (with support for OpenGL 4.2), Real Boxing, HN 2001, Asphalt 8, Blood Sword, Leo’s Fortune, SG: DeadZone, Riptide GP2. There is even a “demo” on the Unreal Engine 4 «Rivalry» with support for OpenGL 4.4 – looks amazing: detailed texture, light, shadow, dust and sparks. “Grafon” is comparable to a PC-shnymi games.

More thanks to the chipset NVIDIA Tegra K1 can record everything that happens on the tablet screen without sagging performance. If you want to – analog “skrinkastinga.” Works as long as this function is not very good. For example, were not started two games: Trine 2 and UE4, and after a small glitch with the video recording was to keep up with the sound. In addition, the movie is written in 720p, that somehow sparsely.

In general, with the broadcast of toys from the PC to the tablet everything is fine, but we need a powerful computer and a good router, and games that are optimized for the chip, not as much as we would like. However, any toys, downloaded from Google Play, will be used on the tablet NVIDIA SHIELD Tablet without problems.

Multimedia

Music player. Music player, it will not stop. Since the unit uses two stereo speakers, the volume is very high, the sound is clear and pleasant. If you close the front part of the hands of speakers, the sound will still be heard, though silently.

Sound from the headphone has a high volume. Quality classy: excellent tapped treble, mid, and low is not buzzing.

Radio is not.

Video player “cool” videos in any resolution, but some audio and video codecs are not supported.

Conclusion

Finally to our office got not banal Android-tablet, about which there is nothing to tell. In NVIDIA SHIELD Tablet  unit invested everything that can be useful to date gamers: if you want to play in Android «Gama” – please do not have any brakes and freezes; if you want to run cool toys that are optimized for the chipset NVIDIA, – «nd that” specialized hub. However, if you become a “Stream” PC shnye games, do not forget to check the system requirements that your computer. Do not forget that the device connects the controller original, with the help of which it is easy to manage in toys.

Of course, there are certain points that cause issues. They are mostly related to the amount of games optimized for the tablet NVIDIA SHIELD, as they are at the moment not very much. About “streaming” PC games – for me personally, this function is extremely doubtful, although both feature in the future – quite interesting.

In any case, even if you do not use all the pieces associated with toys, you get a very powerful tablet with a good camera, loud speaker and long battery life.

Cost of the tablet with 16 GB of Flash without LTE – 14 000 rubles, with 32 GB of Flash and LTE – 19 000 rubles. The price of the controller NVIDIA SHIELD Tablet – 3500 rubles, cover – 1500 rubles. Upgrade your PC – priceless;)

Pluses tablet SHIELD:

• Performance
• “Streaming” PC games on tablet
• “Skrinkasting”
• “Streaming” games Twitch
• Loud stereo speakers
• Stylus
• Android version 4.4.2 with a guaranteed upgrade to Android L
• Autonomy
• Support for LTE

Cons tablet SHIELD:

• Not the best quality IPS-matrix screen

Features:

• Class: tablet
• Housing: Plastic
• Operating system: Google Android 4.4.2
• CPU: 4 core, 2.2 GHz, NVIDIA Tegra K1
• RAM: 2 GB
• Data Memory: 16/32 GB
• Connectivity: Wi-Fi (b / g / n /) Mimo 2×2, Bluetooth 4.0, mini-HDMI, 3.5 mm headset jack, microUSB 2.0 + OTG
• Screen: capacitive, IPS-LCD 8 “with a resolution of 1920×1080 pixels
• Camera: 5 MP (base), 5 megapixel (front)
• Extras: LTE, accelerometer, light sensor, stylus
• Battery: removable, Lithium Polymer (Li-Pol) capacity of 5200 mAh
• Dimensions: mm 221h126h9,2
• Weight: 390 grams