The Nvidia Shield is a pretty ambitious project from NVidia, it’s a bid to enter the mobile gaming market while at the same time showing off their latest System on Chip the Tegra 4 and leveraging their Tegra Zone gaming centre they’ve been building up over the last few years.
Featuring a 5″ 720P resolution multi-touch screen, paired with a gaming controller, whose setup should be fairly easy for most gamers to settle into fairly easily, the NVidia Shield is quite an attractive device based purely as an Android Gaming device alone. What NVidia have done with the Shield however, is added something that whilst still in Beta is pretty special, it will give you the power to wirelessly access your GeForce® GTX-powered computer from the comfort of your couch’ so you can play PC games like BATMAN: ARKHAM CITY, Skyrim, Borderlands 2 and more right on your NVidia Shield.
While not officially on-sale in Australia, the Shield began shipping in the US on July 31st and Mobicity have imported the device and are now making it available in Australia for AU$479.95 + shipping including a 12 Month Australian based warranty.
NVidia Shield Specs :
- 5″ 1280 x 720 display
- NVIDIA Tegra 4 Quad Core Mobile Processor
- 2GB RAM
- 16GB on-board storage with MicroSD storage slot
- 802.11n 2×2 Mimo Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 3.0,GPS
- Motion Sensors
- 3 Axis Gyro
- 3 Axis Accelerometer
- Controller
- Dual analog joysticks
- D-pad
- Left/right analog triggers
- Left/right bumpers
- A/B/X/Y buttons
- Volume control
- Android Home and Back buttons
- Start button
- NVIDIA power/multi-function button
- Software
- Google Play
- TegraZone
- Sonic 4 Episode II THD
- Expendable: Rearmed
- Hulu Plus
- TwitchTV
- Android 4.2
- 28.8 Watt Hour Battery
- 158x135x57mm @ 579 grams
The NVidia Shield is running pretty much stock Android with a few extra pieces thrown in. Indeed they’ve even gone so far as to provide factory images on their website to download in case you’re of a tinkering nature and want to push the boundaries of what the Shield can do.
It’s a pretty neat looking device and we’ll be trying to get our hands on one of these as soon as possible to try it out. If you just have to have one then head across to the Mobicity website and check it out.
Going to be doing a full review on one of these beasts?
Going to be doing a full review on one of these beasts?
People have been comparing the markup on the N7 (2013). $479 AU versus $299 US is a big markup, especially compared to the markup on importing the new Nexus 7.
People have been comparing the markup on the N7 (2013). $479 AU versus $299 US is a big markup, especially compared to the markup on importing the new Nexus 7.