Pictures and Features

Although most would consider the Shield to be a tablet its form factor is far from a tablet form factor. The design is 2 ¼ inches thick, much thicker than any tablet design. It’s actually a lot like a console controller with a flip up touchscreen on top. The hinged touchscreen covers the entire top of the device, protecting its controller, screen, and speakers when you aren’t using the device. For styling Nvidia trimmed out the Shield on the top with a silver panel that also matches the silver on the bottom edge of the Shield. The two silver areas on the bottom edge have the Shield and Nvidia logos on them. The silver top panel is actually magnetized and comes right off. Under it you will find your serial number. This panel can be replaced, Nvidia currently offers two replacement panels, one is glass black and the other is carbon fiber. I’m not a huge fan of the silver top panel, so I a looking to replace it with the carbon fiber panel in the nearby future to add a little style to my Shield. Even without the replacement panels the Shield looks good, much better in person than I expected.

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Around on the back side of the Shield you have all of the devices connections in one location. Here you have a full sized HDMI port, your micro USB connection for data transfer and charging, and a headset connection that handles both your headphones and microphone assuming you are using a mobile connection. Above the HDMI port you have the Shields MicroSD card slot where you can add to your total storage capacity if needed. Above everything is the Shields exhaust port that helps keep the Tegra 4 chipset cool.

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Now let’s take a closer look at the top of the Shield. The button layout of the Shield is actually a lot like an Xbox 360 controller in layout, all the way down to the letters on the buttons. You have the four buttons on the right side labeled X, Y, A, and B. On the left side you have a traditional direction pad. The two analog sticks are also very Xbox 360 like with their beveled top design. The two analog sticks are interesting on the Shield because they stick up like a regular controller yet are recessed into the system enough that they are low enough to not cause issues when the touchscreen is closed.

In the center of the Shields controller you have five buttons. Some you will recognize, because they are standard Android buttons, like the home and back buttons. The volume button, when pressed, opens up an option on screen for you to turn the volume up and down. The top right is your pause button in some games and it also when pressed and held, it will open up the gamepad manager. In the middle of all of the buttons is the Nvidia button. This button opens and closes the shield software that lets us stream games from PCs and also shows you your Shield games. I will talk more about it in later sections.

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On the flip side of the Shield you can see each of the hand grips as well as the triggers that drop down on the front. In the second picture, we can see the four triggers that you get, just like the Xbox 360 controller. You have two analog triggers and two standard triggers.

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garfi3ld's Avatar
garfi3ld replied the topic: #33495 20 Dec 2013 18:05
I hope everyone is having a nice Friday and getting ready for the crazy week we will all have next week. Today I have a special review, a look at the Nvidia Shield. Please let me know what you think!
Plague's Avatar
Plague replied the topic: #33499 20 Dec 2013 18:55
question the first graphic in the benchmark section doesn't have the shield listed, was that correct?
garfi3ld's Avatar
garfi3ld replied the topic: #33503 20 Dec 2013 19:27
Thanks for pointing that out, that is an old benchmark that wouldn't let me run anylonger
Plague's Avatar
Plague replied the topic: #33504 20 Dec 2013 21:49

garfi3ld wrote: Thanks for pointing that out, that is an old benchmark that wouldn't let me run anylonger


ahh well that explains that. hehe

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