I have been using the Nvidia Shield K1 Google Android Gaming tablet for over a month to play games, browse the web, watch video, and do other tablet related tasks. It is one of the best $200 tablets which I ever used. The Shiled Tabler is fast, reliable, fun and simple to use as my main tablet.
It also has a lot of great features like a MicroSD card slot with Apps to SD support, mini-HDMI port, fast wifi, nice cameras, and very fast performance. The Shield also has not slowed down after installing a lot of games, and apps on it, and using it for a few months.
The Shield Tablet is fast enough to play all games which I downloaded from the Google Play App store. I like how fast Apps startup after tapping on app shortcuts in the homescreen. Most apps only take a few seconds to startup, and game levels load in only a few seconds. I also don’t experience any slowdown problems like slow video frame rates, or stuttering audio even when setting the quality settings to the highest settings in games like Asphalt 8, GT Racing 2, and other intensive game titles.
The NVIDIA Tegra® K1 processor has a 192-core NVIDIA Kepler GPU Video Chip and 2.2 GHz quad-core CPU, so it can run most apps, video formats, and games without any slowdown problems. The GPU and CPU is fast enough to play 4K Ultra quality videos, and play all my mobile games on the highest video settings.
The Shield tablet starts up in under a minute when I turn it on. It also wakes up very quickly when I push the power button when the screen is off, but the tablet is still on/sleeping. The Shield tablet also can be awaken from sleep if you open a case with a magnetic cover.
The Shield tablet comes pre-configured with an Optimized Performance Power plan which makes the tablet runs fast, and also does not use up your battery life as quickly as the high performance plans.
There is also a high performance mode in the Nvidia Shield Android Settings App which sets the Shield tablet to use the full power of its processor for faster performance, so games load very quickly, and run very smooth even at high video quality settings.
The Battery saver plan on the Shield is good for users who want to save battery life, and don’t plan on gaming, or doing other intensive tasks while using their tablet.
You can also make your own customize power plan to best suit your power and performance needs.
The Shield Tablet comes with 2 GB of RAM which is enough RAM to run games like Asphalt 8, GT Racing 2, and other 3D games smoothly even on the highest video quality settings. I can also have many apps open in the background without experiencing slow down problems like using Android on a device with 1GB of RAM which is very slow when only a few apps are open.
The 8-inch 1920×1200 multi-touch Full-HD touchscreen display looks great, and is very responsive to my finger touches.
I like that the Shield Tablet has Front facing stereo speakers, so sound is easier to hear even at lower volume settings. The Shield Tablet is one of the best tablets with great audio quality which is loud enough to hear even on rooms with people watching TV, and talking in it.
The Nvidia Shield also has a built-in microphone which you can use to record audio, voice chat, and video chat on the tablet.
It also has a MicroSD Card for adding a MicroSD card up to 128 GB in storage size for expanding its storage to install more apps, games, and store more files onto a 128GB MicroSD Memory Card which is installed on the tablet. If you don’t play a lot of big games, the 16GB of space is enough to carry many games, apps, and files which are under 100MB in size.
The Nvidia Shield Tablet is also very reliable. I can be using the Shield Tablet for many hours, and not experience any crashing, random restarts, overheating problems, and freezes.
The Nvidia Tablet is simple to use because its default launcher, apps, and settings are similar to other Google Android devices, and there are no weird launchers, themes, apps, and settings. The Nvidia Shield tablet has a power button, and volume buttons which are located on the side of the tablet, so it is easy to turn it on, and off, and change the volume settings with the volume buttons.
There is also a fullscreen mode on the Nvidia Shield to play games, use apps, and homescreen launchers in fullscreen mode even where the status notification bar, and navigational bar in Android is hidden until you flick your finger from the top edge of the screen to the bottom of the screen. Fullscreen mode works best for Apps and games which don’t automatically hide the notification status bar, and navigational bar when the App is open. If you want the notification and status bar back, you need to hold your finger on the top edge of the screen, and slide it down to open the quicklanch settings to turn off Fullscreen mode.
The Shield Tablet is also very light, and easy to hold with one hand. I like the rubber back of the Shield which makes the Shield easier to hold with my hand.
I like the design of the tablet because it looks very modern, and dark like a nice gaming PC.
I also use the Nvidia Shield Tablet with the official Shield wireless Game Controller for playing games, and the controller works very well for playing games. It is like playing games with a game console with a controller. The controller rarely disconnects, and the buttons, and joysticks are very responsive. The battery life for the controller also last for 40 hours according to Nvidia’s website.
The Wi-Fi/internet connection is very reliable because it has 802.11n 2×2 MIMO 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz Dual-band Wi-Fi. It streams HD video from YouTube and other video sites very quickly, and multiplayer games don’t slowdown on my Internet connection with a 15 Mbps download limit, and 1 Mbps upload limit.
Web browsing on the 8 inch HD screen on the Shield is pretty good, and desktop and mobile websites load very quickly on web browser apps like Google Chrome, UC Browser, Naked Browser, and more. If I use a Bluetooth keyboard, I can probably use the Nvidia Shield tablet as my main mobile web browsing device instead of using a laptop.
This Tablet also has Bluetooth 4.0 which you can use to connect it to an external Bluetooth speaker, keyboard, or mouse.
There are also a lot of ports on the tablet like Mini-HDMI output for connecting the tablet to a TV or Computer monitor with a HDMI port, Micro-USB 2.0, and 3.5 mm stereo headphone jack with microphone support for connecting it to audio headphones with mics, external speakers with 3.5mm audio jack. The Shield uses a Micro-USB port for charging, and data transfer.
It has a 3-axis gyro, 3-axis accelerometer, and 3-axis compass which are useful for motion gaming, and using apps which support auto-screen rotation.
The quality of the Front 5 Megapixel HDR and Back 5MP auto-focus HDR cameras are also very nice for video chatting, recording video, and taking pictures.
There is an update for the Shield to download and install Google Android 6.0 Marshmallow which is the latest version of Google Android. Google Android 6.0 runs very fast on the Nvidia Shield in my experience. 6.0 is also very reliable, and rarely crashes, or freezes apps when I use it on the Shield tablet. I like the new Android 6.0 homescreen launcher for the Nvidia Shield. The new launcher runs very smoothly, uses very little storage space, CPU resources and RAM, and it does not come with un-needed features like widgets which I don’t use.
The Shield Tablet comes with Google Play, NVIDIA SHIELD Hub, Fallout Shelter, NVIDIA Dabbler, Squid, and Twitch Pre-installed. It also comes with Console Mode, and Game Streaming Apps which make it possible to play Android games on a TV with a controller, or stream games from a Desktop or Laptop PC with a Nvidia Graphics Card like the Geforce GTX 750 or use the internet to play games on Nvidia PC GeForce Now PC game streaming service.
The battery life is pretty good on its 19.75 Watt Hours battery. I can use it for many hours a day and don’t need to charge it until the other day. I can play games on it for many hours like over 3 hours without charging it depending on how system resource and battery intensive the game is. It also charges in only a few hours when the battery has 30% of its battery left.
I can also use my old USB charger and Micro-USB charger from my Asus Nexus 7 which came with a USB 5 Volt 2 AMP USB charger, and Micro-USB cable for charging it, so I don’t need to buy another charger and Micro-USB cable to charge the Shield Tablet. You need a 2.1 Amp charger like the official Shield USB charger for fast charging to be enabled.
The Nvidia Shield Tablet is a great $200 tablet for gamers, and regular users looking for the fastest, and most reliable $200 8 inch Google Android 6.0 tablets with fast performance, great video and sound quality, and great features like a MicroSD 128GB expandable card slot, mini-HDMI port, good camera, high quality design, and game controller support.