The NVIDIA SHIELD Tablet Review
by Joshua Ho on July 29, 2014 9:00 AM ESTWiFi Performance
For the most part these days it seems that the situation for WiFi is much better in mobile than it is anywhere else, but it's still important to test throughput, especially on a device like the Shield tablet that requires low latency, high bandwidth connections in order to support GameStream and GRID. To this end, while NVIDIA hasn't shipped 802.11ac the Shield tablet ships with a 2x2 antenna configuration for a maximum PHY rate of 300 Mbps. Like the Shield portable, this is a BCM43241 chip, likely shared to improve economies of scale. To look at how it performs, we turn to iperf. Before we get into the results of the test, I'd like to thank ASUS for providing the RT-AC68U router to test WiFi perfomance.
Surprisingly, the Shield tablet performs about as well as some single stream 802.11ac solutions like the one found in the Galaxy Note 3. Performance is generally in line with what we'd expect for such a solution, although it would be nice to see 802.11ac for future products.
Camera
While I currently don't have the means to properly test camera, there are still some things to talk about for camera. Both the front and rear camera modules use OmniVision's OVT5963 sensor, which appears to be a 1/4", 5MP sensor. The rear camera has an F/2.0 aperture with 2.95mm focal length, and the front camera has an F/2.8 aperture, with a claimed 4.76mm focal length, although the field of view appears to be somewhat wider. This is the same sensor as the camera in the Nexus 7 (2013). As a rear facing camera, the quality is nothing special but as a front facing camera it's surprisingly high quality. The photo above is with the rear facing camera, the photo below is from the front facing camera. The stock camera application also doesn't show the correct aspect ratio for the camera, so the preview is cropped.
Audio
While I don't have the equipment available to test audio quality and peak volume quite yet, subjectively the two bass reflex ports and dual front facing speakers make for a great experience. It's definitely a major advantage over other devices when it comes to watching movies and playing games as I don't have to cup my hand around the speaker. The larger size of the tablet formfactor means that the stereo separation is much more obvious. On the headphone jack, the device appears to be using a Realtek RT5639 codec. It seems that NVIDIA has continued to use their own speaker protection system that runs on the SoC, as there isn't any clear evidence of a speaker protection IC connected via I2C.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
174 Comments
View All Comments
name99 - Tuesday, July 29, 2014 - link
OK. I guess there are situations where that makes sense. Thx.6cef - Tuesday, July 29, 2014 - link
if "closer to 6504k is better", then you should order the graph by the absolute magnitude of the difference between each devices white point and that ideal value.duh.
kyuu - Wednesday, July 30, 2014 - link
+1kae - Wednesday, July 30, 2014 - link
I'll echo the question of a few previous comments... What is the compatibility of the controller with other Android Devices and PC's supporting WiFi Direct? I'm still rocking the Xbox360 Wireless, but if I can ditch the stupid USB dongle and go direct, I'd do it in a heartbeat. Double the function if it also communicates with my N5, and I'm sold.Anyone know? The documentation only talks about how fast WiFi direct is, but not if NVidia is using some proprietary drivers, or if it will work with any device. My hope is the latter.
wintermute000 - Wednesday, July 30, 2014 - link
it always beats me why the big two don't write decent cross platform drivers. Why on earth did Sony not write a good windows and/or android driver for dualshock for example. Easy money (how much can it possibly cost to write a joypad driver) to instantly create a new market.TheJian - Wednesday, July 30, 2014 - link
proprietary, but nvidia is working with google to get it into AndroidL, so should start to work elsewhere soon, if not at least everything shield that comes along and K1 devices etc. A sale is a sale and you're not giving up a lot here, but mapping software (& community profile uploads for mapping to certain games) goes with it so maybe it would be giving away too much.victorson - Wednesday, July 30, 2014 - link
"Although there are some compelling reasons to go with smaller color gamut." Could someone please help out and say what could those reasons be? I'm really curious, always thought there were no such reasons.UpSpin - Wednesday, July 30, 2014 - link
Take a look at the color gamut of white LEDs. You'll see they're blue ones with a phosphor film to produce 'white' light:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light-emitting_diode#...
However the color reproduction is lacking, especially on cheap white LEDs (the ones you can buy on eBay for example) The more accurate colors you want (high CRI) the more difficult it becomes, they become more expensive and also less efficient. To reproduce all visible colors the best method is to use three separate LEDs, a blue, green and red one. Such a setup is highly inefficient however.
So all NVidia did was using cheap white LEDs to cut costs but also to enhance battery life at the cost of a poor CRI.
theNiZer - Wednesday, July 30, 2014 - link
Great review, very helpfull !cashnmillions - Wednesday, July 30, 2014 - link
Ok so the display isn't phenomenal. Like anyone can really tell the difference between a few pixels. It's an 8" tablet, it doesn't need resolution above 720p to look good. The GPU capabilities are phenomenal, I remember when the Snapdragon and Adreno destroyed the competition about a year ago, this destroys that. I think it's an awesome piece of hardware, I plan to get one, just kind of sucks that the controller is $60. I wonder if I can use an XBOX 360 controller with it like I can on my Nexus 7.