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.
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ol1bit - Sunday, October 19, 2014 - link
I know this is old, but my tf201 with a tegra 3 still plays games great! Uninstalling facebook really helped overall speed!UpSpin - Wednesday, July 30, 2014 - link
The Tegra K1 is lacking an on-chip modem, thus it will always be less efficient than Qualcomm processors, which means we'll probably never see this SoC in a smartphone.I think we'll see much more Tegra producs with the K1, because it's really an impressive SoC. But NVidia seems to care less about the typical consumer tablets, more about their own console ecosystem (Shield) and most importantly embedded systems (cars), where NVidia has some huge partners and the Tegra gets widely used. (Tesla, Mercedes, VW, Audi, ...). There they can make more money most probably and don't have to give their IP away for free more or less to remain competive against companies like Mediatek.
fivefeet8 - Thursday, July 31, 2014 - link
The Snapdragon 805 is also in the same boat without an on-chip modem.Knowname - Wednesday, July 30, 2014 - link
who cares about the display? I get mine on Tuesday (preordered from Amaizon and picked no rush shipping fo da bling xD) and 90% of the time I'll be using it to play steam games on my TV.happycamperjack - Wednesday, September 3, 2014 - link
Just got it. The screen is actually pretty good! Much better than I expected. Great contrast, black level, colors. It's more than good enough for a tablet. I got the original Nexus 7. This is much much much better than that! It looks similar to me to the new Nexus 7.sherlockwing - Tuesday, July 29, 2014 - link
No Video playback battery life test?JoshHo - Tuesday, July 29, 2014 - link
It was definitely planned but there wasn't enough time to finish that test. I'll update the review once I have those results.ams23 - Tuesday, July 29, 2014 - link
Josh, how about some additional tests using the battery saver mode? Limiting fps to 30fps and reducing CPU clock operating frequencies should dramatically extend the gaming battery life with very graphically intensive benchmarks.On a side note, I should point out that not only does Tegra K1 have much higher Onscreen performance in GFXBench T-Rex HD test (which is the test used for battery lifetime and a minimum value long term performance data point) compared to most other ultra mobile GPU's, but is also renders with significantly higher [FP32] precision too. According to Oleg at B3D forum, Kishonti uses low precision FP16 shaders in the T-Rex test by default. Mobile Kepler and other modern day PC and console GPU architectures are designed for FP32 precision and not mixed or lower precision.
mkozakewich - Tuesday, July 29, 2014 - link
This! It's horrible to complain about the extra dynamic range like it's a bad thing, and then NOT test the battery-saving features.Limit the CPU such that it runs like the Shield portable, then set the framerate to 30 Hz and run the gaming battery tests again.
(On my Surface Pro, for example, I'll set everything to the lowest possible, about 800 MHz, and I'll get a couple more hours out of it while playing games. High-Performance mode is for when you're plugged in.)
JoshHo - Tuesday, July 29, 2014 - link
Those are definitely planned as well, there were some issues with meeting deadlines so battery life testing had to be cut down somewhat.