The NVIDIA SHIELD Tablet Review
by Joshua Ho on July 29, 2014 9:00 AM ESTBattery Life
As always, battery life is one of the most important aspects of any mobile device, and is crucial to staying mobile. There’s not much introduction needed to this, as it’s rather well understood that more battery life is usually better. The Shield tablet features an integrated 19.75Wh battery.
This device is a tablet first and foremost, so WiFi browsing battery life is important. In this area, the tablet does well. However, it’s a bit strange how the device performs worse than the Nexus 7 (2013). The reason why I say this is that the Tegra K1 is on a far more power efficient process (28HPm), has broadly equivalent battery capacity to screen area scaling, and should have a more power efficient display due to the reduced gamut. However, it could be that Cortex A15 just isn’t as power efficient as Krait and the silicon backplane of the display isn’t as efficient as the one in the Nexus 7.
While normally web browsing tests are enough to cover the relatively low-compute use cases for smartphones, video playback is a significant use case for tablets. Here, we see that the gap between the Nexus 7 (2013) and the SHIELD Tablet narrows significantly, which can probably be attributed to the mostly display-bound nature of this test. Due to the much lower APL average of this test, we see that the Galaxy Tab S line does noticeably better in this test because their AMOLED displays mean that black-heavy content dramatically reduces power draw. This is because a black pixel in an AMOLED display is turned off and doesn't consume power, while an LCD display relies on a backlight so it isn't possible to turn off the backlight for a single pixel without turning off the entire display.
Of course, the Shield Tablet is also designed for gaming. Unfortunately, the Tegra K1 introduces quite a massive amount of dynamic range. While it’s fully possible for the Shield tablet to last 10 hours of continuous use on a single charge, running the GPU at full blast gives battery life similar to a gaming laptop. Realistically, if a game is made for Tegra K1 and truly stretches the GPU to the limit, battery life is only around two and a half hours, assuming display brightness is kept down to 200 nits. Of course, anything less intensive will do much better.
NVIDIA has also made it possible to cap the maximum frame rate and clock speed for better battery life. However, it’s quite clear in this test that the tablet isn’t capable of sustaining peak performance the way the Shield portable was, as the Shield portable sustained around 90% of the first run performance while the tablet sustained around 80% of its first run performance. The Shield Tablet also has noticeably higher skin temperatures, although this was a subjective observation.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
174 Comments
View All Comments
TheJian - Wednesday, July 30, 2014 - link
Full 3.1 ES support and OpenGL 4.4. Being based on desktop gpus it should become a very good emu platform over time. I wonder if a 20nm M1 would be totally able to play wiiu games too? I find myself wanting to hold out for a 20nm version of NV's chip for a serious boost in power for gaming since android seems to be really taking off in this area. I couldn't justify a tablet before just as a tablet, but my list of android games I want to play is growing so might have to bite soon. Dad's nexus 10 isn't good enough for many things (dang res being too high). I hope NV sticks with 1080p/1200p for a while so gaming just gets better not slower on android. Above this is just stupid in something under 13in with gaming as an intention.Another review showed it running emus and Zelda Ocarina of time.
http://gizmodo.com/nvidia-shield-tablet-review-a-g...
Mupen64. Dolphin guys will probably adapt it to K1 soon I'd guess. The power and features are there. N64 games work at least according to gizmodo guy. I'm not really interested in anything before n64's time but there's some pretty fun stuff on n64 or better I wouldn't mind playing today (never owning any nintendo product previously).
Knowname - Wednesday, July 30, 2014 - link
the controller is certainly as uncomfortable as an n64's *bazinga*NZtechfreak - Monday, August 18, 2014 - link
Dolphin will run, on time trial mode (no other racers onscreen) in Double Dash it gets 40-60fps, with high 40 to high 50s the majority of the time. Haven't yet tried a lot of other stuff. The Dolphin developers are really looking forward to the 64-bit K1.bossmoogle - Tuesday, July 29, 2014 - link
I'm considering one of these but for me an important factor that wasn't discussed in the review was the glass on the display. I'm guessing it's not GorillaGlass. Is it scratch resistant at all? I'm on a Nexus 7 2013 right now and the GOrillaGlass is just amazing, if I wipe my screen off it still looks pristine as if it had just gotten off the assembly line. Not a single micro scratch is visible in the sunlight. Once you've used something like that it's very hard to go back to a screen you know is going to get all scratched up.schizoide - Tuesday, July 29, 2014 - link
The nexus7 2013 actually uses Corning's "Fit" or "Concore" glass, which is not as scratch resistant as corning gorilla glass.I researched it briefly but was unable to find what the shield tablet uses. So I agree that it's probably not gorilla glass, or they would have said so.
kron123456789 - Tuesday, July 29, 2014 - link
Good thing about games on this tablet is that Tegra K1 optimized games are using desktop OpenGL, not mobile OpenGL ES.kidconcept - Tuesday, July 29, 2014 - link
> Of course, the real question here is whether the gaming side is worth the price premium.Can you mention some other tablets the Shield has to compete with on price? For example, the Nexus 7 costs about $60 dollars more than the Shield (16GB +$70, 32GB-LTE +$50). Anything else in the same class as the Shield that is significantly cheaper?
Great review BTW. Hit all the important points for most of the audience. As an artist, I'm curious about how the stylus performs, but I recognize that nobody else really cares about it.
schizoide - Tuesday, July 29, 2014 - link
You've got that backwards. The Nexus 7 16GB retails for $230 and the Nexus 7 32GB model with LTE at $350.The nvidia shield tablet 16GB retails for $300, and the 32GB model with LTE will sell for $400.
schizoide - Tuesday, July 29, 2014 - link
Also like I posted earlier, if you're OK with manufacturer refurbs, you can pick up a N7 16GB refurb from an authorized reseller for $140 on eBay. Half the price.kidconcept - Tuesday, July 29, 2014 - link
Refurbs isn't really a great price comparison.