The NVIDIA SHIELD Android TV Review: A Premium 4K Set Top Box
by Ganesh T S on May 28, 2015 3:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Media Streamer
- Home Theater
- TV
- 4K
- Shield
- NVIDIA
Power Consumption and Thermal Performance
In order to see what the power and thermal characteristics of the SHIELD Android TV are like, the device was tested in two scenarions:
- 1080p60 HDMI output to Pioneer VSX-32, connected to a Sony KDL46EX720 46" 1080p TV. Connected to a wired network, with a Samsung T1 SSD hanging off the USB 3.0 port
- 4Kp60 HDMI output to a Samsung HU6950 40" 4K TV. Connected to a wireless network, with a Samsung T1 SSD hanging off the USB 3.0 port.
The table below summarizes the important power consumption numbers.
| NVIDIA SHIELD Android TV Power Consumption | |
| Activity | Avg. Power (W) |
| Idle (Scenario 1) | 3.6 W |
| 1080p Netflix Streaming (Scenario 1) | 4.6 W |
| 1080p YouTube Streaming (Scenario 1) | 4.7 W |
| Kodi Playback (Hardware Accelerated 1080p60 H.264) (Scenario 1) | 6.5 W |
| Kodi Playback (Software Decoding 1080i60 VC-1) (Scenario 1) | 10.4 W |
| Idle (Scenario 2) | 4.2 W |
| 4K HEVC Playback (Scenario 2) | 9.1 W |
| 4K Netflix Streaming (Scenario 2) | 10.3 W |
| Gaming (Scenario 2) | 19.4 W |
Since the gaming scenarios stressed the at-wall power consumption heavily, we decided to run the GFXBench battery life test which puts the T-Rex benchmark in an infinite loop. After 2 hours, we took a thermal image of the unit (oriented vertically with the SHIELD stand).
The thermal solution is excellent, and the frame rates were consistent across all the benchmark runs. Thanks to the low-power SoC, the chassis temperature was just 34 C (ambient at 23 C). The fan noise was audible only when we kept our ears against the vents in the back panel.
Moving on to the business end of the review, we split up the positives and negatives into two sections - one for Android TV itself, and the other for the SHIELD.
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ES_Revenge - Wednesday, June 10, 2015 - link
Perhaps not but Tegra X1 might be Maxwell but it's only 256:16:16 with 512 GFLOP SP performance. That in the realm of a GT 730...and the GDDR3 730 is faster than that, lol. In AMD-speak that's around equal to an R7 240.PS4 OTOH is a little below an R9 270 (around a GTX 660) and has over 1800 GFLOP SP performance. "On paper" it's already about 4x faster computationally, and it has about 7x the VRAM bandwidth.
Trying to compare a 7850/R9 270/GTX 660 to an R7 240/GT 730 is lulz though and it's very hard to find any kind of direct comparison between the two because they're never tested together and low end cards are typically tested at lower res and settings than higher end ones. It may not be actually an order of magnitude difference quantitatively but that's not really here nor there in the real world. In 1080p, we're talking about the difference between 10-15 FPS (i.e. totally unplayable) to 30-50 FPS (not spectacular but still very playable), between the two. The qualitative difference between 10FPS and 30FPS is HUGE so it seems like "an order of magnitude" in realith.
Nevermind the CPU side is well behind the 4M/8T Jaguar x86 CPU in the PS4.
MJJackson - Saturday, June 29, 2019 - link
Isso que eu chamo de bíblia hein. Como você teve disposição para escrever tudo isso? E como este site suporta tantos caracteres em um comentário?MJJackson - Saturday, June 29, 2019 - link
Isso que eu chamo de bíblia hein. Como você teve disposição para escrever tudo isso? E como este site suporta tantos caracteres em um comentário?Samus - Friday, May 29, 2015 - link
So this is a $200-$300 Roku on steroids?Udo - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
No, on gamma radiation.ToTTenTranz - Friday, May 29, 2015 - link
And it'll do jack for selling Tegra devices because:1 - Such games have been in the PC for years or even a decade. Whoever wants to play them, can do it on a PC.
2 - Being greedy and making these games exclusive to Tegra devices/consoles means they won't ever enlarge the market for higher-end games on Android, which in turn won't ever raise the demand for higher-performing Android devices (like Tegra X1).
mkozakewich - Saturday, May 30, 2015 - link
People are replacing their computers with tablets and things, so I could imagine someone junking their six-year-old computer and getting this, and just getting a large phone for any mobility needs.I personally don't have any of the latest consoles or a new TV; so if I was going to get one right now, I'd try to get a 4K TV and this console would be really tempting.
smorebuds - Thursday, May 28, 2015 - link
Nintendo should come out with an Android-based console. And start making mobile games that can scale up to tv size. And let us play touch optimized pokemon on our phones dammit.testbug00 - Thursday, May 28, 2015 - link
Why android? They have ARM consoles, they know to do touch. Going android just makes it easier for other android users to get Nintendo games pirated...tipoo - Thursday, May 28, 2015 - link
Their own operating systems all being slow as molasses could be a reason, though that could also be down to the hardware.