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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jeffkibuule - Thursday, May 28, 2015 - link
Yeah, especially when you have controllers like the PS4 or Xbox One which do a far superior job in ergonomics, any other company that attempts to make a controller falls pretty flat on their face.Brianbeastsu - Sunday, May 31, 2015 - link
Have you used the shield controller yet? I personally had my doubts when I bought the tablet but its now my fav controller with the volume and mouse features I wish every controller had.....really awesome and could actually make the ps4 less of a nightmare if you ever wanted to think about using their browser.....ha......also the GRID streaming on the tablet is amazing so I will 100% be getting this....I didn't even know this existed until after I got the tablet and it blows anything else I've used out of the water....just my opiniontestbug00 - Thursday, May 28, 2015 - link
19.2 watts of power? Cut off 2 A57 cores and one Maxwell SMM, I'm betting you would have one heck of a mobile chip for phablets and larger.jt122333221 - Thursday, May 28, 2015 - link
NVidia has chosen to chop off their mobile division and have openly stated they are no longer pursuing mobile devices like phones. Why would they gimp the chip to have a mobile chip when they aren't interested in mobile anymore?testbug00 - Thursday, May 28, 2015 - link
Not designing for a space and not having a product that can fit it are two different things. Over the course of all the runs for the X1 Nvidia might get enough "bad" chips to do a series that could fit into a phablet.Of course, for Nvidia's sake, I hope their yields don't allow for that :)
jeffkibuule - Thursday, May 28, 2015 - link
Nvidia long ago stopped pursing phones because phone OEMs basically wanted chips with integrated LTE modems and Qualcomm had the best. Why go with a Tegra when you can get a Snapdragon that already has everything you need?testbug00 - Friday, May 29, 2015 - link
Tablet. End of story.ZeDestructor - Friday, May 29, 2015 - link
LTE tablets sell for a much larger margin, and it costs a hefty amount of engineering time to design two different platforms for the same product, then certify it, so they stick to the usual Qcomm stuff by and large.ZOONAMI - Thursday, May 28, 2015 - link
Can you please verify if the base 16gb model can be opened up so we can add our own SSD/HDD to it?jt122333221 - Thursday, May 28, 2015 - link
We will know in time - I guarantee someone will check by the end of next week.