- it's gonna be a quiet,introspective, very useful video full of consumer advice about hey guys, this is austin, and today i have thebrand new nvidia shield. so you may remember this.
Android TV google assistant, this is the original nvidia shield. now i actually really like this. however, there's a newversion that's just come out, but the big question is,
is a $200 gaming console worth it? what's interesting is thatthe shield actually shares a lot of common dna with thebrand new nintendo switch. so, honestly this is probably going to be a more powerful option. not only does it supportboth 4k and hdr, but as you'll see, the new slim version also adds some new features. so this guy is running android tv.
now that's actually probably my favorite sort of smart tvinterface that i've tried. not only is it fairly snappyand easy to get around, but it also is fairly powerful. you can do things likeactually multitasking as you watch video, andthere's some new things with the new nougat version,which this is preloaded with. also, that is really small. are you serious?
i mean, i don't think anyonethought the original shield was all that large, but thisthing is absolutely tiny. wow, i wasn't expecting that. i mean, in pictures, itlooks almost the exact same, but when you actuallyput them side by side, there's a huge huge difference. i guess it makes sense. so, there is another version of this that actually can come witha 500 gigabyte hard drive,
and i assume that that's probably gonna be a little bit bigger than this, but right now we'retalking about something that's not that much bigger than a normal streamingbox like an apple tv. you're really not losing much because of the small size either. so we still have twousb 3.0 ports, ethernet, hdmi.
the biggest loss is the lackof a microsd card slot, but honestly with the shield, i prefer to just plug in a usb drive for extra storage anyway. something that wasn't includedin the original shield is the actual remote. so this was something like$50 on the previous version. however, it's really nice tohave this actually included. as much as this is a gaming device,
i feel like a lot ofpeople, myself included, probably end up spendingmore time watching netflix, so having a dedicated remote is nice. there also is a brand new controller, and this is an interesting looking controller. what? i get going for the sort of faceted look,
but it's such a weird choiceto not smooth out the grip. i mean, it actually doesn't feel bad. i really wasn't a big fan ofthe previous shield controller, so i do think this is an improvement. and i guess once you kind ofget it settled in your hands, you really don't notice, but that's such a unique call to do that. i don't know. i don't hate it.
it's definitely unique. at $200, the nvidia shield is an interesting value proposition. so for this kind of price, you could pick up a usedxbox 360 or ps3, and ton of terrific games. and on the flip side of things, a used xbox one or ps4 is not going to be that much more expensive.
now to be fair, you do havethat 4k and hdr support. honestly, especially on the media side, i think android tv pretty muchbeats all of the consoles, and it does have somefairly decent gaming chops with games that run natively, games that are specificallymade for shield, as well as things like geforce now, as well as streamingfrom your personal pc. but the real question is
how does all that stuffactually come together? something else that shield can do is play some party games. more specifically, jackbox. - [game host] arrange these_ [austin] oh no! - [man with black cap] holy (laughs) - [austin] there's a pure guess here. - [man with blue shirt] i have no idea. - [austin] i think i know.
- [game host] erniehas no eyebrows at all. - [man with black cap]i got it right! (laughs) - [game host] meet mcconadark ages - [man with blue cap] thisis the best thing ever. - [game host] follow the mcconamiddle ages - [man with black cap] yeah!- [austin] oh! i did not think i had that. what?- [man with black cap] yeah! oh! (laughs)
- it's okay buddy. - thanks guys for being in the video. really appreciated it. clearly the nvidia shield isthe ultimate party game device. inside, the shield is usingthe tegra x1 processor from its predecessor. while that might not seem like an upgrade, because it really isn't, most importantly, notonly is this more powerful
than any other streaming box out there, but it's still got a lot more horsepower than something like anxbox 360 or ps3. (upbeat electronic music) so one of the things that you can find on the shield is portal, and no, this is not somedumb down mobile version. this is a full port of theproper pc portal experience. when you think about it,
the shield really is about as powerful as a lot of the gaming pcs that were out at the time of portal's release. so, sure, you're not gettingthe full 4k ultra setup with mouse and keyboard, andall the kind of fun toys. but, to be honest, you'rereally not losing a lot either. it's pretty much the full experience. and especially if you'venever played portal before, it's definitely worth a look.
i make it? can i make it? oh yeah i can make it. there are also moretraditional android games such as real racing 3. now on the surface, yes, this is basically the same game that you can play on your phone. however, once you actuallyget it up on a big screen tv,
and you have this controller, it really does kind ofchange the experience. and speaking of thiscontroller, it's good. so you know at firsti was a little unsure, but after playing withit for a few minutes, it immediately jumps out to me as maybe not quite on par withsomething like the xbox one, which is definitely my sortof favorite controller out. it's really not far off.
the sticks are nicely weighted. the grips are nice. even the sort of hexagon shapedoesn't really bother me. there's also residentevil 5 for the shield, and as you can see, it's fun, and it's really easy to play, and i'm not dying a lot right now. this is a direct port of the xbox 360 and the ps3 version of the game,
and while it might not be the most technicallyadvanced game in 2017, it's decent if you have anyammo, which i currently don't. in addition to the nativetitles for the shield, you can also stream fullpc games using geforce now. now this very much is relianton your internet connection, but if you have a decent one, it can be a good way of adding a lot of titles to the shield.
while it might be a littlebit of an older game, the tomb raider rebootis still a lot of fun. and considering that we're running at 1080p ultimatesettings here on a pc, it does not look bad at all. so, i think one of the things that, especially in the earlydays of game streaming was a little bit sketchy was the latency, but it's actually not bad.
i wouldn't want to play call ofduty or battlefield on it, but if you're at somethingthat's a little bit more casual, it's completely usable. now there are plenty of geforce now games that you can pick from,including "no man's sky," so if you really wanna play "no man's sky" on your nvidia shield,that's totally an option. but there's a fewdifferent ways of doing it, whether you can actually subscribeand get a few free games,
or actually just purchase them, it might not be the greatest way of playing games in the world. however, if you have a desktoppc with a modern nvidia gpu, you can actually stream itover your local network. so games that you already have owned and you play on your gaming pc, you can use the shield to play on your tv. in addition to gaming, theshield makes a solid media box.
so on top of that 4k and hdr support, you have all of the staples like youtube and netflix and amazon, but on top of that, themultitasking is solid. so i can be playing a game,jump right back out to the menu, and you have additional thingssuch as google assistant, which is pretty much only found on the google pixel right now. there's a lot of coolstuff with the shield.
for $200, while the shield might not be the best upgrade if you havethe previous generation, it's still one of my favorite ways of streaming 4k video. and on the gaming side of things, that gamestream reallydoes make it useful if you do have a pc that's compatible. if not, while a lot ofthe games are interesting,
it's not quite compelling enoughto make it worth it for me.
you'd probably be better offjust picking up a console. but definitely be sure to letme know what you guys think in the comments below, and iwill catch you in the next one.
