This initiative has three prongs: native and optimized Android games, Steam game streaming, and the GeForce Now cloud service. If you’re into gaming, that is - basically all of Nvidia’s software efforts are concentrated around building a premium gaming experience atop Android. It’s a mercifully clean build, too - the software is almost untouched save for a few preloaded Nvidia apps, most of which you’ll actually want. You’re still dealing with stretched-out phone apps, but at least on the Shield they’re not blown up to the ridiculous degree that you’d see on something like the Pixel C.Īpart from the Pixel C and Google’s own Nexus devices, the Shield is one of the only tablets out there running the latest version of Android Marshmallow. It’s big enough to offer a meaningfully different experience over even a giant phone like the Nexus 6P, but small enough to mitigate the fact that Android still just doesn’t feel all that great on a tablet. And, at least until Google sorts out serious multitasking for its OS, eight inches is the right size for an Android tablet. Now I use a big phone, so tablets need to do more to justify their existence to me. I bought that Fire HDX (and the Nexus 7 it replaced) in an age where I used a tiny phone.
The Shield Tablet has an 8-inch 1920 x 1200 display, and it does make a difference next to the 7-inch screens that were table stakes for Android tablets years ago. It’s not quite as contrasty or vibrant as the 7-inch Kindle Fire HDX I keep by my bed for emergency Netflix, but it does have one big advantage: size. The display is any tablet’s defining feature, of course, and the Shield has a decent one. Eight inches is the right size for an Android tablet I’m not crazy about the way it picks up fingerprints, and the mushy power button is a little too difficult to press, but beyond that there really isn’t that much to even say about the Shield Tablet’s generic design. It’s a generic black rectangle covered in soft-touch rubber line it up against the wall with a Nexus 7 and a bunch of other competitors and you’d have a hard time identifying the criminal. The Shield Tablet couldn’t be more unassuming.