Nvidia Shield Android Tv 4K HDR Streaming Media Player, Dolby Vision, Google Assistant Built-In, Works With Alexa

Bought this sucker specifically for streaming games, and it works great. It was more of an experiment with pleasant results. The great thing about the Shield TV for that purpose is that the hardware doesn’t matter, it’s all about network speeds. So whether you’re streaming from your $2,000 gaming PC or using GeForce Now to take advantage of one of Nvidia’s $12,000 gaming rigs, your network speeds will determine how well that works for you.

For local streaming it’s all about local area network. If you’re rocking a modern router with anywhere from 100 – 1,000 Mbps throughput, you’re sitting pretty. For GeForce Now, they suggest 50+ Mbps download speed on your Internet. I also suggest that you have a ping of less than 100 ms to the nearest Nvidia server, but you can’t find that out until you connect to the service. I also suggest connecting to your network directly via Ethernet. Nvidia says that 5Ghz WiFi is sufficient, but nothing beats the bandwidth of good ol’ Cat 5/6 cable.

I’ll talk about direct PC streaming in a second, but let’s touch on picture quality and latency of GeForce Now first. The quality is amazing. Since the game is running on hardware that would cost us between $12,000 – $15,000 the limited library of games (around 500 games that you must already own on Steam, Epic, Uplay and Battle.net) run on ultra settings at 1080p and 60 frames per second. If the games use raytracing then that runs as well. A bit of a caveat: the overall picture quality relies on your connection speed. Slower speeds may get some blur and artifactIng. If you run a gigabit connection, you’re laughing.

Latency is nearly unnoticeable. Competitive online games like Overwatch, Destiny, CoD and Tekken 7 are perfectly enjoyable for casual – intermediate gaming. Pro players may bulk at the latency, but how many of us are actually making a living in competitive gaming? Single player / co-op games are fantastic. Games like Metro Exodus, Tomb Raider, Doom (2016) and The Division 2 have invisible latency. The way Nvidia does this is ingenious, the server runs the game at 120 FPS while sending you the stream at 60 FPS, so instead of the server catching up to your inputs, your inputs are syncing up with the stream, which makes your feedback seem instantaneous.

The Shield TV seems made for GeForce Now and was a great investment for that alone.

The shield also streams games locally from your PC using Steam Link. This is done to a fault. The benefit to Steam’s streaming service is that this allows you the ability of playing your unlimited library of steam games on any screen in any room. The downside is that Steam Link’s latency is fairly apparent, especially when you go from 5-20 ms from playing on your rig to nearly 50-100 ms playing over lan. This isn’t the shield’s fault, it’s inherent to Steam’s service. Not to mention if you have limited hardware in the first place, a sit back experience is not going to change the fact that your PC can only run FTL and solitaire. Still, if you have a favorite PC game you’d rather play on a big screen in a different room that isn’t offered on Nvidia’s streaming service, the shield offers a great solution via Steam Link.

As for all the video streaming, it runs all the services a smart TV, Apple TV, Amazon Fire and Roku runs. Netflix, Google Movies, Prime Video, Disney+, etc. So, if you’re buying this thing just for that there are quicker, cheaper and easier solutions. Admittedly, The shield offers better 4K streaming than some of the other devices. This device is really meant for those services PLUS gaming. Gaming accomplished via streaming and android games, but mostly streaming.

Edit: Since this review was written Blizzard Activision no longer stream on GeForce Now. This includes Overwatch and all CpD games.

It’s great for streaming videos but is not powerful enough to stream games. If it’s to stream games, buy the pro version. NVIDIA has very weak technical support, they couldn’t guide me through the internet speed test lol I knew how. I was able to test it at my friend’s place and didn’t work. He had the 2017 version and it worked fine on the same internet connection with the exact same game. They sent me a replacement and it did the exact same thing.