NVIDIA Shield TV Review
The Tech Like This team are going to be taking a look at the NVIDIA shield Android TV to see if it would still be worth picking one up for emulation 4k video playback native android gaming or cloud gaming now these are still going for 199 dollars we get 16 gigabytes of internal storage and it comes with one of my favorite additions to the shield line their new remote unfortunately they don’t sell these with controllers anymore but you can always pair any kind of Bluetooth controller, personally i use an Xbox one controller but a ps4 or a ps5 controller should pair right up with it and even though they’re calling this the pro model itonly comes with 16 gigabytes of internal storage but i always use a USB drive this is a 128 gigabyte Sandisk USB drive and mainly what i store on this are extra movies and roms.
About NVIDIA Shield
For our emulators the internal 16 gigabytes on the unit itself has been plenty for all of the apps i want to install be it uh native android games all of my streaming apps and emulators I’ve really never run out of space with that and that’s all because i use external storage when it but you know the basic hardware has pretty much been the same since the original NVIDIA shield TV was released we’ve got that Tegra x1 CPU with three gigabytes of ram so in this video we’re gonna see how it holds up in 2022 and by the end of this video it’ll give you a good idea if it’s still worth picking up so with all that out of the way let’s go ahead and jump right into it all right so a lot hasn’t really changed with the interface here but one major thing has been added and that’s ads something that a lot of users really didn’t like personally, i’m not a big fan of it this is a 200 device i don’t think we should have ads up front here now there are ways around it you can install a third-party launcher you can disable google play services but then you’re going to run into some apps that just won’t work without google play services enabled this has really been added to all devices that use google tv but you know i really do think that NVIDIA and google drop the ball here given that this is such an expensive device when it comes to android tv boxes the chrome cast with google tv comes in at around what this is a 200 device i really don’t think we need ads up front now when it comes down to it first and foremost thisis a 4k media device this is for consuming media from your favorite apps HBO, Go, HULU, Showtime, Netflix, Youtube and it does 4k video playback really well whether you’re streaming or natively playing from a hard drive usb drive oreven a nas and the pro model which we have here can actually be turned into a plex server if you go with the non-promodel you can still use plex but it can’t be turned into a server so what i have running here is youtube 4k 60fpsone of my old go-to videos to test here we’ve got zero drop frames so far and ican let this play through all the wayeven on wi-fi and not get any drop frames 4k 60. i’ve always had really good luck with the nvidia shields and 4kvideo playback and now we’re actually getting some cheaper devices that do 4kpretty well like the s905 x4 android boxes i’ve had really good luck with those but for the past few years this has really been the go-to device if you so streaming works out really well with basically any app that supports 4k and even native playback 4k 60 HDR this is actually running from a 128 gigabyte usb drive plugged into one of the three usb when it comes to native android tv gaming.
NVIDIA Shield Vs Devices
the market has really been stagnant i mean we have the same games that we had when this thing launched there are some games that work on this box that don’t work on others like half-life 2 it’s a native port for NVIDIA shield borderlands 2 and the pre-sequel have also been ported over to this and they do work really well on the Nvidia shield TV but you know we haven’t got anything really new in a while and it’s very stagnant when it comes to native android gaming on these tv boxes so the next best thing would be cloud gaming and this does come with GeForce now i’m a huge fan of it I’ve been subscribed for a while and this will allow you to play some really awesome pc games on this without pc hardware it also supports stadia you can actually download it directly from the google play store if you want to stream fromyour own pc in the house or out of thehouse you could go with steam link ormoonlight but one of my favorite thingsto use on these android devices is xboxcloud gaming it used to be known asxcloud and you will have to sideloadthis but it is fully working here i’mgoing to go ahead and start up forzahorizon 5 and whenever i do any kind ofcloud gaming i always plug in over ethenet just makes the experience much better, you don’t get the cleanest picture likeyou would with geforce now or stadia but in my opinion this is playable unfortunately they haven’t done any kind of upscaling with the android tv version or even the android version of xcloud yet hopefully that comes down the road something to clean up the edges a bitbut it does work as you can see hereso it’s still great for game streaming and 4k video playback but you know oneof the main reasons i always used the shield in the past was for emulation sowhat i want to do now is just check outsome of our favorite emulators running on the shield in 2022 we’re going tostart off light here with ds we’re going to use the drastic emulator and thisshould work just fine here the drasticemulator is really the best ds emulatorthat you can get for android and we’llgo ahead and load up astro boy herejust start the game and i’ll get rightwith this setup here as you can see ihave the dual screens going but it’salready set up for your controller so ifyou press r3 or in on your right analogstick it’ll bring up a single screenthat way we have a bigger screen for awhen it comes to emulation on the shieldtv you’re going to be good to go withall the lower end stuff nes pc engineneo geo you want to do some fba cps onetwo and three is gonna work just finesnes game boy game boy advance and asyou can see ds here and it also does areally good job with the higher endemulators but this chip is getting a bitdated let’s go ahead and move over todreamcast i’m going to be using thestandalone version of redream hereand this is available from the googleplay store on the shield you don’t haveto sideload anything here this is segarally championship 2 we’re at 1280 by960 running at full speed fps is up inthe top left hand corner i prefer usingthe redream emulator on the nvidiashield but when it comes down to it youcould always use flycast in retro archor a standalone version it’s really upnext on the list the shield definitelyhas you covered with n64 emulation youcan use retro arch with the moo pin corei prefer using the mupin 64 plus fzstandalone emulator from the google playstore we’ve got goldeneye 007 i amupscaled a bit here and it’s runninggreat i mean this is fully playable inwhen it comes to psp emulation on thenvidia shield i’ve always had a littlebit of struggle with the god of wargames here’s chains of olympus and withthis i did have to turn a couple hackson and we’re only at 1x resolution whenit comes to some other easier to emulategames you can go all the way up to 4xwhether you want to use vulcan or openglbut with these harder to emulate gamesyou might have to stick it down to 1xwith opengl and you know with all of theupdates to the app itself and theoperating system i figured i’d be goodto go with vulkan on this game but i didhave to go to opengl even at 1x withvulcan i was still getting a lot ofand the final thing i wanted to show offhere was a little bit of gamecubeemulation using the dolphin emulator ipersonally download the developmentbuilds from the official website andsideload them some games are going torun at full speed on this device butwhen you get up to the harder to emulatestuff like automotive and even f-zeroit’s just not gonna do it when it comesto the tegra x1 and 2022 on the gpu sideof things for gpu performance it’s stilla great performer but if we take a lookat the cpu performance side of thislittle chip here it’s not even comingclose to some of the mid-range chipsthat have been released in the last fewso i can only get geekbench 4 to installand run on the shield i can’t even getgeekbench 5 to install on this butsingle core 1433 on the shield tv multi4010 when we take a look at the googlepixel 4a which has the snapdragon 730so when it comes to cpu performance thesnapdragon 730 has the tegra x1 beat andtaking a look at gpu performance for3dmark slingshot xtreme on the shield tvon the pixel 4a we only got a 2481so the tegra x1 is still rocking thatgpu performance but you know with a lotof these newer emulators cpu is reallyso should you buy one in 2022 well itreally all depends i mean if you’vealready got a tv that does pretty good4k video playback from your favoriteapps then you should be good to goreally what we need here is a new nvidia shield tv for 2022. i’ve recommendedthis device for a very long time andstill to this day i think it is the beststandalone android tv box that you canpurchase but with all of these newadditions to the on-screen ads andthings like that it might make you thinktwice about picking one up in 2022 butthat’s gonna wrap it up for this video ireally appreciate you watching if you’restill interested in picking up an nvidia shield tv click here.
