When it arrived in 2014, the original Shield was a seriously
powerful gaming tablet that packed in a lot of extra value if you happened to
own an Nvidia graphics card. Unfortunately, a battery overheating issue forced
the company to recall a large number of tablets, and eventually withdraw it
from sale completely. The Shield Tablet is now back as the K1, a facelifted
version with a battery that won't blow up unexpectedly.
·
What’s changed?
Battery aside, the differences
between the K1 and the original Shield Tablet are mostly skin deep. You’d be
hard pushed to spot the difference between the two; the K1 has a silver Shield
logo on the rear rather than a shiny black one, the edges of the tablet are
matte, rather than shiny, and the speaker grilles have a rubberised finish,
rather than the plastic seen on the original. The ports, buttons and speakers
are all in the same places too.
You don’t get a stylus with the K1,
but while gamers are unlikely to miss it, anyone wanting to sketch or take
notes can buy Nvidia’s DirectStylus separately for £15. There’s no docking
mechanism to store it inside the tablet, however. There’s also no power adaptor
in the box, which helps keep costs down. You’re almost guaranteed to have a
micro USB cable lying around the house, but unless you have a 2A charger it
could take a while to refuel the tablet once it runs out of juice. If you
insist on having an Nvidia-branded cable and charger, you can pick up the pair
for £18. There have been a few cost-cutting changes inside, too, simplifying the
range by ditching the 4G LTE modem and the 32GB storage option. The K1 is only
available in a 16GB, Wi-Fi only configuration. There’s still a microSD card
slot for adding extra capacity, and when Android Marshmallow arrives it will be
far better at handling external storage than Lollipop is at present.
· Android Marshmallow
Nvidia's stayed true
to its promise of regular Android updates for its Shield devices updating the
Shield Tablet K1 to version 6.0 Marshmallow. It was a bit of a tumultuous
update process with the company temporarily halting the roll out due to Wi-Fi
bugs introduced in an earlier version. The good news is that those problems
have seemingly been fixed, so you should expect the update to arrive in due
course.
One of the more important updates that Marshmallow
brings is better management of external storage. Now when you add a microSD
card, the operating system can more effectively integrate it with the internal
storage, essentially treating them both as one and the same. On top of this,
Nvidia has updated the Camera app with a new design that takes inspiration from
Google's Material design language.
Other Marshmallow
additions, such as Google Now On Tap, are also now introduced. Importantly, the
update also brings with it support for the Vulkan API, which provides more efficient access to the
Shield Tablet K1's graphics hardware. There are other plenty of smaller bug and
performance fixes, too, including better power management so it's worth
checking if the update has been rolled out to your device.
· Performance
The K1 is almost
identical to the original Shield tablet. It has the same Nvidia Tegra K1
quad-core processor running at 2.2GHz, 2GB of RAM and the incredibly fast
Kepler SMX GPU, which made the original such a potent gaming machine. The
Shield's chip is slightly different to the one found in Google’s Nexus 9, which
is dual-core and 64-bit, but in practice there’s little performance difference
between the two tablets.
A Peacekeeper
browser benchmark score of 1,148 is on par with Samsung’s £400 Galaxy Tab S2, which
helps make web browsing feel very fluid and responsive. GeekBench 3 single- and
multi-core scores of 1,142 and 3,554 are also among the fastest we’ve seen from
an 8in Android tablet, which helps Android 6.0 Marshmallow animate, open apps
and multi-task smoothly.
With near-identical hardware, it was no surprise that
the K1 turned in almost the exact same battery life score as the original
Shield Tablet. At 12 hours 39 minutes, it’s among the better 8in tablets, but
still falls slightly behind Samsung’s Galaxy Tab S2 and Lenovo Yoga Tab 3,
which both managed over 14 hours. Even so, you’ll get a full day of use from
the K1, and should manage over five hours when playing graphically intensive
games.
· Gaming
The Kepler GPU is one of the most powerful tablet
graphics chips around, so it should come as no surprise that it excelled in the
GFXBench GL Manhattan tests. Scores of 1801 (or 29fps) in the onscreen test and
1961 (or 32fps) in the offscreen test are second only to the iPad Air 2.
There’s simply no other Android devices that are as fast. It shows in games
like Blizzard’s Hearthstone, with battle animations looking incredibly smooth.
As a Shield device, the K1 includes access to Nvidia’s
GeForce Now and GameStream services. The former provides unlimited access to 50
PC games, streamed from the cloud to your tablet, for £7.49 a month. The
selection is mostly limited to older titles, with newer games like the Witcher
3 available separately at a premium, although they justify the extra cost by
including a Good Old Games or Steam key for offline play.
GameStream is the free alternative that uses a PC
equipped with an Nvidia graphics card to stream your games library locally over
a wireless network. It works brilliantly if you have powerful enough hardware;
Nvidia suggests a GeForce GTX 650 or higher desktop graphics card or a GeForce
GTX 800M laptop GPU as the minimum for uninterrupted play. A dual-band 802.11n
router is also recommended for 1080p streaming. It’s frustrating that Nvidia
hasn’t added 802.11ac, but this was missing from the original tablet so it’s
not a surprise to find it absent here too.
A controller, like the optional
Shield Tablet Wireless Controller (£50, www.ebuyer.com), is essential
for serious gaming. It connects via Wi-Fi direct rather than Bluetooth for
lower latency, and for up to four-controller multiplayer gaming on a single
tablet. The Xbox-style layout makes it ideal for console ports, but the built-in
touchpad and volume control buttons are handy for mobile-focused titles too. A
headset jack and integrated microphone let you use Android’s voice-operated
features too.
· Display and sound
It appears Nvidia has used the same display panel in
the K1 as it did for the original Shield Tablet; both have a 1,920x1,200
resolution and relatively high pixel density of 283ppi. An sRGB colour gamut
coverage of 79.2% was above average when the Shield first launched, but in a
£150 tablet it’s a very respectable score indeed. Black levels remain rather
high at 0.4cd/m2, and a contrast ratio of 823:1 wasn’t particularly high, but
an above average maximum brightness of 434cd/m2 gives photos and videos plenty
of punch.
Importantly, viewing angles are excellent, and while
not earth-shattering, the panel is easily one of the best you’ll get in a £150
Android tablet.
The side-firing stereo speakers are still some of the
best we’ve heard from a tablet, producing a clear mid-range and relatively
crisp trebles. There’s even some semblance of bass presence, and stereo
separation was noticeable in films and TV. You won’t need to reach for a pair
of headphones for YouTube or Twitch videos, either, as the speakers are
impressively loud.
· Camera
The 5-megapixel cameras on the front and back produce
fairly respectable images outdoors where there’s lots of light. Saturation is
reasonable, but they were a little soft. The HDR mode left images looking a
little washed-out, and there was still a lack of sharpness. The front-facing
camera works surprisingly well indoors and in low light, as would be the most
likely situation when streaming game commentary using the Shield’s Twitch
integration.
Hardware
|
|
Processor
|
Quad-core
2.2GHz Nvidia Tegra K1
|
RAM
|
2GB
|
Screen size
|
8in
|
Screen resolution
|
1,920x1,200
|
Screen type
|
IPS
|
Front camera
|
5 megapixels
|
Rear camera
|
5 megapixels
|
Flash
|
No
|
GPS
|
Yes
|
Compass
|
Yes
|
Storage (free)
|
16GB
|
Memory card slot (supplied)
|
MicroSD (none)
|
Wi-Fi
|
802.11n dual-band
|
Bluetooth
|
4.0
|
NFC
|
No
|
Wireless data
|
No
|
Dimensions
|
221x9.2x126mm
|
Weight
|
390g
|
Features
|
|
Operating system
|
Android 6.0 Marshmallow
|
Battery size
|
5,197mAh
|
Specifications
Processor: Quad-core 2.2GHz Nvidia Tegra K1
Screen size: 8in
Screen resolution: 1,920x1,200
Rear camera: 5 megapixels
Storage (free): 16GB
Wireless data: N
,Dimensions:
221x9.2x126mm
Weight: 390g
Operating system: Android 6.0 Marshmallow
!
Zakaria Jabri
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