Nvidia Shield Tablet Unveiling July 22

With the Nvidia Shield Tablet seeing an official announcement on July 22, it’s time for a roundup of all the latest developments.

(UPDATED: Nvidia Shield Tablet started taking orders on July 22.
http://www.amazon.com/NVIDIA-940-81761-2500-000-SHIELD-Tablet/)

The NVIDIA Tegra Shield is a gaming tablet in two parts; the tablet called SHIELD Tablet and the controller, called SHIELD Controller, which then becomes an extension of the SHIELD family.

The release date is said to be July 29 in the US and August 14 in Europe, with one week of pre-orders ahead of the release, with a price of $299 for the Wi-Fi version and $399 for the 4G LTE version.

What you get is an 8-inch Android 4.4 KitKat tablet with the gaming-happy quad-core processor Tegra K1 at 2.2GHz with 192 GPU cores. You get 2GB of RAM, 16GB of storage on the Wi-Fi version and 32GB on the 4G LTE version (with 128GB microSD card expansion support), and Full HD resolution of 1920 x 1200 through a LCD IPS display.

NVIDIA SHIELD Tablet and controller
NVIDIA SHIELD Tablet and controller

Furthermore you get an included DirectStylus 2 with 3D Paint, front facing stereo speakers, a 5MP front camera for twitch streaming and a 5MP rear camera, both with HDR auto focus, 802.11 a/b/g/n Wi-FI, Bluetooth 4.0 LE, GPS, GLONASS, mini-HDMI and micro-USB 2.0 ports.

The 19.75 Whr battery is given an 10 hour average battery life with video playback, though battery life will naturally vary a lot depending on how heavy gaming this tablet might get to see.

The thickness is 9.2 mm which is pretty average for 8-inch Android tablets, with a weight of 390 gram, which is decent considering the large battery. It’s not called SHIELD for nothing, so the tablet have an integrated magnesium thermal shield to keep it from spreading heat too much to the bezel.

The SHIELD Controller connects via Wi-Fi, which is said to be much faster in responding than Bluetooth, have its own microphone and headphone jack, micro-USB 2.0, and the controllers you see in the image. The controller is priced at $59.

In addition, there’s another accessory that would be very handy, and that’s the SHIELD Cover, which costs $39, and should make for a practical stand for the tablet.

This is only the second tablet to be released with the new NVIDIA Tegra K1 processor after the recently released Xiaomi Mi Pad, which was even cheaper, at $240.

But at $299 the price for the SHIELD Tablet is pretty good too, so I imagine this tablet to become popular among gamers and many others too, unless any shortcomings surface once it gets reviewed and tested. But among gaming tablets this is the biggest happening since the Intel i7 with 8GB RAM powered Razer Edge tablets.

NVIDIA SHIELD Tablet
NVIDIA SHIELD Tablet
NVIDIA SHIELD Tablet
NVIDIA SHIELD Tablet
NVIDIA SHIELD Tablet
NVIDIA SHIELD Tablet
NVIDIA SHIELD Tablet
NVIDIA SHIELD Tablet

– Tom Bowen