Nvidia's 500 GB Shield Pro Now Available

[Guest]

If Shield's 16 GB of storage wasn't enough for you, Nvidia's Shield Pro, which contains 500 GB of storage, might be your best bet. Plus, it comes with a free game.

Nvidia's 500 GB Shield Pro Now Available : Read more

 

[deppman]

I've had my shield pro for 10 days already. The benefit of ordering direct from Nvidia I guess. Its a great kit, and a 500 Android device is pretty awesome!

 

[eklipz330]

I've had my shield pro for 10 days already. The benefit of ordering direct from Nvidia I guess. Its a great kit, and a 500 Android device is pretty awesome!

so it has a lot of space. care to explain why that's awesome?

 

[elbert]

I can only guess it has a 500GB HD to later sale it as a Steam OS console.

 

[TallestJon96]

I like the idea of the $200, 4k capable, better than an x360 set-top box, but at $300 it's best to get yourself a ps4, unless you already own a 4k TV.

 

[jaber2]

I've had my shield pro for 10 days already. The benefit of ordering direct from Nvidia I guess. Its a great kit, and a 500 Android device is pretty awesome!

so it has a lot of space. care to explain why that's awesome?

Me too, I would like to know what's awesome about shield

 

[TechyInAZ]

I've had my shield pro for 10 days already. The benefit of ordering direct from Nvidia I guess. Its a great kit, and a 500 Android device is pretty awesome!

so it has a lot of space. care to explain why that's awesome?

Me too, I would like to know what's awesome about shield

Me three!!

 

[stoned_ritual]

I can't see how this fills a void in the set top market. It isn't a console. It isn't a pc. It isn't solely a video device like a roku. This is basically the same thing as me plugging my tablet into my TV. Or chromecasting my tablet through my roku. Or plugging an hdmi cord into my pc.

 

[Fido_One]

I can't see how this fills a void in the set top market. It isn't a console. It isn't a pc. It isn't solely a video device like a roku. This is basically the same thing as me plugging my tablet into my TV. Or chromecasting my tablet through my roku. Or plugging an hdmi cord into my pc.

I disagree, I have had a shield portable, the tablet, and now the TV. Especially after the updates and the move to lollipop, there is nothing out on the market that touches this. Yes, Android TV needs a bit more TLC, but what is there now is a seamless, extraordinarily slick experience you can't get from other consoles. It makes the Roku look pale in comparison, and if you're using game-stream, it makes all consoles look lackluster as well.

At this point (not at the beginning) it's a super refined experience and Nvidia will continue to update it. I am lucky enough to have a computer with a Nvidia card (the initial reason I got the portable) , and it's crazy-fantastic for that purpose. I stream games from the Grid as well, sometimes even preferring the grid games over the ones on my rig as I can pick them up and go while on the road.

I never understood the whole OUYA thing, but I am starting to see it in the shield - there are some good android games out there, but NVIDIA has gotten some good controller support on a solid selection of android games which are a great addition to PC games as they're a bit more casual pick up and play things than you find on Steam.

So right now, I hit the game pad button, get voice recognition to the point that it blows everything else away, and can generally navigate to what I want a lot more intuitively than a PS4, tablet or XBone. And it's just rock solid - no jitters, no stuttering (okay, on a bad day a grid game does stutter a bit, but you'll quickly forget you're playing from the cloud and the graphics beat the snot out of PS4 and XBone).

The HomeRun benefit is actually quite good, as I'll be using it as a cable box in another part of the house when they upgrade for MPEG2 support.

So I see the shield TV as a great swiss army knife, something that I use everyday quite regularly, and I know that I haven't seen half of the neat stuff they have hidden underneath there.

Is it completely different than a Roku? Not really, but it is a helluva lot better. Think of it as a Roku 8 - the shield skipped 4-7 and set the bar higher. While I sound like a fanboy, I got into the shield as I couldn't run any solid HDMI signals in my house due to super long cat6 runs with some interference. The shield fixed all of that, and it essentially has allowed me to transport my 70 pound rig to any 1080p TV I want.

I can't comment on its 4k abilities as I don't have a 4k TV, but I wouldn't underestimate this device, I don't think any other set top box can touch this thing.

 

[somebodyspecial]

I've had my shield pro for 10 days already. The benefit of ordering direct from Nvidia I guess. Its a great kit, and a 500 Android device is pretty awesome!

so it has a lot of space. care to explain why that's awesome?

Games are already 2GB+ and these are NOT even aimed at K1, let alone X1, Vulkan etc and all made with PUNY storage in mind. You can copy some movies from the network and shutdown whatever they came from to play them too. There is much you can do when space isn't your issue. It won't be long (think next xmas, unreal 4/unity2.5 games etc) before we're talking 4-10GB mobile games and maybe even larger. There is a reason MS is now shipping a TB model this week right? Can you say FUTURE PROOF (at least as much as you can)?

I'm confused by your question. 16GB sucks, 500GB is awesome...LOL. DUH. If external storage is treated like most devices (a pain to get apps over there and act like internal storage) then 500GB out of the box is AWESOME. Not sure why they didn't just make it a 1 screw and you can install your own though at any size in 2.5in much like a laptop. It would seem to me that will sell far better, but I think they just really didn't want to sell the low end model at all, just had to due to price. They would rather have ALL units having storage as a NON issue for devs. So I kind of get why they made them so far apart, hopefully forcing a higher model purchase for most.

OF course it's a moot issue if a flash card works the same as the internal 500, or if USB storage works this way too, but we haven't heard that covered in depth yet.

Also the price of a hybrid 2.5in is $60 so basically this is the drive price + the $30 game. No big deal. Personally they should have sold for $269 sans game IMHO which would be $60+10 install I guess (or fee for different setup inside). They've said you can't install it after, so some portion of the $100 is due to a different internals or something (missing sata port in $200 models?). Or people could just crack it open and DIY. The $300 means nothing to me if I'm buying though, as it saves money for years on watts while playing movies (10w vs. consoles at 75-100w playing netflix etc) and games are not $60 a whack. Pile on grid for cheap gaming all year (even at $15/mo it's only the price of 3 console titles, poor people can't afford $60 each) for major hits and it's a great deal all around as the only 4K player also. If you're buying as an alternate to PC gaming also great as you can get your PC games to the TV with this. As a PC owner a console is no longer worth it, as I'd only buy for exclusives and play on the TV. If I can get my PC to the TV with this, use grid for games I can't afford and play android on top, I'm in and console free. X360 was my last console and purely bought for a few exclusives. Not even worth the price of admission today IMHO. My xbox collection is basically non-existent. What a waste if you have a PC and too expensive if you're poor as the price of games adds up quick. I'd rather buy top android games for $2-10. If you weren't one of the few million that bought games like bard's tale (~40hrs of gameplay), icewind dale (enhanced), baldur's gate 1+2 (80hrs + each, now enhanced graphics) etc android is a cheap treat. All the final fantasy games etc, and ports galore on the way.

Most titles don't sell more than 10mil total, so there's a BILLION gamers who have never seen this stuff which is great for devs to collect again on old IP that pays the way for new IP stuff. There's a ton of games I never got to years ago, and am glad to pay $2-10 for enhanced graphics editions today...LOL. Today for $60 you rarely get more than 10-15hrs of fun (unless rpg or strategy). I'll take android pricing for older hits please...ROFL. I hate steam (and have no account) so if it's not on gog for an old title I'll take android if available and play on the TV.

Either way, if you're buying 16GB model, you'll be wanting more shortly if you're much of a gamer. With 5-7 top games you're already tapped out.

 

[deppman]

I've had my shield pro for 10 days already. The benefit of ordering direct from Nvidia I guess. Its a great kit, and a 500 Android device is pretty awesome!

so it has a lot of space. care to explain why that's awesome?

Me too, I would like to know what's awesome about shield

Me three!!

Having a half terabyte of fast hybrid storage on an Android TV device is unprecedented. No more shuffling around to make space for apps and data. Sorry, but I find that pretty awesome - and appropriate - for the Shield Android TV. I have the original Shield portable and I know first hand that 16GB is a PITA, even with stellar SD card support. There are some apps that will only install on primary storage, so after just a few AAA titles and space runs out. 0.5 TB primary eliminates the problem.

The pro version is a much better product IMO. First it comes with $60 of goodies (borderlands presequel, $30 play store credits), so if you use those freebes, the price delta is only $40. For our family and devices the Android ecosystem makes the most sense. With 500GB of internal storage, excellent 4K support, and outstanding performance, this version is pretty future-proofed and blows away fireTV, Roku, and AppleTV. I'm excited by the OGL/Vulkan titles coming to SATV, GRID has been getting really good, and being able to migrate numerous titles from our touch devices to the big screen has resulted very happy and occupied children for 0 marginal dollars.

Yeah, I know some would say for just $150 more or so I could get a dedicated xbone or ps4. But those aren't compelling to me because the don't do 4K, they have closed (albeit rich) ecosystems, and they don't have GRID. To get the same variety of entertainment options we already have on SATV on the xbone, for example, we would need to buy ~ $2,700 of games just for the GRID titles alone (45 AAA games * $60 each); and replacing the Android casual and AAA games would cost at least hundreds more. I see the use of GRID as part of a virtuous cycle, where people will try games, and then NV will help port popular titles to Android for people who know they want it. This has already happened with Borderlands, and I expect it to continue.

Also, I don't think the performance delta to current gen consoles is as great as some people think: Maxwell is very good at tessellation, for example, and probably exceeds the capabilities of both consoles in that area. So some games may actually run faster on the SATV.

As always, YMMV. For me, it was an easy choice.

 

[somebodyspecial]

I can't see how this fills a void in the set top market. It isn't a console. It isn't a pc. It isn't solely a video device like a roku. This is basically the same thing as me plugging my tablet into my TV. Or chromecasting my tablet through my roku. Or plugging an hdmi cord into my pc.

Roku - no 4K, no storage, useless for gaming (same with nexus). Format support for usb sucks, so useless for that too.
Console $60 games...nuff said
PC - not easy to get to your TV as most don't have it in the same room (this solves that). I don't know anyone with their gaming rig in the living room with the big screen.

Your tablet is probably 1/2 the gpu power (or worse) than this X1 tegra. This is faster than xbox360/ps3 by far, and games coming for future socs (once massive units at 14nm/10nm are X1 gpu levels on billions of units) will run great on this for years. At 14nm a few hundred million will instantly be able to play X1 level gpu stuff. First 1/2 2017 a BILLION will ship with X1 levels (even low end 10nm will be X1 levels) and devs will massively target that audience. Your device will be useless correct? This device is the poor mans great gamer/streamer, or the rich man's add-on to his PC (or even middle class users add-on to his/her PC). It serves MANY markets this way.

GRID gaming. FREE today, and soon to be probably the cheapest way to get massive amounts of gaming even when it goes subscription assuming a price of $15 or less (likely $15 for 1080, <$10 for 720, maybe free for a while who knows). Just 3 console titles will cost you $180 and you'll likely blow through those in weeks or less. Some games are 10-15hrs for $60. I'd rather have access to 50 and counting for that price and a whole year to play them and the price may be less. IF you have a kid or two this is awesome alone. The GRID servers can constantly be upgraded POWER wise by NV as needed for gaming far beyond xbox1/ps4 or even many PC's as time marches on. A small monthly fee can avoid a $500 vid card and constantly adds new games in the same fee. It would take a few years of grid fees to cover even a $300 card. A dirt poor person could see this as just the $200 option and GRID for life vs. PC+4K set top box or bluray player. Of course cheap android games on top too. You can stream your whole PC library to this.

I don't see how anyone can say there isn't value here vs. other units already (and grid+4K will only get BETTER with more games+more 4K content). I can't wait for a 14nm HBM model or maybe they'll wait for 10nm for rev2 since that's merely Q1 2017 and might have HBM2 then easily/cheap at that point as all gpu cards will shift to it bringing costs down. Either way I can't see Xbox1/ps4's value as constant revs will just kill these with HBM coming up. Can you imagine an HBM model with two 14nm or 10nm Tegras inside? This next rev box will be the ultimate console killer IMHO. It's just a question of if it happens at 14nm or 10nm, but surely NV will do it. No point in not doing it once you can slap HBM1/HBM2 inside with massive bandwidth exposed and a 2nd chip is not more than another $20-30 for NV (they get it at cost here, T4 was made for well below $20, not sure about K1/X1 but can't be more than $25-30). I can't wait for rev2...ROFL. Xbox1/PS4 have less than 200GB/s total bandwidth (roughly overall tough to gage MS edram in there) and HBM1 blows this away, never mind HBM2. With another die shrink of the memory you might even get a 500-1TB SSD inside instead too. It would be extremely hard to sell a xbox1/ps4 in 2017 if they put out a dual chip HBM box. Vulkan will be in that box too and supported everywhere in all engines. This box would probably be the first 8K box too...LOL. Not that an 8K TV (or content) is on my horizon... Hopefully you see the difference.

 

[soldier44]

Still waiting on the first mainstream 4k tablet to hit with good specs to run it.

 

[beshonk]

Storage is a non issue. I stream my media content from my pc with kodi, and I have a 64 gb sd card in there for games. Down the road as games get bigger, I can plug in a USB hard drive that Android m is rumored to allow me to set it to behave like internal storage. 16gb is easy to work with.

 

[Fido_One]

Storage is a non issue. I stream my media content from my pc with kodi, and I have a 64 gb sd card in there for games. Down the road as games get bigger, I can plug in a USB hard drive that Android m is rumored to allow me to set it to behave like internal storage. 16gb is easy to work with.

As someone else pointed out, this isn't as easy as one thinks with Android, even Android 5.1. A hell of a lot better than it was 2 years ago, but you still have only a 75% success ratio in getting apps over to another form of storage. If you're running emulators, you're kind of boned unless you get a 80+ read/write mbps microSDXC card, which is at the moment limited to 64 GB (they may have a 128 GB now). Even then you can see some sort of performance hit on some games.

And sometimes 'moving' an android app to external storage still keeps a good bit on the device internally if you like it or not. There are more than a couple of programs out there that you have to root to move to the external storage as they're flagged as unmovable, and while you can get them over to external storage with some heavy wrangling, the chances of those apps working aren't so great.

I'll believe the Android M thing re: internal storage when it comes, I believed the 'move your apps to the external storage' thing until I tried it out and saw how much of a mess it is.

For now, the 500 GB model makes perfect sense to me, I'd wait [a year? two years?] until people report back that the external storage is seamless if you're banking on having more than 16GB from the non-pro model that is worry-free.

 

[captaincharisma]

500GB is great but considering PS4 and xbone users have complained 500GB is not enough space since you have to install almost every game. this is also considering the PS4 and xbone also have their games mainly on optical media to relieve some of the HDD spaceand this devices external media is iffy on how it will work