The Ultimate Gaming Portable: NVIDIA SHIELD Review

Are you a portable gamer that’s tired of the restrictions that bog down most handhelds? Based on Android, NVIDIA’s SHIELD portable helps fix that problem. At the same time, it even goes a step further to improve the gamepad solution. At $300, SHIELD is on the pricier side – but is it worth it?

You know that feeling of when you’re certain a new product was made just for you? That’s what I felt when NVIDIA announced its SHIELD portable at CES earlier this year. In fact, I had nightmares in the weeks that followed because I swore a product manager had been reading my mind (the scare came from wondering what else they stumbled on).

I’m a big gamer, but not a big mobile gamer. Well, not until SHIELD came along. I’m the type of PC gamer who couldn’t imagine preferring a gamepad for a first-person shooter, and likewise, I couldn’t imagine doing much gaming with a touchscreen. I’ve tried – believe me – but the stint never lasted for long (save for the simplest of games).

NVIDIA’s SHIELD looked to fix all of what made mobile wrong for me. I wanted a gamepad. I didn’t want to have to connect a tablet to a dock and then a USB dongle to that and then use a gamepad. I also didn’t want to be locked into a limited-use device, or one that has a limited selection of games, a la PS Vita or Nintendo 3DS. SHIELD was the solution to those problems.

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