Nvidia Shield Tablet aims to be the ultimate 8-inch Android gaming tablet: $299, available July 29 (hands-on)

Remember the Nvidia Shield, that crazy Android gaming handheld with PC-streaming support? Nvidia has a follow-up, and it’s not a handheld at all…it’s an 8-inch Android tablet. But it plays games with separate controllers, connects to a TV, and aims to be the next generation of tablet-meets-console hybrid mobile gaming.

Can a gaming tablet also be a TV-connected micro-console? This is a question Razer asked over a year ago with the Razer Edge, a PC handheld-slash-game system that morphed into various forms. Nvidia has dreamt up a similar idea with the Shield Tablet, an eight-inch Android handheld packed with Nvidia’s latest Tegra K1 graphics chip. Unlike last year’s handheld Nvidia Shield game device, the Shield Tablet’s a tablet, not a game controller with a screen attached: it pairs with optional wireless game controllers, and can even be connected to a TV for console-style gaming while sitting on the sofa. Starting at $299 and £239.99, it’ll be available in the U.S. and Canada on July 29 and Europe on August 14, and other places worldwide after that, with pre-orders starting today.

CNET had a chance to get hands-on time with the new Nvidia Shield Tablet both in San Francisco and New York, and it seems like a killer 8-inch tablet with a lot of upside as a gaming device. Whether or not it rises up and becomes a destination for great games depends on how quickly developers will take to working the Tegra K1 graphics inside.

Design: yes, it’s a tablet

Why a tablet? That’s the question I first had when I saw the Shield Tablet: after all, the first Shield boldly proposed grafting an Android 5-inch screen onto a regular game controller for something that felt very different. The Shield Tablet looks a lot more conventional. But that’s also a smart move: the Shield handheld isn’t going anywhere according to Nvidia: it will receive new software updates, and could even get a hardware refresh in the future. The tablet is a lot more practical. It’s a showcase for some pretty amazing mobile graphics, but it’s also a decently-priced ultraportable tablet. This will probably make a lot of people ask whether this is meant to be a gaming handheld, a console, or a tablet. The answer, I think, is clear: it’s a tablet. It just has a lot of skills in the other areas, too.

The Shield Tablet weighs 13.7 ounces and is .36 inches thick: it’s not the lightest or thinnest, but you certainly don’t feel like you’re sacrificing size for graphics. It’s as compact as any other 8-inch tablet, for the most part.

It’s a design that’s not too different from the Tegra Note 7, Nvidia’s first tablet that debuted back in November and was intended as an affordable gaming tablet. Both have a stylus, too, albeit a passive one.

A sleek matte finish and front-firing stereo speakers lend the Shield Tablet a clean, striking look, while avoiding too many extra flourishes. The Shield Tablet cover, which costs $39/£24.99 separately, folds back into a stand for gaming, or at an elevated angle like Apple’s iPad Smart Cover. You don’t get the cover or Nvidia’s new Wi-Fi Direct-enabled Shield game controller ($59/£49.99 extra) with the Shield Tablet, but you do get that stylus, which slides into the tablet’s housing. A pretty robust pre-installed painting app features some impressive graphics-accelerated 3D paint effects: it’s clear that Nvidia wants people to appreciate the power of the included processor.

Specs: It’s all about the K1

The Nvidia Shield Tablet is the first tablet to show off the Tegra K1, a far more powerful graphics processor than last year’s Tegra 4. The Tegra K1 offers benchmark performance, according to Nvidia, that blow far past tablets like the iPad Air or Samsung Galaxy Tab Pro 8.4. The Tegra K1 processor has a 192-core Kepler GPU plus a 2.2 GHz quad-core A15 processor, and 2GB of RAM. We haven’t had a chance to benchmark one, of course, but it sounds like a beast. But, is a beast of a graphics processor needed for an 8-inch Android tablet?

The $299 version has 16GB of onboard storage, but the $399 32GB version, coming in another month or so, will also throw in unlocked LTE support: HSPA+, 3G, 2G, GSM and EDGE, compatible with AT&T and T-Mobile in the U.S.

Nvidia boasts a lot of similar graphics capabilities on the K1 as on their recent desktop graphics chips, including DirectX12 and OpenGL 4.4 support. It’s hard to tell that in a quick demo, but we saw a full desktop version of Epic’s Unreal Engine 4 running on the Shield Tablet and showing off some effects that made the demo look like a pre-rendered video, even though they were real-time graphics. Expect graphics levels at an Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 level of quality…on an 8-inch tablet. Nvidia claims the Shield Tablet battery will last up to 10 hours of video playback, or around 6 hours when playing heavy-graphics games.

The Shield Tablet has a 1,900×1,200 8.0-inch IPS LCD display, which looks vibrant, and the included bass-boosted speakers pack a decent punch. The tablet’s 4K video-output ready, has a Micro SD card supporting up to 128GB of extra storage, plus Bluetooth 4.0 LE, GPS, and a 9-axis accelerometer with compass, gyro and g-sensor. There’s also a Micro USB port and Mini HDMI 1.4 port.

Controller: that’ll cost extra

The Shield Controller costs an extra $59.99/££49.99, and you’ll want one: it’ll be needed to play Shield Tablet games the way Nvidia intended. You might even want more, since the tablet supports up to four-player simultaneous games on the tablet or on a TV.

The controller looks a lot like the one bonded onto the original Shield game handheld, with some nice extras: dedicated Android control buttons and volume, a headset jack that supports microphones, and Wi-Fi Direct connectivity for what Nvidia claims are more lag-free controls than a standard Bluetooth controller.

Games: Android, Shield, PC game streaming, and GRID

Much like the first Nvidia Shield, this tablet can access any Google Play apps or Android games, plus a curated collection of around 180 Shield-optimized games (11 that are Tegra K1 optimized) that can be launched from the Shield Hub, a new app formerly called Tegra Zone that acts as a self-contained zone for those who just want to use their tablet for Shield-related games and apps. Shield Hub also converts into a big-screen TV mode — called Nvidia Console Mode — when the tablet’s connected to a TV via HDMI, much like Steam’s Big Picture or what Android TV will eventually do this fall. Netflix will stream in 1080p on the Shield Tablet, too.

PC game streaming, called Nvidia Gamestream, is supported just like on the original Shield, via local or remote playback. Supported games (120+ so far) show up on the Shield and can be streamed at 1080p. I played GRID 2 and it looked extremely sharp, significantly better than what Shield’s original game-streaming technology looked like, but it still had a few framerate hiccups.

Native Android games like Trine 2 looked a lot more a PS3 game than your average Android tablet, but Trine 2, while looking a lot like the PS3 version, wasn’t quite as drop-dead stellar as you’d hope: it’s a pretty platforming game, but not a killer app.

In addition, Nvidia’s offering its GRID cloud-gaming service for free, streaming 16 games including Borderlands 2 for free. We didn’t get to test this yet, but it’s another significant Shield perk.

Twitch streaming

The Nvidia Shield Tablet has 5-megapixel front and rear cameras, and the tablet supports Twitch live game-streaming of both Android and PC-streamed titles. Nvidia’s game controller has its own microphone and headset input jack, and both it and the front-facing cam can add audio-video commentary during streaming, something that hasn’t been on a mobile device before. I’m not a real Twitch gamer, but if you’re connecting this to a PC in your home and want to set up in front of your TV, this is an extra perk.

The tablet also supports Nvidia ShadowPlay, a new software tool for capturing in-game footage.

Who is the Shield Tablet for?

Good question. Much like the first Nvidia Shield, you can think of the Shield Tablet as a demonstration of what Nvidia’s new processor can do rather than a must-have killer device. The original Shield made a case that the Tegra 4 processor was ideal for gaming. With the Sheld Tablet, the pitch seems to be “great for gaming, but also works well on a big-screen TV, too.” The two biggest concerns I’d have are game library and price.

There aren’t that many Shield Tablet-specific games in the works yet: announced games include Pure Chess, The Talos Principle, War Thunder, graphics-enhanced versions of the ports of Half-Life 2 and Portal already available on Shield, and Trine 2, which comes pre-installed on the tablet. In other words, slim pickings. Yes, the Shield Tablet supports streamed PC games and GRID games and all the other Google Play games, but will that add up to enough of a punch for serious gamers, especially when you think that you’ll be adding at least one $60 controller and probably a $40 cover-case, too? $400-$500 is a lot to spend, considering consoles already cost that much, and the next iPads won’t fall far from that either.

Still, the Shield Tablet looks nice. And if you’re a serious Android gamer, or a PC gamer, or both, this might be the coolest tablet for you. But for a lot of other people, that same money will buy a new PS4, or an iPad. Or, something else. That’s the challenge of where the Nvidia Shield Tablet is walking: it’s trying to be a bit of everything. It remains to be seen whether that’s the best idea, but it may be the most logical path.

Stay tuned for a future review.