Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsJust buy it - its worth it
Reviewed in the United States on April 15, 2017
As an Android TV: Absolutely the best Android TV box on the market right now. Navigating around any app on the shield is a breeze, very snappy and responsive with hardly any load times. This box is the first box fully optimized to work with Plex and does so very well. This is ALSO the FIRST android tv box to have amazon prime video on it. If your purchasing this specifically as a "media center" you will be very satisfied with what you get.
As an Emulating Power House: For me this was actually the main selling point of the box. You can pretty much download any emulator you want on this thing and play ANY and i mean ANY old game you want. This was specifically exciting for me, I envisioned myself grabbing the shield and taking it over to a friends house to play some Super Smash Bros or some Mario cart. OR reliving my childhood playing games that I loved as a kid but haven't played since the 90's. Not to mention these days you can emulate the PS3 and the xbox 360, and play some newer games.
As a Game Stream Device: Game stream is another feature that adds quite a bit of usefulness to the Shield. If you have a gaming pc with an Nvidia card you can easily stream games from your PC to your TV. This has proven to be a really cool feature with games that I own on the PC but are better played with a console controller. Since i have owned the Shield i have used this feature almost exclusively to play Rocket League with my roommates, which it does a great job at. HOWEVER it is important to remember that when using game stream the shield is going to cut down whatever resolution your running on your computer to a maximum of 1080p on the TV its being streamed to. This isnt a huge deal, definitely noticeable quality difference but when you consider what your actually doing (streaming a game over your local network) 1080p sounds pretty good.
*Game stream will be throttled back to 720p when using a wireless connection
*For those of you who have a gaming pc that does not have an Nvidia GPU, don't fret there is an app called KinoConsole that will allow you to game stream as well. The Shield is also optimized for twitch streaming right out of the box. you can set up your twitch stream and then simply hit a button inside the menu on the shield to start streaming.
Hardware: The interior hardware in this thing is essentially the exact same hardware as the Nintendo switch. The x1 processor in it is a monster. I have yet to find anything that has been too demanding for the shield. In fact i ran 3DMark and received close to a score of 5000 (for those of you who are unfamiliar with 3DMark this puts the shield in the top 1% of android devices)
-As for the controllers; The dual shock Nvidia controller that came with the shield is actually a really nice controller. Very sturdy and good build quality, feels VERY comfortable with a slightly more ergonomic feel to it than an xbox controller. My only complaint is that its a dual shock, If you've been playing with an xbox control it will take you some time to get used to the dual shock layout. HOWEVER, if your dead set on using an xbox control your in luck. I have successfully used xbox 360 controls (requires dongle) and paired my xbox one controller via Bluetooth, and although I don't have one I am positive the play station controllers will also work. (sidenote: I am speaking specifically about using WIRELESS controls, ANY control with a usb cable attached will plug right into the back of the shield and work flawlessly)
-For the remote this is where one of the VERY few differences between he basic and pro models lie. They are the same shape and layout, HOWEVER the pro edition remote is rechargeable whereas the basic edition is powered by coin batteries. Also the buttons on the pro remote are very firm and clicky whereas the basic remote the buttons feel a little squishy and less precise.
Conclusion: It isn't should I get a Shield TV? Its should I get the basic edition or the pro? If your interested in android tv box, a device to emulate on, or a gamestream device any ONE of these reasons alone is enough to get the shield because its the best at all 3. I have been completely satisfied with this thing top to bottom, It looks cool, its functions great, and it out performs all the competition. The real question is what are YOU going to use it for. I bought the basic edition and within two days had the 16GB hard drive filled with emulators and roms. Due to this i returned it and picked up the pro edition instead. Now i have 3 emulators installed and over 100 games and still have 300GB's free to download more. Now its worth mentioning that if you have the basic edition and need more space you can simply plug an external into the usb slots on the back and there you are, But i was looking to be able to grab the shield and take it to friends houses, and didn't want to futz around with a bunch of things that have to come with it. Also if you are intending to use this a Plex/media sever its only gonna take 3 or 4 movies to fill the basic editions 16gb's. To wrap it all up, either the basic or pro editions are wonderful pieces of technology, and there really isnt much reason to get the pro edition unless ur dead set on not having extra hard drives laying around for the device and even then 500 GB's only goes so far on a media sever.
PS: i forgot to mention that there is actually another minor difference between the pro and basic edition, and that is the IO. The back of the basic edtion has USB-A 3.0 (2), Gigabit ethernet, HDMI 2.0b w/ HDCP 2.2 and CEC. The Pro edition has all these plus a micro sd slot. The SD slot has proven to be very useful for easily transferring files to the shield and can be used to expand on the space available, However this is a very minor plus and probably shouldnt be part of the deciding factors.
