4K Gaming In The Living Room

Final Thoughts

Price

The Nvidia Shield TV can be purchased directly from Nvidia. The 16GB model comes bundled with the Shield Controller for £169.99 while the 500GB Shield Pro is £219.99. They’re currently out of stock, and seem to be out of stock at most retailers too. We’ve spoken to Nvidia and they are struggling to keep stock due to high demand on the Shield TV, so keep an eye out for new stock as it goes pretty fast.

Overview

Shield TV really is a fantastic all-in-one solution, not only does it play Android games better than anything else on the market, it’s by far the best device for streaming your PC games to the big screen. It out performs solutions like Steam Link with ease, while also offering you a huge range of features like Plex, NetFlix, Amazon Prime and much more, giving you a true hub for all your 4K and HDR content consumption.

Obviously, your performance is going to vary depending on your PC specs and network capabilities, but when it comes to 4K gaming in the living room, the GTX 1080 paired with the Shield TV is an unstoppable force. Of course, there’s no reason why you can’t do this with lower performance GPUs, as even the GTX 6xx series support gamestream, and you can just as easily stream in HD resolutions if your system or your TV don’t support 4K.

With Nvidia already working on an update to bring HDR game streaming to the Shield, you can bet we will be returning to this testing very soon, as HDR gaming monitors on PC aren’t exactly viable right now, but HDR TVs are becoming more common. Our test TV is 4K and HDR compatible, so you can bet we’re eager to see what it can do.

Pros

• Uses your existing PC to render graphics
• Cheaper than building a second gaming PC
• Huge range of features beyond gaming
• Easy to configure
• Support for 4K @ 60Hz
• Supports multiple wireless controllers
• Fantastic price

Cons

• Quickly sold out stock makes getting a Shield TV a bit of a challenge

“Shield TV is perfect for those who want a well-connected home entertainment hub, with the bonus of using existing gaming PC to stream high-quality graphics that mobile GPUs can only dream of, without having to build yourself a second system in the living room.”