Can You Really Use the Nvidia Shield as a Desktop?

A Closer Look

The USB micro adaptor is a great tool for the Shield as it allows me to break out the microUSB to a standard USB port, allowing a multitude of devices to be hooked up to the single port, especially with the help of a USB hub; I’ve got a Rosewill hub here, but any standard hub should work just fine.

Plug straight into the back and connect the devices and everything started working straight away, no issues, no modifications or settings had to be tweaked.

Going one step further, the keyboard and mouse connected perfectly, even with four devices connected via USB the Shield never threw up any complaints, the keyboard and mouse backlight also fired up straight away, a good sign that everything is working nicely.

Obviously there are a lot of cables now plugged into the Shield, but no more than you would on a Brix, NUC or pretty much any other kind of computer really. If you look next to the USB port, I’ve now also connected up a mini-HDMI to HDMI cable, allowing me to output to a TV or monitor.