Can You Really Use the Nvidia Shield as a Desktop?

Setup & Testing

With everything connected, operating the Shield as a desktop replacement was actually incredibly simple. Log into Google Docs, which for the most part will require an internet connection, although content creation can of course be done offline dependant on what it is you’re trying to do. The screensize is obviously an issue, so I’ve made the font big in the picture above as a demonstration, but as we’ve seen before you can hook up the Shield to any TV or monitor with a HDMI cable or by using the wireless Miracast technology if your display supports it. Doing this puts the Shield into 1920 x 1080 resolution at 60FPS, making productivity a lot easier and there is no reason why I can’t put the Shield onto my desk or next to my TV for this purpose.

The USB hub was working perfectly, adding card readers and USB flash drives, even a USB hard drive such as a 2TB Buffalo drive worked perfectly, with the Shield detecting each almost immediately. I do recommend that you install something such as Astro File Manager to allow you to properly navigate the drives with a Windows Explorer style interface as the services built into Android can be a little restrictive.

All peripherals were also immediately detected and operational, with Android detecting their presence, even allowing me to chose their language settings.

The mouse pointer speed can be configured within Android, although the mouse I tested (Corsair M45) has on board Macro functions and on-the-fly DPI toggling, which also worked perfectly.

While I did use Google Docs, there were also no issues with Office for Android, Chrome, or any other desktop application that have been ported over. Since the Shield and of course Android in general supported my peripherals, so too did all the apps I tested. The mouse will even emulate the touch screen functionality, so gaming can also benefit from the extra input devices.