“Screen certainly not poor, I actually commented on how nice it looked and whilst a far cry from the iPad air, it is certainly competitive with other devices in this price range.”
It is very clearly below average. Perhaps you only did limited testing? Did you try it outside in the sun; did you look at the how accurate or not the colour reputation is. It’s not that bright plenty for indoor use but outdoor won’t be easy to read. Colour saturation falls apart as well.
It’s not just me but lots of reviews say the same. To quote one “As expected, the ColorChecker shows the results of the poor gamut and some issues present in the grayscale. Error ends up relatively high. The display is still decent, but relative to the competition it doesn’t stack up very well. “
I would hardly classify 10 days of pretty much constant 'spare time' use as limited testing. I had it out in the garden with me this weekend and had zero issues. If I did, I would have included it in my review. The colours are fairly vivid and the IPS panel does an adequate job at colour reproduction when compared to things like... my colour calibrated IPS computer monitors. Its a budget orientated tablet so I marked it accordingly. I wasn't expecting it to be fantastic and I stand by my opinion that it is on par with other devices in this price range.
“Weight is largely irrelevant as it is designed to be used on a stand with the controller. I compared it to my Nexus 7 which feels around the same weight so I don't see the problem.”
It’s pretty much the heaviest tablet on the market out of the main tablets by a long shot. It’s not a problem for everyone but weight is a big factor in tablet buying. For me it’s too heavy to hold and use as a tablet. I struggle enough with 345g for extended amounts of time so 390g is well out of use. 50g heaver then a Nexus 7 is too much for me any many other people. Close to 400g is not what I would call a nice mobile device.
Come off it, the difference is hardly noticable. 50g is the actuation force of a blue cherrymx switch but you're making out like its a huge extra burden.
I feel you're being a tad over-dramatic. I'm hardly the strongest person in the world but at no point did I sit there thinking, "bloody hell, this 390g tablet is ruining my arms"
“Battery Life was mentioned in my review and the quoted 10 hours is not far off the mark.”
Most of the other reviewers are barley getting 2 hour gaming out of it. Movie and web browsing life is good at 10hours. But the gaming life has it bottom of the pack and its meant to be a gaming tablet. Gaming tablets are not meant to be heavy or have poor gaming battery life.
Buttons I sort of agree on as its meant to be used with a controller.
performance is high and whilst not taken advantage of yet, there is scope to develop for it. As I mentioned, I have played enough on it to use it for over 2 hours and have plenty of battery left. Perhaps the reviewers were using the more taxing Tegra optimised titles or something, I couldn't comment as I have avoided reading other reviews to avoid influence on my own.
The device isn't even commercially available yet, and is very early in its life. I would imagine that a few optimisation updates would improve this.
“The point is that it isn't power on and play though. Its all there, all set up. Takes two minutes and recognises everything as soon as its paired and has native controller support if required. “
The native controller support is built into android. It’s not really hard to plug in an Xbox, shield or other controller to an Android tablet. Shield isn’t power on and play either you have to do all the setting up and pairing. My point is Shield is practically identical to the none shield tablets. Bar about 3 extra clicks and a few seconds to download the app it’s the same software, same install steps, same protocols, same interface, same install and setup time. So it’s not fair to call Shield unique, unrivalled and so on.
If you timed a shield and none shield setup there would be no noticeable difference. Once the app is installed its 100% the same. Installing the app takes all of 10seconds. (EDIT: You have a Nexus 7, once the app is installed how hard was it to pair up to the PC? It should be 100% the same as shield.)
Perhaps being an early adopter of splashtop and dealing with the low resolutions and stuttery game play, perhaps my experience is flawed. As mentioned in the review, I had to buy a Keplar GPU to use Shield anyway so that would probably boost an experience with a third party app also.
Ok, so let me refine my point. Until now, nobody has tried streamlining this and using it as a key element to drive sales and also advance android tablets as a PC gaming peripheral rather than being a standalone device. As a platform to develop on, Nvidia has focussed on unifying this whole thing. I would love to see the official gamehub app readily available on play store for all android users but in the same vein as console development timeline, Nvidia have to realistically get it right on a predefined hardware set.
Let me put it this way. What can shield do that other decent Android tablets cannot do? What advantage does Shield have over other decent Android tablets? I hardly call a preloaded free app that takes 10 seconds to install unique and unrivalled. The performance is a complete waste as there are zero apps to make use of that performances that I know off. I see very little reason to upgrade to a shield over current tablets or even get one over other tablets.
The review never once mentions that it is the BEST android tablet. It merely points out that for the price, it is good value.
Whilst the performance may not be made use of now, what about the future? I'm sure that if a Graphics card came out that performed remarkably better than anything but no current software could take advantage of it, then people would jump on it. why is the same principle not true for other hardware?
I would personally change to a shield over my current Nexus and would certainly consider one if I was looking to buy a tablet in the £200-£300 price point.
