Last year Nvidia released their first serious attempt at getting into the mobile gaming market. And though it's not gotten nearly the attention of the 3DS or even the Vita, the Shield Portable is actually a pretty amazing piece of tech. Although it received a revised model in the form of this year's Shield Tablet (which seems to be an iPad competitor), I actually think that those of you out there looking to spend the bulk of your time gaming on the go are going to be far more interested in the (cheaper) Shield Portable.



First things first, let's take a look at the physical build of the Shield Portable. You'll notice that the clamshell design basically resembles a tablet screen hinged on to an Xbox 360 controller. This makes plenty of sense as the 360 controller is basically "the" PC gaming controller in this day and age. But how's the build of the controller? It's actually really great. The buttons and d-pad all feel just right. The triggers are sensitive and easily accessible. But the analog sticks are even better, feeling tighter and more precise than a 360 pad and more akin to the Xbox One controller. Nvidia really went out of their way making sure that this handheld feels like a solid and well-built system instead of one of those cheap dime-a-dozen Android devices you see out there. This becomes apparent the minute you pick it up and realize it's a lot heavier than you imagined.

Under the hood is Nvidia's Tegra 4 processor. If that means nothing to you, I'll simply translate it as, this CPU is very impressive for an Android device and because of that, it is capable of amazing gaming, which I'll get into further detail about later. The 5" (1280 x 720) screen is absolutely stunning. It is crystal clear and really blows away the 3DS XL visually. Nvidia took just as much care with the speakers, which pump out the volume and have clarity much higher than you'd be expecting from a portable gaming device. And finally comes the operation system, which as of the last major update brought the Shield Portable to Android KitKat.


But who cares about operating systems and processors unless there's good games to be played? The games are where the Shield Portable really shines, since a variety of games that can be played on it. While there are basically "Shield" games proper in the form of games that require the mighty Tegra chip and are optimized to work with the Shield Portables controls, this library is relatively small. Though I will contend that what is available is quite good. For instance, Valve actually ported the classics Half-Life 2 and Portal to the Shield earlier this year. And other games, like the FPS Dead Trigger really show off the capabilities of the system. And yet, I think many folks will buy the Shield for non-Shield games, at least for now.

Because the Shield is built on an Android OS, this means that virtually every Android app out there is fair game, be it from the Google Play store or Amazon's App marketplace. Now obviously not all of these games were built with the Shield in mind, so it's going to be a case by case basis as to how well they work on such a setup. For instance, some games are designed to be played in portrait mode rather than landscape; however, there are workarounds for this restriction. Some games are going to recognize the controller right away, while others won't at all. Luckily, the Shield comes with a key mapper tool to help you customize controls for any game you wish. This was definitely a well thought-out inclusion by Nvidia.

Next on the list of playable games list are PC games. This is the reason I finally decided to pick up a Shield myself. So here's how it works - if you have a somewhat recent Nvidia GeForce GPU in your gaming PC, then you can easily stream your PC games over to the Shield. Now obviously this function is going to rely heavily on the strength of your home network, and Nvidia also recommends some pretty beefy routers to make it silky smooth. To some degree, adding the costs of a GeForce card and a newer router might make the Shield less palatable to some. But, if you were already in the market for either upgrade (or have already made the upgrades) then it's a lot easier to get onboard.


Some PC games are already tweaked to be compatible with the Shield without any extra work. I tested out the new Borderlands Pre-Sequel this way, as well as XCOM: Enemy Unknown, and both worked well where I was able to get a good wifi signal in my house. Again, it's pretty breathtaking to see games like this running on this beautiful little screen. Other games will need to be messed with a bit to get going. One trick is to launch Steam's Big Picture Mode on the Shield and then you can launch virtually any game from there. Of course you may have to play around with keymapping again, much like you have to do with Android games.

Other PC games are available to be streamed directly from Nvidia's own Grid service. The Grid is basically something like Netflix for games, and although it's still in beta, I've been very impressed with the results. For now, Nvidia has offered about a dozen free games at a time to experiment with and I had no problems running Half-Life 2 and Street Fighter X Tekken through The Grid. This service is planned to remain free to Shield owners at least until July of next year, but depending on pricing and game availability, it may be something worth looking into further at that time.

I'd also like to take a moment to remind everyone that the Android OS offers plenty of non-gaming apps that might be worth mentioning here as well. I've used my Shield to watch Netflix throughout my house, and the app looks great as expected. Other entertainment services are also welcome additions, such as access to Youtube, Twitch, Spotify, and Pandora to name a few. And I suppose it goes without saying that any emulator that runs on Android also runs on the Shield.

Another interesting feature of the Shield is the Console Mode. You can hook up the unit to a TV via HDMI and actually tether up to four wireless controllers to it like a console. So now you've got this portable gaming powerhouse/video hub that can double as a set-top box as well. The microSD slot can accept up to 128GB cards (on top of the system's built in 16GBs). Really, I can't help but think that there's lots of cool things that you can do with this thing that I haven't even thought of yet.

Images used courtesy of Nvidia

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