This will be mix of review, tips and tricks and experiences. If you have anything thing to add please feel free to!
The basics:
The shield tablet is well constructed bordering on excellent, but there are some draw backs. The tablet feels solid, no creaking or flexing, but the edges where the screen meets the body of the tablet could have been designed at little nicer.
The screen: The screen is very good. I prefer it's more natural color palette over the over saturated look of amoled screens. If the colors aren't to your liking you can change the screens color correction via the display settings. TIP: There is another setting that was a little harder to find. it's in the battery settings then press the 3 dots in the upper right hand corner and select shield power control. Select Tegra Prism dyamic backlight. The effect is not really noticeable from the static screen, but watch a movie there is a world of difference. Blacks are blacker and colors are slightly richer (without being over the top). I tested it by watching the same scene in Gravity (the one where the debris hits the space shuttle).
The Battery: the screen is the biggest hog of power. Nvidia has done a good job through the shield power control settings of giving you the power to throttle the cpu when you need to. I leave it on optimized unless I'm playing a heavy duty game (grid games, Half life 2 or using and emulator). I get about 10-12 hours out of the battery with heavy use (movies, music and a bit of gaming). I get about 3.5 hours out of Grid Gaming.
Gaming:
I've spent a while gaming and I have zero complaints. I've played android games, emulators (from nes to dreamcast), tegra optimized games (half life 2) and Grid games. Grid games require a hefty internet connection, which luckily I have. I've tested Grid games over LTE (I tethered it to my N5 on att, my connection usually is between 15-25mbps with really low pings). I was curious to see what would happen. It works well. I played Borderlands 2 for about 10 minutes and it used ~200mbs of data. I can extrapolate that to ~11gb an hour of gaming. I highly discourage it, I feel like that would get me kicked off att. The tablet gets warm, not hot, but warm enough that I fear that it might over heat if I put a thick case on it. TIP: If the game is stuttering even slightly try turning the processor mode to max performance in the shield power control menu
My general Tips:
Get a micro sd card and put everything on it (I have a 64gb micro sd card). I have the 16gb shield and I have pretty much all the space the tablet came out of the box with except for maybe 1gb less.
Google apps are the biggest offender when it comes to massive file sizes. Google movies in hd are about 2 gb, tv shows are 1-2 gb. The real surprise was google magazines. One national geographic magazine was .5gb. Go into settings and set downloads to SD Card.
The basics:
The shield tablet is well constructed bordering on excellent, but there are some draw backs. The tablet feels solid, no creaking or flexing, but the edges where the screen meets the body of the tablet could have been designed at little nicer.
The screen: The screen is very good. I prefer it's more natural color palette over the over saturated look of amoled screens. If the colors aren't to your liking you can change the screens color correction via the display settings. TIP: There is another setting that was a little harder to find. it's in the battery settings then press the 3 dots in the upper right hand corner and select shield power control. Select Tegra Prism dyamic backlight. The effect is not really noticeable from the static screen, but watch a movie there is a world of difference. Blacks are blacker and colors are slightly richer (without being over the top). I tested it by watching the same scene in Gravity (the one where the debris hits the space shuttle).
The Battery: the screen is the biggest hog of power. Nvidia has done a good job through the shield power control settings of giving you the power to throttle the cpu when you need to. I leave it on optimized unless I'm playing a heavy duty game (grid games, Half life 2 or using and emulator). I get about 10-12 hours out of the battery with heavy use (movies, music and a bit of gaming). I get about 3.5 hours out of Grid Gaming.
Gaming:
I've spent a while gaming and I have zero complaints. I've played android games, emulators (from nes to dreamcast), tegra optimized games (half life 2) and Grid games. Grid games require a hefty internet connection, which luckily I have. I've tested Grid games over LTE (I tethered it to my N5 on att, my connection usually is between 15-25mbps with really low pings). I was curious to see what would happen. It works well. I played Borderlands 2 for about 10 minutes and it used ~200mbs of data. I can extrapolate that to ~11gb an hour of gaming. I highly discourage it, I feel like that would get me kicked off att. The tablet gets warm, not hot, but warm enough that I fear that it might over heat if I put a thick case on it. TIP: If the game is stuttering even slightly try turning the processor mode to max performance in the shield power control menu
My general Tips:
Get a micro sd card and put everything on it (I have a 64gb micro sd card). I have the 16gb shield and I have pretty much all the space the tablet came out of the box with except for maybe 1gb less.
Google apps are the biggest offender when it comes to massive file sizes. Google movies in hd are about 2 gb, tv shows are 1-2 gb. The real surprise was google magazines. One national geographic magazine was .5gb. Go into settings and set downloads to SD Card.