NVidia Shield unboxed, in the flesh

Saw a lot of the NVidia Shield being sold at Mongkok here in Hong Kong and immediately bought one to check out. Here’s a quick unboxing and first impressions of NVidia’s newest and first handheld gaming console.

Announced back in January as Project Shield, the NVidia Shield is the company’s first handheld gaming console and an attempt to actually make a device out of their own new Tegra 4 chipset. After about a year of waiting, it’s finally here and selling for a decent price of a little under Php14k.

The packing is simple yet eye-catching — inside is the manual, the microUSB cable, 2 power adaptors (one for Asia and one for Europe). Was hoping there’s some sort of carrying case but there’s none. The device itself feels actually light and the controllers are akin to the ones from the Xbox.

That metallic plate on the lid can be easily detached since it’s only magnetic. The finish of the outer surface is a bit matted but the silver and black combination gives it a cool effect.

The buttons an the controllers can be daunting at first but you should be able to familiarize yourself with it after a day or two of constant use. If everything else fails, you always have to option to use the touchscreen display for navigation.

At the rear side are the ports for the microUSB, earphones, microSD card slot and the mini-HDMI port. The exhaust grill is also situated just above them.

With a 720p HD display on a 5-inch screen, the does offer enough screen real estate (they’re almost the same size as the screen on the PSP). The Shield runs on Android Jellybean so you have access to tons of games on the Google Pay Store as well as Tegra Zone (which is supported by NVidia).

We’ll look for a compatible monitor when we get home from our trip and try to stream the games straight thru there and see how ti goes. We’ll post our review in a week or two.