NVIDIA Opens Pre-Orders For The SHIELD Tablet With LTE and 32GB Of Storage
by Brandon Chester on September 16, 2014 9:00 AM ESTNVIDIA's SHIELD Tablet arrived earlier this year and it was one of the first devices to use NVIDIA's Tegra K1 platform with 4 Cortex A15 cores and a single SMX GPU based on NVIDIA's Kepler architecture. It was a major departure from NVIDIA's previous mobile GPU designs, and it came with a level of GPU performance that was unheard of in an ARM tablet. For the whole story you can take a look at the SHIELD Tablet review. What you may notice on the first page is the listing of a version with LTE support and 32GB of storage. At launch, the SHIELD Tablet was only available in its 16GB WiFi configuration. Today NVIDIA is opening pre-orders for the that model with 32GB of storage and LTE.
At $399, the SHIELD Tablet with LTE and 32GB of storage is $100 more expensive than the base model. This pricing is roughly in line with the cost of upgrades to other popular Android tablets like the Nexus 7, and much less expensive than upgrading an iPad to a 32GB model with LTE. The increased amount of storage and the addition of LTE are packaged together with NVIDIA's pricing; you can't just get one upgrade or the other.
In addition to the new model of the SHIELD Tablet, NVIDIA is announcing three new games optimized for Tegra K1 that are coming soon. The first is Beach Buggy Racing which is a kart racing game that is a sequel to Beach Buggy Blitz. The second is BombSquad which features various mini-games like capture the flag and hockey, with the addition of explosive weapons to blow up the other players. The last new title is Broadsword: Age of Chivalry which is a turn-based strategy game where the player assumes the role of the French or the British and builds their empire.
Customers in the United States on AT&T can also receive a special offer when buying the SHIELD Tablet with LTE. When activating it on a qualifying AT&T plan with a 2 year agreement, users will receive a $100 bill credit which effectively covers the cost of upgrading from the WiFi only model.
The SHIELD tablet with LTE and 32GB of storage can be pre-ordered now and it will ship on September 30th in the United States and Europe. Pre-orders can be made at Nvidia's official SHIELD website as well as retailers like Amazon, Best Buy, Fry's Electronics, GameStop, Micro Center, Newegg, and Tiger Direct. Information about where to buy in a specific region can be found in the "Where to Buy" section on NVIDIA's website.
Source: NVIDIA
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Death666Angel - Tuesday, September 16, 2014 - link
I have a 5.2" LG G2 and it works perfectly fine with my 7" Nexus. On the other hand when I had a 4.7" Galaxy Nexus and a 10" Cube tablet, the tablet was hardly ever used, only when I wanted to play a certain game that only existed on Android and was better on the big screen. It never left my house, because taking my 11.6" notebook was just as easy and far more capable. The 7" Nexus gets taken nearly everywhere and is much better for website reading and ebooks (because of weight), it is equivalent to the 10" in the gaming department (some work better, some worse) and loses with movies and photos (though not by much). But the better availability because it fits in my jeans pockets means it is much more useful overall.Sometimes I wonder if people who say 5" and 7" or 8" are nearly the same have ever seen those devices at the same time. 2" sounds like a small number, but the difference is huge. 5" phone, 7" tablet and 11.6" windows 2-in-1 with a powerful desktop at home is really all I need at this point. I haven't played with enough 6+" phones to know whether they would replace my 5"+7" devices. A 5.7" Note3 was still small enough that I wouldn't get rid of my Nexus 7 for it. Mostly, the current 6"+ stuff is either not feature rich enough or too expensive for the specs. Though I guess 6.5" or 7" without bezel would be the maximum that would fit in my pockets.
IlllI - Tuesday, September 16, 2014 - link
399 for a 7 in tablet? Can yoy say overpriced???varad - Tuesday, September 16, 2014 - link
No, you can't. It's an 8 inch tablet with 32GB & LTE. Let us know if you find something equally powerful and with similar features at this price point.descendency - Tuesday, September 16, 2014 - link
It's 8 inches.TheJian - Thursday, September 18, 2014 - link
Fortunately they're not selling a 7in for 399. It's 8in, and comes with LTE and 32GB. Reasonable considering the competition (below apple). Who else sells a soc that beats it for $399? Nobody. K1 is tops in gpu and many cpu benchmarks also.I guess you consider all tablets in this range overpriced then. You also get it for $300 if going with ATT, so again, a pretty good deal.
Treynolds416 - Wednesday, September 17, 2014 - link
BombSquad, Broadsword, and Beach Buggy Racing (which is a sequel to Beach Buggy Blitz)This seems like something that happened on purpose