Nvidia Shield gaming tablet announced: Features flagship Tegra K1 SoC, dedicated controller

Nvidia had announced the Tegra K1 SoC at CES 2014  which is the first system-on-chip to feature Nvidia’s Kepler architecture and sporting 192 CUDA cores. Barring the Xiaomi Mi Pad , there is no other device which features the Tegra K1 SoC. All that is about to change, as Nvidia has just taken the curtains off its first Nvidia Shield Tablet which will come in two variants: 16GB ($299 or Rs 18,000) and 32GB ($399 or Rs 24,000).

Nvidia Shield , as we know was the Android based gaming console, featuring Tegra 4 SoC. Nvidia Shield tablet is an improved version of Nvidia’s Tegra Note 7 . The Nvidia Shield, as the name implies, is clearly targetted at the gaming community. To that end, it features the flagship Nvidia Tegra K1 SoC which has a quad-core ARM Cortex A15 processor (along with a companion core) clocked at 2.2GHz. On the graphics front, Tegra K1 will have 192 CUDA cores with an 8-inch full HD display.

The Shield Tablet will also come with a Shield wireless controller - which looks similar to the one seen on the Nvidia Shield - sans the screen. The Shield Tablet cover allows you to place your tablet in flexible positions while viewing movies or playing games. The controller and the tablet cover will need to be bought separately. Just like the Tegra Note 7, the Shield Tablet will have front-facing speakers. It will also come with the DirectStylus 2 which is aimed at designers and artists or for taking down notes - this comes included in the tablet price.

In terms of sensors, the Shield tablet features a 3-axis gyro, 3-axis accelerometer and a 3-axis compass. On the connectivity front, you have Bluetooth 4.0 LE, 802.11n Wi-fi which works on the 2.4GHz as well as 5GHz band and GPS/GLONASS. The Shield Tablet comes in a Wi-fi only and a Wi-fi + 4G LTE variant. There is a microSIM slot on the 4G variant as well.

Just like the Shield, you can use PC streaming on the Shield Tablet as well as stream games from the tablet to Twitch. You can also connect the tablet to the TV for big screen gaming. Features such as ShadowPlay, GameStream, GRID are also supported by the Shield tablet. Thanks to the Tegra K1, the Shield Tablet is 4K UltraHD ready, allowing you to connect it to a 4K display and mirror content.

Details on the India launch aren’t out yet. We will update the post when we have more information on the same.