As expected, Nvidia has now officially announced and launched its newest member of the Shield lineup, the new 8-inch Shield Tablet. Nvidia already tried its luck on both the tablet as well as the Android gaming markets with the mainstream Tegra Note 7 tablet and the Shield hand-held console. The new Shield Tablet is pretty much a mix between those two devices and easily described as "the gaming tablet".

As it was already reported before, the Nvidia Shield Tablet is based on Nvidia's Tegra K1 SoC, which features a quad-core 2.2GHz clocked Cortex A15 based CPU part and 192 core Kepler GPU. It also comes with 2GB of DDR3L-1866 memory and will feature 16/32GB of storage space expandable by microSD card slot with additional up to 128GB of storage space.

The dimensions of the Nvidia Shield Tablet are set at 221x126x9.2 mm and weighs 390 grams. This is not that bad considering that it features an 8-inch 1920x1200 IPS LCD screen and front stereo speakers. The rest of the specifications include a main rear 5-megapixel and 5-megapixel front cameras, 802.11abgn 2x2 MIMO 2.4GHz and 5GHz WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0 LE, GPS/GLONASS, 9-axis motion sensors, aforementioned stereo speakers with dual bass reflex port, included stylus with DirectStylus 2 with 3D Paint support, mini HDMI 1.4 output, micro USB 2.0 port with host and device support, 3.5mm stereo headphone jack with microphone support as well as a 19.75Whr battery which, according to Nvidia, should keep the tablet up and running for about 10 hours of video playback.

The Nvidia Shield Tablet will be available in two versions, 16GB WiFi-only version and the 32GB WiFi+LTE version, which will feature a micro SIM card slot.

The 802.11abgn 2x2 MIMO 2.4GHz/5GHz WiFi is quite important as it is exactly what Nvidia needs in order for the tablet to feature both Nvidia GameStream and GRID Cloud Gaming Beta, which allow streaming from your Kepler-equipped PC or Nvidia's GRID Cloud gaming servers. The rest of the gaming features also include support for Nvidia ShadowPlay, support for the Console Mode, Gamepad Mapper and access to the Nvidia TegraZone.

In addition to the new Nvidia Shield Tablet, Nvidia has also launched two new accessories to go with the new tablet, including the new Shield Wireless Controller and the Shield Tablet Cover. The Shield Wireless Controller is a rather interesting device which uses WiFi Direct connectivity which should, according to Nvidia, minimize latency and increase data rate, something that is quite important with gaming. It will also bring voice support to Shield devices, especially Shield Tablet and will be supported by both the Nvidia Shield Tablet and the earlier released Shield hand-held console. The Shield Tablet Cover on the other hand is a cover for the Shield Tablet which can double up as a stand.

The new Nvidia Shield Tablet is already up for pre-order and will be available in the US and Canada as of July 29th. Europe should get it on August 14th while more regions should follow in fall 2014. The price for the 16GB WiFi-only version is set at US $299 while the 32GB LTE version will sell for US $399. The price of the Shield Wireless Controller is set at US $59 while the Shield Cover will sell for US $39.

There has been a couple of listings in Europe and while the final price will depend on the region, you can expect the 16GB WiFi-only version to sell for €299,99, 32GB LTE version will go for around €399,99 while Shield Cover and Shield Wireless Controller will be sold for €29,99 and €59,99, respectively.











Source: Nvidia.com.