[Shield Tablet Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] stanglx:
My 2 cents coming from an iPad -

The Shield is lightning fast compared to my iPAD 2. When I compare it to my wifes Ipad Mini Retinia its about the same.

The screen is very very good on the Shield - I have no clue what others are saying its average. I have compared it to the Retina and its very very close and some instances better.

The form factor is great though the iPad Mini form factor is better for reading and browsing.. the shield is better for moving watching, gaming etc.

The speakers are amazing.

Did I say its lighting fast?

The ONLY slow down I have on 5.01 is when it first wakes up out of a deep sleep. Other than that I have 0 slow downs. I HAD slow downs when 1 I didnt do a full reset after an upgrade AND 2 Facebook and Facebook Messenger absolutely destroy the tablets performance. I dont know what facebook does with Messenger but that is a POS like I have not ever seen. It literally occupies a 1/2 of a core all the the time doing nothing. So... I have 0 slow downs except for right out of deep sleep. Prior to 501 I saw MANY slow downs.... I was not impressed. Now... I am impressed!

Browsing is amazing (recently with 501 and the new version of chrome)...

Battery life is HORRRRIBLE! Now.... I will preface that with I am comparing it to my iPad 2 and the iPad Mini which I could literally go days without seeing a charger with normal use. The shield however has a very powerful GPU in a very small form factor. So, its probably sufficient for the size, etc. I can only get even after removing bloat 5 hours of on screen time - thats it. I would get 50 % more than that on the apple products. This is my only complaint... but its one I live with and I can not fault the device due to its size and power.

SD Cards - I havent found a single person who has been 100% happy how it works. Everyone seems to have issues with either games not installing on them (inconsistent), accessing them in general (many successful after rooting), even issues with recovery images not being able to format large SD Cards. I would suggest if you can afford the extra $$ get the 32 GB if you think your going to need the storage. Reserve the SD card for movings, music and pictures (for now until they fix it).

WifI - horrible performance compared to every other device I have compared it to. If you have strong WiFi signal in your house you will be fine. If your already on the fringe (2 bars out of 4) forget it... this tablet may not even connect to the AP at any distance. Its also very sensitive to APs that are on the same channel. If your AP is on channel 11 and your neighbors channel is on channel 11 and your within 10 dB of each other, the tablet drops connections like crazy. The simple fix is to either get a booster, better antenna, better AP and change the channel... The device however is flawed and no software can fix these issues.

Developer Friendly - yes the platform is very developer friendly so if your into making custom roms, kernels, etc. This is a great tablet.

Quality - My tablet, excellent. but others have complained. So its a roll of the dice. Generally when everything works as it should its perfect. Unfortunately there have been lemons.

Nvidia Support - AMAZING! even with the lemons Nvidia is fast to respond. I have had many conversations with techs in their forums and they are almost as fast as Google when it comes to updates. I love that!

Software Quality - ****E!!! In my career I have never seen so many bugs (I run a division of software engineers - in software engineering for 20 years). I am shocked with how poor the quality assurance is. There are core user functions that broke in 501 - In my world these would have been show stoppers! But Nvidia let it go out the door. I am shocked honestly. 501 has to be the worst Quality OS revision I have seen from any product. They introduced regressions like screen corruption (its apparent in many many many games, apps, etc.), battery stats are all messed up, battery life inconsistent, some games no longer work at all. Nvidia and Google need to step it up on the quality side. The tablet is usable but for some it may not be - especially if one of the apps you use on a daily basis is now broken.

Wait or not? I dont think it matters. The hardware is not going to change and I dont think Nvidia or Google's code quality is going to change. They will fix these issues in the next release and break other things.

Its a question of whether or not do you go with Android or not. If you like to fiddle with your tablet its a yes... if not go with apple.

If you want a small form factor android then you go with the shield.

I recommend the tablet for its price, performance and support. I own it and for now will be keeping it. I personally dont like Apple - I dont seem them an innovative anymore.

But, If you want rock solid performance, quality and battery life - go with Apple.