NVIDIA unveils a new Shield TV with 4K HDR

NVIDIA’s Shield TV was one of the few successful Android TV devices — it was both a capable 4K entertainment device and a simple way to bring PC gaming into your living room. So it only made sense that NVIDIA had a sequel in the works. Today during his CES 2017 keynote, NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang unveiled a new version of the Shield TV — now just called Shield — which will support 4K HDR for both games and movies.

Among other new features, the new Shield TV is also the first Android TV device to support Google Assistant. As you’d imagine, Google Assistant works just like it does on the company’s Home device and Pixel phones, but you can also command it to play media on the Shield TV. The company also announced a companion microphone accessory for the Shield, NVIDIA Spot, which will function similarly to Amazon’s Echo. You can spread Spot throughout your home to utter voice commands wherever you are.

Surprisingly, NVIDIA didn’t say much about the hardware powering the new Shield. I was expecting it to include the company’s X2 mobile processor, but if that were the case NVIDIA surely would have made that clear. It also doesn’t require much hardware to add HDR support, and we didn’t hear anything about improved game performance. The new Shield is still a compelling device, but it’s not quite the successor we were expecting.