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Nvidia's sequel to its Shield handheld is set for release in the US at the end of the month - and a European release a few weeks later - and takes the form of a high-quality eight-inch tablet with an optional console-quality wireless controller. The firm's state-of-the-art Tegra K1 processor - with 2x the graphics power of the iPad Air - beats at the heart of the new device, set to go on sale for $299 in North America, and £229 in the UK.We went hands-on with the device at an Nvidia press event on 14th July, which proved an interesting experience bearing in mind that we were in the midst of our Xiaomi MiPad review at the time. The import-only Chinese tablet is notable in that it's based on the exact same Tegra K1 chipset, so we should expect similar baseline performance from the silicon, but in practice, the two tablets share less in common than you may think. The MiPad aims squarely at an iPad mini-style experience, whereas Shield Tablet comes across as a much more gamer-orientated offering.
So what's the big deal with Tegra K1? Well, 326 GFLOPs is a lot of graphics processing power. PS3's RSX graphics core has 192 GFLOPs, while Xbox 360's Xenos chip is rated at 240 GFLOPs. Nvidia reckons that K1 propels mobile beyond the last-gen consoles. Well, the surrounding architecture - CPU, memory bandwidth, etc - has to be factored in when it comes to gameplay, and in those respects, K1 comes up a little short, but we are now moving into an era when AAA console titles should hold up when ported to mobile. That's something Trine 2 should demonstrate quite nicely...
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