NVIDIA Shield Android TV Pro | 4K HDR Streaming Media Player High Performance, Dolby Vision, 3GB RAM, 2X USB, Works with Alexa, Model:945-12897-2500-101

Bought this to replace our Shield TV "stick". This one works so much smoother and quicker. More memory and storage. Extra features like usb ports. Great product and excellent support.

As pictured, the Nvidia shield tv pro NOW supports Dolby Atmos music and Yes it is amazing, and well separated throughout my 7.2.4 setup and much more immersive than stereo music. From what I understand dac’s don’t currently support Dolby Atmos music and right now the only way to listen to Dolby Atmos music is to first have a good streaming device, like the nvidia shield tv pro, and second it has to be connected to your dolby atmos source via an HDMI cable. For example, I can ONLY listen to true Dolby Atmos music through the tidal app of my Nvidia, which is connected to my Dolby Atmos AVR, Denon AVR-x4500h. Dolby Atmos music is honestly brand new to me as I have been using tidal connect which doesn’t support Dolby Atmos at the time of this review. Dolby Atmos music is hands down better than stereo and reminds me of listening to great music that is played on a dolby atmos movie! The sample rate for dolby atmos is currently reading at 48khz but as we all know it’s difficult to tell the difference between 24 bit 192khz and 16bit 44khz because what really matters is how well the track was mastered, something we cannot quantify at this time. I would think Dolby atmos music would be identifiable in a blind listening session since the surround channels are so engaging! This is another example of why the nvidia shield pro is such a great streaming device!!! Update: After having this unit a few years I’ve finally gotten a chance to get an upgraded dac for my system and find the best source to play to my dac. After trying Bluetooth, airplay2, and using the hi res USB Audio function of this shield pro (hardwired to my dac) and found this is this machine that gives you an amazing music experience.. if you like to rock! The biggest improvement in sound is how the shield pro makes your subwoofers work for the money! My subs really come alive in hi res usb while played from the nvidia. I compared playing usb music between my iPhone and the shield which plays to a new hi-res, affordable, 1mii DS -601 dac and the biggest difference between playing hardwired from my iPhone and hardwired from the shield is how well the signal processes in my subwoofers. It’s fun and I highly recommend using this product for hi-res USB music (Tidal is awesome at sound quality and discovering/rediscovering your fav music) as well as a stout dolby atmos/vision machine! This does it all!!! Thank you nvidia🙂 This review compares the Full Nvidia Shield Pro against the newest Apple TV 4k 3rd generation and Roku Ultra on a cheap hiscence 65” TV with an Audiophile grade Dolby Atmos 7.2.4 Home Theater Component Setup. The picture quality of the Nvidia Shield Pro is near equivalent to the Apple TV, but is better at upstreaming and removing that annoying CGI Wavy dark background from your video playback. The Roku Ultra is very unremarkable when compared against the Nvidia Shield Pro and Apple TV and wont be mentioned further. Please keep in mind this is Nvidia, so the fact this product is the best shouldn’t be a surprise based on how well the stock has performed historically. The apple TV doesn’t detect the available video settings like the Nvidia does, which I love. What this means is that you get to find a Dolby Vision and HDR10 setting that eliminates the Wavy CGI dark background and replaces it with rich detail!! I ultimately picked this because I am an audiophile and love Dolby Atmos! This streaming device makes Dolby Atmos really pop! If you already have a great Dolby Atmos system this device is definitely worth considering as it will upgrade your audio experience as well as video experience! You do have to play around with the display settings though to find what works best for your TV, screenshots of possible settings (for my TV available). I found my favorite setting is Dolby Vision, default was Non-Dolby Vision set at 4k 59hz. For my TV Dolby Vision was only available at 4k 29hz but again, this lower refresh rate removed the wavy CGI dark background that interferes with your movie watching experience! I love this Streaming Device and have settings listed below: The default picture and sound is standard, you must first change the default video settings to 4k with Dolby vision and HDR as pictured to achieve the best picture possible (Pro). Also change the Audio settings to manual and select all Dolby and DTS Settings for optimal sound(Pro!). The default is regular 4k which will not appear that different from your budget smart TV. Once the settings are optimized on this device you will find this android device is much better than the Apple TV, which is hard to beat! This device is worth the price as it optimizes the picture and sound. I don’t use this for games, only to enhance the picture and make the surround sound really pop! This truly is A must for anyone who is an audio enthusiast and/or for someone who has bought a budget TV like a Hiscence, as I did. UPDATE: The screensavers are beautiful! Can you please put the locations on them instead of the photographers name, where applicable, it would be greatly appreciated!!

I upgraded from the Firetv 4K Max due their inability to play high end Ultra HD/ HDR10 movies flawlessly. So it’s been a week now that I have been testing this unit and here are my thoughts: This is a top tier media streaming unit. The processor an memory are more than adequate for the applications I’m using it for. Works well with my preexisting Plex Server although it has plex server built in for those who do not have one. The system maneuvers flawlessly through apps and actually closes the app when you exit it vs the firetv sticks flawed issues with app overlapping when exiting to open another. The unit is not filled with non removable bloatware unlike the firetv stick. The ability to side load apps is commonplace. The sleek non-obtrusive design along with its robust OS platform makes it the perfect Home Theatre additive. I highly recommend this streaming unit to anyone and everyone who cares about quality regarding picture and sound in its truest form. Simply the best on the market today! Prove Me Wrong…..

Received this item next day, as expected. Installed easily. Works better than I anticipated. It will play my 4K UHD MKV files from a USB disk without any jitter or pauses.

12/22/2025 : compared to any other streamer out there, this is 5+ stars, even though it is getting dated. This includes Apple TV 4K, the new one, which yea, does produce *slightly* nicer visuals without 4K upscaling, but, constantly has handshake and YouTube issues.. if you want one box that will play almost everything you throw at it, feel super snappy, and JUST work, this is the one. Especially if you have your own plex or other video library, and have some movies that just weren’t encoded the best, this box will nail them. If this box can’t play something, nothing short of a full PC will play it (although, weirdly, sometimes an iPhone will play videos that even a MacBook struggles with..??). Anyway. I just cannot recommend any other streamer. I even had the new cylindrical non-pro version, and just got sick of the little glitches and little hiccups, so I bought this to try it out. Glitch free. No hiccups. If you have very large 4K files, they will look MUCH smoother when played on this box. Seriously, I just wish I had bought this when it first came out, but I had bought almost all shield tv models prior and didn’t want to spend even more. Well. I ended up buying this anyway. And even though it is in eol territory, it is STILL more muscular than NYTHiNG else out there. If all you do is watch Netflix and prime and stuff, then the other stuff might be fine. But, if you have a big screen and surround system, don’t cheap out on the streamer, just get this. So, why only 4stars? Because I’ve been waiting over a year for an updated model with even more grunt power, even better 4K upscaling, and complete video decoding including the new AV1 codec, but nvidia seems to have stopped working on this and just fallen in love with data center equipment. Anyway. Even though the interface is getting outdated, I would still recommend this, because things stream smooooothe and look greaaaat. Sadly for me, when nvidia releases a new streaming box, I’ll probably throw more money down and get that too. I have so many boxes lying around now, need to get rid of them.

This is perhaps the best TV streaming box if you are a power user but it is probably not the best for everyone. I will list out why this was the best one for me: 1. Can handle 4K over Plex without hiccups. The non pro version of NVIDIA shield actually struggled streaming 4K content over Plex (especially those that had atoms track). This one plays it smoothly. This is also the only player I've tried that isn't struggling to keep up with a large Plex library. 2. It has USB in/out. That means I can use a dedicated DAC with this. I've actually had quite a bit of struggle because my Samsung TV only outputs 16Bit/48KHz through Optical out. With Shield, I can get 24Bit/192Khz audio out through USB and listen to it on my dedicated stereo system. I use Prime music HD or Plex to stream from my library. 3. Great interface. I won't go into too much depth on this but let's just say that having a very powerful CPU inside a streaming box like this makes it very fast and smooth. It is quite a bit faster than my Samsung QLED TV, which wasn't slow to begin with. On top of that switching between apps is fast too. You will love this if you are running apps like Kodi which are somewhat heavy on memory and CPU usage. App support is great too since Shield runs android. You have access to play store which has Google TV specific apps but you could side load any android app if you really wish to. 4. Picture quality. The AI enhancement is probably the best upscaling you can find on any player. I have not tried them all but after going through few other streaming boxes and couple blu ray players, I can say that this is the best upscaling that I have come across. 5. Voice recognition. Since it's android TV, the voice recognition uses google and it works better than any other voice assistant. Out of these, the first 2 requirements were kind of important to me and are hard to find on other devices. If you are not worried about the top 2, but still want rest of the features, the normal version of shield TV will suit you very well. One thing you don't get with Shield is the amount of content you will get with a Roku. In terms of free channels, and just sheer content to watch, I think Roku is unbeatable. I find that Shield has all the content that I wish for. It has all the popular apps and few TVs (I think Sonys) also use Google TV, so it will keep adding support for popular channels in the future. The top of the line steaming boxes from other manufacturers cost just as much as a normal Shield TV if not more and I would still pick that one over the others because of feature number 4 & 5. By now, you know what kind of user you are. If your preferences are close to what I list here, this is easily the best streaming box for you. Hope this helps.

The mass appeal for this product for me was the fact it had a built in Plex Server, certified streamer (except Xfinity, attempt to side load did not work), and best in class graphics and Dolby Atmos support. I sat on purchasing this for ages because a promised update in May (2025) was to fix the Plex Server issues of crashing and the Shield's power issues with the remote etc. I cannot tell you the amount of research, inquiring, and effort I put in to find me such a device that was simple and affordable. While I was warned via various platforms such as reddit, I hoped with the age of the posts coupled with the recent updates that enough time had passed for Nvidia to sort the bugs. However, even outside the box with these updates I experienced a very sensitive remote and power issues. In terms of the power issues, after hitting the power button to turn on my tv/device it would immediately turnoff (this was a bug fix explicitly outlined in the May update that apparently did not take). This then progressed to delayed page navigation to just the Plex app (separate from the buried server app) crashing or not loading to then other apps not loading or crashing to then the device working just fine but if left untouched would crash out and act as if it was shutoff. To awaken it again and to fix any of these issues I would have to power cycle the device. It got to the point that I had to power cycle at least once during any usage period, however brief. I checked as often as I could for updates even though I set it up as automatic. I factory reset at least 3 times and reset up my server just as many. Thankfully I used an external drive to house everything so didn't lose that, but was a PITA to have to redo my collections and detections each time and if anything as my library grew the strain only increased on the device. Nvidia was not helpful in the slightest and the replacement didn't last much longer either. Five months of troubleshooting and trying to optimize and nothing ever got better, the issues persisted and grew and in frequency. I travel frequently so I wanted to be able to feel comfortable leaving my server plugged in and unattended without fear of battery issues/overheating/glitching. I almost settled with purchasing an amazon power plug to remotely power cycle the device since truly that was the only solution that temporarily unstuck it, but then I realized for how much I paid for this and yet the amount of effort it is taking to simply keep it operating I should not be complacent just to have those few moments of graphics and audio appeal. Save yourself the headache, invest in NAS (thinking the latest ASUS NUC) and there'd be no issue with keeping it running all the time unattended, just as much of a small footprint and probably a bit more versatility in that the whole automation process is on one device rather than me having to transfer files.

Best media device hands down ! If you stream this is your device, its flawless, has a ton of features ,remote feels very nice it even comes with new duracell batteries already installed, its Nivida I wouldn't exspect any less ,so if your thinking about ditching those firesticks then do so you want regret it