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Nvidia's Shield Tablet returns with lower $199 price tag

Nvidia wants to get its beefy gaming tablet into your hands this holiday season.

Nate Ralph Associate Editor
Associate Editor Nate Ralph is an aspiring wordsmith, covering mobile software and hardware for CNET Reviews. His hobbies include dismantling gadgets, waxing poetic about obscure ASCII games, and wandering through airports.
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Nvidia's tablet gets a price cut.

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Nvidia has slashed the price on its powerful gaming-centric 8-inch Android tablet, down to $199 and £149 in the UK, which converts to around AU$320. That's down from $299 (£240 in the UK), which leaves you a bit of extra cash to spend on apps or a controller.

A quick refresher: The Nvidia Shield Tablet arrived last August, and it didn't fail to impress. Nvidia crammed its powerful Tegra K1 processor into an 8-inch shell, with a 1,920x1,200-pixel resolution display. Games optimized for the K1 -- such as Half-Life 2 and Portal -- look stunning, but they're few and far between and you'll really want to pick up a Shield controller for the best experience.

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The Shield controller is sold separately.

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But if you've got a gaming PC equipped with an Nvidia GPU, you can stream games from your PC to the tablet. When connected to a TV, the tablet will play games at up to 1080p, and stream 4K content from online services such as Netflix and YouTube. The tablet also supports Nvidia's GeForce Now videogame streaming service.

The Shield Tablet ships with 16GB of storage, but it can support up to 128GB microSD cards. Couple that with a gaming controller, and you've potentially got a rather inexpensive gaming platform on your hands. If your interest is piqued, you can pick one up from stores like Amazon or Best Buy, or directly from Nvidia.