5 upgrades the next NVIDIA Shield TV absolutely needs

I love my NVIDIA Shield TV. Mine is the original 2015 model, which I got for just £90 during Prime Day in 2016, and I haven’t stopped using it since.

After a decade of loyal service, I’m confident when I say that all models of the Shield TV are still the greatest streaming devices available, but with no hardware updates since 2019, I’d love to see NVIDIA make some changes.

Whenever NVIDIA decides the time is right for a new Shield TV, here are the five biggest things it needs to focus on.

The remote is one of the things I wouldn’t want to change too much. The one included in my 2015 Shield TV was trash, but the 2019 remote, which I bought separately, is fantastic. The triangular shape makes it comfortable to hold, and the buttons are clicky and have held up to six years of constant use without issue. Those buttons are backlit for easy use in a dark room, and there’s an internal speaker that you can trigger from the Shield’s interface if you misplace it. If this remote is so fantastic, what would I like to change?

First, I’d like to remove the Netflix button. Not everyone has a Netflix subscription, and having a hardware button for something you don’t use is just annoying. The Shield already lets you easily customize and remap double-taps of the home and menu buttons, so swapping the Netflix key to one or two custom shortcut buttons would be a welcome change.

My second wish is simple: A more secure back panel. You only need to look at this remote a little harder than usual, and the battery cover pops off. The fact that this is one of my only two complaints should tell you how much I love this remote overall. I certainly wouldn’t be writing this many words about any other TV remote.

Standard (and replaceable) power supply

With the exception of the cylindrical 2019 base model, all Shield TVs use a proprietary power port, and NVIDIA doesn’t sell replacements. That’s a big problem if your power supply starts to fail, especially with how long people like me use their Shield TVs. There are third-party replacements on sites like AliExpress, but I’d be wary of trusting them. There are official Shield power supplies on eBay, but they cost £40, and I wouldn’t spend that kind of money on one.

Power supply failure isn’t uncommon, either. A failing supply can cause sporadic reboots, a flickering light on the Shield itself, boot loops, and eventually failing to turn on entirely. I know I’ve had 10 glorious years with my Shield TV, but given that it’s still getting the same software updates as the latest model, I’d like to keep using it for as long as possible. If a broken power supply is what eventually kills my Shield TV — and I don’t have a way to replace it — that would be grim.

Please, NVIDIA, use a standard power connector next time, or at the very least, let us buy replacements from you.

There’s a reason the original Shield TV is still a fantastic device: NVIDIA gave it specs that were monstrous for the time. The Tegra X1 processor was built on the same architecture as NVIDIA’s desktop GPU from the year before, and it was still good enough years later that Nintendo used a modified version to power the Switch.

That’s right, a Shield TV has essentially the same processor as a Nintendo Switch, and it delivers twice the graphics performance of the Xbox 360. My original model paired that with 3GB RAM and 16GB of storage, which was easily expandable via MicroSD or an external hard drive, and the 2019 Shield TV Pro had the same storage configuration.

Memory prices are a little crazy right now, but I still think NVIDIA could go above and beyond what other streaming devices offer in 2026. 8-12GB of RAM and 128GB of storage would make a new Shield TV as future-proof as the original, and it would let NVIDIA focus on Android gaming as the original did. I regularly play the Android ports of Knights Of The Old Republic 1 and 2 on my Shield TV, and more powerful hardware would only open that experience up to newer titles. A partnership between Xbox and NVIDIA to bring an official Game Pass streaming app to the Shield would also be a great value add.

Android TV was great, but since it was replaced by Google TV several years ago, the experience has been getting worse. The biggest hit to functionality was the loss of the Google Play Movies app. While Google TV got a convenient way to access movies purchased via Google Play, older Android TV devices have a convoluted workaround that doesn’t work as well. You can use the YouTube app, which has always been buggy for me when watching movies, or go to the shop tab and scroll to your library. It works, but it isn’t as convenient as the old app or what Google TV lets you do.

Likewise, the existing Shield TV will never get Gemini, and the Google Assistant experience has been practically non-functional for over a year now. There are other operating systems NVIDIA could use, but as good as Roku and other platforms are, Google TV is my favorite TV software. I just don’t like any of the hardware currently running it.

I use my Shield TV as a Plex server, as do many others. The 16GB of onboard storage is fine for all your apps, and the two USB-A 3.0 ports and MicroSD card reader make it easy to expand that storage so you can fit your whole media library. Sadly, the 2019 Shield TV Pro dropped the MicroSD slot, limiting your options compared to older models.

If NVIDIA makes a new Shield TV, replacing those USB-A ports with high-speed Thunderbolt ports would make it an even better media server than it already is and would ensure the Shield TV remains an easy recommendation for people setting up a Plex server for the first time. All these years later, I’ve never felt the need to swap it for anything else.

NVIDIA hasn’t announced any plans to bring back the Shield. Given how much money the company is making from AI and how it has abandoned gamers lately, I doubt that will change any time soon. Even so, I like to dream of a day when the NVIDIA Shield TV is resurrected. It’s one of my favorite tech purchases of all time, and I’ll keep using mine until the very last possible second.