Nvidia shield vs Nokia Streaming Box for a 1080p TV

by asambasamba

Hi all,

Would like to ask some buying advice from you. We own a 1080p non-HDR TV from 2017. We might replace it with a newer 4K model at some point but that's not planned anytime soon, not within let's say 4-5 years. But the smart-TV portion has become real slow and keeps crashing and hanging. We're fed up with that so want to buy a separate streaming box.

Our wishes:

- Fast UI navigation and short load times, no crashes. It should ideally stay that way for a relatively long time, let's say 5 years

- Ethernet port

- USB port for connecting a hard disk with a library of movies & series, which removes the need to use Plex from our PC

- For the rest we use it for streaming Netflix, Youtube and some Dutch streaming apps (Videoland, NPO). We will not use it for gaming.

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We are doubting between Nokia Streaming Box 8000 (€80) and Nvidia Shield Pro (€200). It's a huge price difference, basically the Nokia can do everything we want today and has generally good reviews. The only reason we still doubt about the Shield is firmware support lifetime. The Nokia will be supported 'at least until 2023', after that it's unclear, it might get updates or not. I'm also not sure how quickly it would become slow or buggy after support stops.

The Shield has exceptionally long software support so we're definitely safe there. But on the other hand we are not demanding users and we will be (partially) paying for features we don't use (4K, HDR, gaming)...

What would you recommend?

Kind regards

513

If you have 3 guaranteed major updates (so up until Android TV 13/14 ?) + Google makes a lot of UI + functionality updates through the Play Store, for 80€ go for the Nokia.

Kodi_Fan_Omicron

All current AndroidTV Set-Top-Boxes or Dongle devices should be purchased will the intent to upgrade in 2 years time.

Your expectation/requirement of it lasting 5 years is reasonable from a purely hardware perspective, the device should physically last that long, but the most important factor the Software is where all Androidtv devices lose support after only a few years, with the exception of the Nvidia ShieldTV.

Elf-Lord

Nokia, will work, the Shield will just be an utter pleasure to use in comparison. End of the day, it is your money, and you are hoing to be using/watching/interacting with the device. I'll stick with my Shield - think you muchly 😀

asambasamba

Thanks to everyone for your input. I purchased both the Nokia and the Shield to test them, and in the end I kept the Shield. It already feels nicer to work with, the remote is also really great and the Nokia even crashed a time or two during a week's use. That combined with the clearly long expected lifetime of the device and good support, made the choice clear for us.

Also one minor thing to note was that the Nokia has a built-in volume control which cannot be disabled, so no TV-volume control through CEC. And the built-in volume range is quite narrow. While the Shield also does not support this for our Samsung, it supports IR volume control so now we never have to use the TV remote anymore, which is really convenient.