Apple TV 4K (2021) vs Nvidia Shield Pro

[Awesomesince86]

Moving into a new house this year and one of the first purchases I'll be making is a new great room TV. I cant stand the built in OS on TVs as the chips used are always underpowered and they start to lag after about a month. Up to this point I've been using a Nvidia Shield and will keep using that on one of the TVs. But as I am currently on my quest of diving deep into the Apple ecosystem to see what all the fuss is about, I thought I would consider an Apple TV 4K instead of auto-buying another Nvidia Shield.

Can anyone give their experience on either device to sway me?

I've never had an issue with performance on the Nvidia Shield and I like the AI upscaling, but I have had previous issues with frame rate matching being poor, audio sync not being great, and the adds on the homescreen really piss me off for a device this expensive.

 

[tbayrgs]

The Apple TV of course plays nice with other Apple gear but of all the Apple devices I use, this would be the easiest to swap out. And not because it’s not good but the differences between Google TV (is that what it’s called now?), FireTV, Roku, and Apple TV all seem pretty negligible.

That being said, one specific advantage I’ve found recently is I’ve been testing Fitness+ while I wait for the latest COVID spike to subside (people’s inability to clean up after themselves at my gym means taking a pause there) and the way the Apple Watch integrates with the Apple TV is pretty slick.

I have Android TV built into one of my TVs and it works just fine, especially now that the Apple TV app is available almost everywhere. Felt no need to add an Apple TV to it.

 

[clevins]

I've not used the Shield but some thoughts on the ATV:

1) It's fast (as in responsive UI)
2) There are no ads etc.
3) It supports Atmos and allows fairly detailed selection of various video and audio options (Chroma, etc).
4) It can be used as a HomeKit hub which might be important to you or utterly irrelevant, depending.
5) The remote is ok and Siri works well for the various basic commands (turning CC on and off, etc).
6) related to #4, it obviously integrates well with your other Apple stuff, but the integrations are probably least important here.

To me, there's no reason NOT to get the ATV so it comes down to whether the Nvidia does something the ATV doesnt do and if so, how much you want that thing.