Its more unfortunate news for Nvidia’s hardware manufacturing division, with another Shield line recall being announced; this time affecting the 500GB hard disk drive (HDD) in the more premium Shield Pro version of their Android TV console. According to Nvidia, the issue affects fewer than 1% of Shield Pro units, no Shield 16GB consoles, and is not currently being caused by actual disk failures.
In an official forum post regarding issues installing Upgrade 1.4 for the console, some of the users who spend a little more for the larger hard drive are having issues booting back up after the update. Nvidia has determined that this behavior is caused by faulty hard drive issue that can worsen over time, and even if after the update it does eventually return to a functional state, users should visit www.nvidia.com/nvcc for a replacement.
This is especially unfortunate for Nvidia as their Shield line of tablets and consoles have received high praise from reviewers and users alike, they seem to be plagued with manufacturing defects that other premium device makers have managed to avoid. It is especially bad timing for this particular unit to have public problems, with Nvidia positioning it as the only true competition against the overhauled Apple TV just announced. With Apple being known for the quality of their builds, this news may sway users more than Nvidia would like, despite their tweets over the capabilities of the two devices.
.@nvidiashield gives you more options than other living room devices, including #appletv. https://t.co/so7kloYBqR pic.twitter.com/DBhT8Ynft6
— NVIDIA (@nvidia) September 10, 2015