Nvidia charges 50% more for a Shield TV Pro it first sold in 2019

Anyone buying a Shield TV Pro this week gets an Nvidia Tegra X1+ processor ^[5] and no AV1 support ^[7], the hardware Nvidia first sold in October 2019 ^[3]. According to 9to5Google, the box has not been refreshed in the better part of a decade ^[8]. At $299.99 against a $199.99 launch price, it costs 50% more than it did on day one ^[1][4][19].

The comfortable assumption about a seven-year-old device is that its costs were settled long ago. That holds for units sold out of a warehouse. Nvidia still builds the Shield: Nvidia's Andrew Bell told Ars Technica earlier this year that it is still being actively manufactured ^[16]. Ars's explanation is that Nvidia has no stockpile of pre-AI hardware to sell, so new units face the same supply chain constraints as today's smartphones and computers ^[12].

Here's what Shield buyers actually do, by Bell's account: they buy every unit Nvidia makes ^[16]. A product that sells out can carry a $100 increase without leaving boxes on shelves. Its buyers also have few like-for-like alternatives. 9to5Google still ranks it among the most capable Android TV streamers on the market ^[14], and the person it is for wants hardware decoding for almost any media format, plus AI upscaling ^[5].

"Starting October 2, SHIELD Pro will be priced at $299. The cost of components, including memory, has increased substantially across the industry," a spokesperson told Ars Technica ^[6]. Both outlets tie that to AI demand for memory. 9to5Google called it "RAMageddon" ^[9], and Ars wrote that in 2026 anything with memory or storage is getting more expensive, years-old tech included ^[13]. The statement as quoted does not mention AI, and Nvidia did not say how much of the $100 is memory ^[6].

The size of the increase is close to a rival's. 9to5Google put the Google TV Streamer's recent rise at $50, to $149 ^[11], about 51% on its earlier $99 price ^[18].

For a reorder list, I'd sort each device by two questions: is the maker still building it, and does it sell everything it makes. A device still in production that still sells out, as the Shield does by Bell's account ^[16], takes its next price from current component costs, whatever year it launched. A device sold from existing stock is insulated only until that stock runs out ^[12]. If the Shield is already your standard streamer, I'd pay the increase and keep the fleet uniform. The tradeoff is $100 more per box than launch buyers paid, for the same 2019 chip ^[1][4].