If you want gaming, the Shield is much more appealing. Emulators work well. There are some Android games specifically ported for Shield. Gamestreaming can also be done from your PCs library of games.

Definitely look at what games are available/supported though.

https://shield.nvidia.com/games/android

Make sure to filter for Shield TV. And then the other tab will show you whats available from their streaming service.

Regarding streaming video, the shield is the best hands down. Load times are fast, app swapping is fast, its just a fast and snappy device. No other on the market matches it currently.

Yes! Had a variety of cheaper Android devices as set top boxes before but this is the Rolls Royce

The Shield is the best Android TV device on the market. The NP isn't even for sale anymore, so don't even bother. If you can find it though, it's the best value option at under $50. Technically the Razor Forge is another option but is overpriced and too buggy to recommend. Other than a Smart TV that run Android TV, you'll need to look into competitors' products like Roku or Amazon's FireTV.

I love my Shield TV!

The answer to these threads is often "yes". I own three. I considered a roku for one of them, but the functionality of the Shield is so much better.

The only reason I got one is because my 4k TV did not support Google's VP9 codec for 1080/4k you tube.
The 10bit input does not yet support hdcp as there is not enough bandwidth in HDMI for both 10bit colour AND hdcp over HDMI 2, so tis means if you want extra color on your shield you forgo HD Netflix...as the content protect kicks in over non HDCP ports and stops Netflix from working (ironically the cure for this is to download the content from the pirate bay and stream over Plex). Egro is you want 4k/1080/720 Netflix though the shield then you need to plug it into a 8-bit HDCP port. It's a real pain if your HDMI ports are fairly inaccessible and you need to juggle them.
Gforce now is good, but a decent gaming PC is better. The game streaming is good, but you need a monitor on your PC with the correct aspect ratio if you want to stream 4k (or anything more than 1080) gaming to the shield, as the PC streaming service is a broadcast from your PC screen so your monitor needs a cheap ass aspect ratio, your screwed if you have the wrong ratio screen to mirror your PC screen to TV screen via shield streaming..
Game streaming on WiFi causes random dropouts that are only fixed going upstairs to the PC, pressing OK and then back downstairs and restreaming the game sigh , I don't understand why it cannot recover itself. So unless you have wired Ethernet or are prepared to drill holes in your house, and your PC is upstairs, then forget about game streaming from your PC.
If you use a external keyboard/mouse plugged in, it messes up the voice recognition input (insta closes it when you open it) intermittently. No native chrome installed and native keyboard and mouse support for the OS is dire (in case you had aspirations of plugging in a cheap keyboard and mouse and browsing the web and navigating the os, you can forget about it, even after side loading chrome the mouse does not work with it).
As usual, it's a lot of half baked tech from google and nVidia, with so much room for improvement and some easy wins I just can't understand why it's not 1000% better. (I'm just sore that I still can't answer a phone call in phone speaker mode from my Android Wear watch, I mean, honestly! It's been years...).
Still it's the best of class and I recommend it and would buy again :-)

I know you posted 3 weeks ago but just wanted to say it's more than worth the price tag. You don't have to worry about buying a box and being dissapointed.

Yes, best media player device on the market . I will be buying their next model , the controller and remote control are superb quality , I feel like a champ everytime,I fire it up