i'm sure it's worth the premium, everywhere i go people are basically worshiping the shield TV for all the stuff it can do, and i'm sure it'll have dev support long after nvidia drops it so it's very future proof
but it's about a year and a half old now, so of course i'm looking at second hand units.....they're still almost the same price as a new unit though? Is there any particular reason for that? was there a hardware revision very recently i'm not aware of? Or is it just THAT GOOD?
It won't drop in price until v2 comes out (hopefully next year).
I bought mine new at a GameStop for 175. It was the only store that had stock around here.
It's THAT GOOD.
I would say that it's the best Android TV experience out there and it's not close. Great hardware, several major software updates, IR sensor, Ethernet port, etc. My Shield is worth every penny. My only "complaint" is that the little controller is easily lost because it's so tiny.
Right now, Shield units are in short supply, so the price is inflated on the secondary market. It also suffers from the same disease that plagues Fire TV units on the secondary market, where people who think they're clever load Kodi and a bunch of half-working pirate addons, and sell them as "FULLY LOADED~!!!" units that will get you "FREE TV~!!!" for a significant amount more (even though anybody can do the same thing with a vanilla unit and thirty minutes on Google).
It is a pretty solid box, and if you can find a vanilla one (i.e. not a "FULLY LOADED~!!!" one), it's worth the money.
There is supposed to be a revision on the way, although it has been a couple months since I have heard anything. They might be having some delays getting the new one out while the old one is running out of stock.
Personally I don't understand it. What are these amazing android TV games everyone wants to play?just get something that does everything else
People still pay full price for the same product that came out in May 2015. The value has held up well considering a year and half of dominance has passed and no one can even come close to challenging it. It's also been sold out for months and sparse stock appears and then quickly disappears.