- I have access to the play store for apps, not some proprietary tv manufacturer subset of poorly developed apps. That means I can install the retroarch/plex/etc android apps directly from play.
- It has built in google assistant which I use every day to play music and yt videos (as well as controlling other stuff in my all-google house.
- Thanks to CEC, if I say "hey google play [artist] videos on shield" it will turn on the shield, which will turn on my TV, which will turn on my stereo. I never have to touch buttons if I want to listen to music.
- Because it's android TV, I can clear my homescreen of everything but the app launchers I use - no ads, no suggestions, no junk apps.
- It has a really cool feature that lets you stream 4k from a PC with an nvidia card. I added the rdp exe as a "game" that I can stream so I stream my office desktop to my living room tv to browse reddit and check emails and stuff. (This is probably one of the most incomparable features)
- It has 2 usb ports. I use one for retroarch roms and the other one for a logitech wireless kb with a touch pad (which is great for when I'm streaming my desktop but also when I need to enter a password or something.
- you can pair any controller with it but I've used the nvidia controller that came with it to play a bunch of n64 and snes games all the way through on retro arch.
My TV is stupid and I like it that way. As far as I'm concerned, the shield is my TV's os