NVIDIA Shield

That's a big display, and a hinge that's a big point of failure — but the good news is it should last a while

Stating the obvious here, but you're going to be opening and closing NVIDIA Shield a lot. You don't have a choice. To use it, you've got to flip open that 5-inch display, exposing the controls underneath and giving you a screen to work with. And that opening-and-closing mechanism also was one area NVIDIA focused on since we first saw a prototype in January. The hinge has been made more robust, NVIDIA told us at its headquarters in Santa Clara, Calif.

But just how many times can you open and shut this thing before it gives out?

More: Hands-on with new NVIDIA Shield

That's the sort of thing you test, of course. And you test it a lot. And Shield, NVIDIA says, is rated at 20,000 cycles. That's 20,000 openings and closings. Open, shut. Open, shut.

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The proof, of course, is in the pudding, so we'll see what happens when final retail units get into consumers' hands. But, on paper, you can open and shut Shield 20 times a day for more than 2.7 years before that hinge is supposed to fail.

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