Nvidia raises Shield TV Pro price to $299.99 over AI costs

The Shield TV Pro is not a new product. The most recent version debuted in 2019, running Android TV with AI upscaling and hardware decoding, and its Tegra X1+ processor was already aging at launch even though it remained fast for a media streamer. It arrived at $199.99, alongside a $149.99 non-Pro variant that Nvidia has since discontinued, leaving the Pro as the surviving model at the new $299.99 price.

What makes the increase notable is that Nvidia itself links it to the AI boom. A spokesperson told Ars that component costs, including memory, have risen substantially across the industry, and the article frames this as a moment when anything with memory or storage is getting more expensive. Nvidia's Andrew Bell had earlier described the Shield as a passion project, saying the company still actively manufactures it and sells every unit it makes. Without a stockpile of pre-AI hardware, those new units appear to face the same supply constraints as today's smartphones and computers.

The stakes here are modest in dollar terms but telling in kind: whether a seven-year-old streaming box can hold its price depends on memory costs that Nvidia does not control, and on whether buyers keep paying $299.99 for hardware whose internals date to 2019. Watch whether the increase sticks or whether demand softens at the new price.