Nvidia wants to put a cheap Shield in your hands this Black Friday

Whether you're lining up somewhere after loading up on a Thanksgiving feast, or curling up on the couch in your pajamas with your finger on the refresh button, the siren song of ridiculous discounts on just about everything that comes with Black Friday is here. This year there's plenty of websites you can hit if you don't want to go out. Nvidia is a prime example this year, with promotions for both of their Shield devices that make for a compelling buy.

They don't get much more niche than Nvidia's power gamer-focused hardware, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. The Shield Tablet was the first Android tablet outside of the Nexus 9 to sport Android 5.0, and the hardware just begs for some high end games to be played on it. Nvidia's GameStream service does a decent job of making it so you can play your PC games on the tablet, as long as you have the right PC hardware, and the new GRID cloud play service will hopefully fill in the rest of the gaps when it leaves beta.

What a lot of folks don't know about the Shield Tablet is the ability to play a handful of Valve classics on it, which is where the Black Friday deal comes in. The bundle includes the $400 Shield Tablet, the Shield Controller, and copy of Portal, Half Life 2, and Half Life 2: Episode 1 for $399. It's also worth pointing out that this version of the Shield Tablet is LTE ready, so you could get your mobile gaming on wherever you want if you attached a data plan to it.

If a tablet isn't what you are looking for, Nvidia's Shield Portable is also on sale. You can get the portable and one of the crush-proof cases for $199, which is a significant discount on a device that never really took off. You get access to the same GameStream service if you're rocking a decent gaming PC at home, and the HDMI-out for this portable even handles 4K video if you've got a TV that supports it. If you play a lot of mobile games that support controllers, this is one of the better experiences for gameplay. If you're more of a touch control user, you'd probably be happier with the Shield Tablet.

Whichever way you go, if you want to take part in the promotion you'll need to head over to the Nvidia website and get your refresh key ready. The purchase buttons are already set up on the site, which means Nvidia will flip a switch on Black Friday and whoever gets there first gets the deals.

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