I have a Shield pro 2017 that is running really slow with a bunch of issues. The 9.0 update (ads on home screen one) killed performance and now it’s slowly been getting worse. I was thinking of just reformatting but have been looking into debloat it as well ( https://florisse.nl/shield/). Anyone have any other tweaks they’ve done on these? I just use it as a client for Plex and YouTube mainly.
You’ll want to ensure you get a mini PC with graphics acceleration. The Intel i3-N305 is a good CPU to look for, as are the embedded Ryzen CPUs with onboard graphics.
I was thinking about an inten N3350; way cheaper; plus an N305 would be overkill.
N3350 is 7 years old now, and Intel no longer provide security updates for it, which is why it’s so cheap. AFAIK all the chips are second-hand, extracted from old motherboards.
If you want something cheaper, consider the N5105 or J6412. If you don’t mind using an old CPU then I’d just buy a second-hand small form factor or “tiny” PC off ebay (HP ProDesk or EliteDesk, Lenovo Tiny M series, etc) since that’ll be much better value than a newer mini PC with an old CPU in it.