So why a tablet? The original Shield is just a tablet with a controller (permanently) attached, so separating them makes sense. That way, NVIDIA could market it as a high-end tablet, a handheld gaming device and possibly a home console that'd plug into your TV. It's also feasible that more than one Shield device is coming, though that seems less likely. Either way, a mysterious benchmark for an NVIDIA Mocha tablet gives us a clue about the specs, which are identical to the new Xiaomi Mii pad. That device has a 7.9-inch, 2,048 x 1,536 screen, with 2GB of RAM and NVIDIA's new Tegra K1 quad-core CPU. If the Shield Tablet is similarly equipped, it'd be much more capable of running serious games than the original, as shown in the video below (which features NVIDIA's reference Tegra K1 tablet, by the way). 4G connectivity would also make it much more usable on the road. If all this pans out, it'd make sense -- allowing the Shield to be a standalone tablet might be the final carrot to entice gamers into throwing their cash at it.