[phreedumb]

Ordered the new Shield on the basis that;
1) it's far more powerful (3-4x)
2) I got a $20 employee discount (Amazon), and Prime shipping
3) for $110 extra than the Mi Box (delivered), ~$40-50 of that would have been for a controller (which comes with the Shield anyway).

Thanks for the help thus far

Shield arrived today, installed Kodi 16.1 from Google Play. First impressions, a bit meh. Kodi runs at 1080p by default (couldn't change res in settings, though Shield settings show 4K @ 59.something Hz), remote massively laggy (from a distance on 6 feet with line of sight, remote upgraded to v1.03 during install), remote also doesn't have a PLAY/Pause button so you need to press the middle button twice to Pause, once more to PLAY then press Back to remove the context menu at the top (got to be a better way) 720p files still lagging (like on fire stick) which points to an issue with my wifi network (or USB hdd).

I've not spent long with it at all (10mins) but I'm very disappointed off the bat. My next steps are updating to a beta release of Kodi, and reviewing WTF is going on with my wireless. The remote lag is worrying me.