The Nvidia Shield will be available late June in the US and Canada for US$349 (AU$353), Nvidia has announced.

Pre-orders for the device will be open from May 21, and it comes with two games – Expendable: Rearmed and Sonic 4 Episode II THD.

The Shield is a five-inch portable Android game console that can also stream PC games from a nearby PC – to a TV if required.

It runs standard Android 4.2.1 and features 2GB of RAM, a retinal multitouch 720p display, tuned bass reflex drivers for audio, a micro-SD card slot, a GPS chip, and a mini-HDMI 4K output.

The system’s Tegra 4 processor features a quad-core Cortex-A15 CPU, 72 GPU cores, and provides six times the graphics muscle of its predecessor, according to Nvidia.

Earlier this year, Nvidia claimed the Shield would "raise the bar for Android and PC gaming".