In the mood for a teardown? Here's the Amazon Fire TV Cube. The first hands-free
TV streaming device thanks to Alexa. How do you get into a shiny cube with no
screws or obvious point of entry? Well we have a hunch that the Fire TV is built
just like an Amazon Echo. So that means prying up the rubber base, and finding
some deeply recessed T10 screws. These screws are deep down some very narrow
channels. Which gives us the perfect opportunity to use one of our drivers
from our pro tech screwdriver set. With the four screws removed; the outer case
lifts right off, and so does the built-in 1.6 inch speaker that allows you to
interact with Alexa. Even if the TV is off. Speaking of the case; while it may
look like a solid black cube to the naked eye, our infrared camera proves
it's actually transparent to IR light. Allowing the beams of the IR blasters
inside to project out. Underneath the speaker is the motherboard which is
connected to the upper portions of the Fire TV Cube by a few cables. On the
board you can see the six multi-directional IR blasters that allow
you to use your fire TV cube to control other devices in your living room, and
underneath some shields we find the 16 Gb of sandisk made
flash storage and the AM logic Quad-core ARM Cortex A53 based SoC with
a Mali-450 MP3 GPU. We're left with a large metal heatsink that the antenna
cables are soldered to. Separating this block from the remaining components is a
challenge as it does require a decent amount of force. The solder cables
are connected underneath a plastic frame preventing us from disconnecting them
first risking ripping the delicate cables. The last board in the fire TV
cube is home to both Alexa's ears in the form of eight microphones; some flashy
visible light LEDs, and the physical buttons that control Alexa's volume and
deactivate the microphone. With our Amazon Fire TV cube completely
disassembled it's time to talk repairability.
The Amazon Fire TV Cube scored a 7 out of 10 and here's why. On the upside the
majority of the device is held together by standard Torx screws. The
device construction is simple and straightforward to disassemble. On the
downside antenna cables are soldered to the heatsink and the connectors are
hidden behind a plastic frame. The potential for ripping one of these
cables is high if you're not careful during disassembly. Finally all the
ports are soldered to the motherboard.