Amazon Fire TV teardown features a tight device packing a big punch
We’ve already gotten a little down and dirty with the Amazon Fire TV, but we haven’t been able to get quite as deep as the guys at iFixIt have. You know what that means — teardown time! No way to spend a Friday like looking at the disgusting guts of a beautiful piece of tech.
We noted in our initial impressions that the Fire TV was small, yet quite heavy. It had to be, of course, considering Amazon packed it with some beefy internals compared to the competition. Revealed beneath the chassis of the set-top box, remote and gaming controller is a result of seemingly beautiful and expert engineering.
Everything is nice and neat, though that won’t mean much to you. What you should be worrying about is how easy this thing is to repair in the event that it breaks. iFixIt rated it a 6 out of 10, where 10 is a device that’s quite easy to repair. While that’s above average, there are a couple of things to note:
- The heat-sink is secured with enough glue to make a criminal charge stick
- The outer-case is a bit unforgiving when taking it apart, but nothing that a bit of tender love and care can’t handle
- There’s little modularity in the way the components are put together, so if something breaks you’re most likely going to have to replace the entire motherboard.
All of that is to say that it’s probably worth picking up an insurance plan for Amazon if you’re going to grab one, because if anything ever happens to the unit it probably wouldn’t be worth replacing it yourself. Hopefully you’ll never have to cross that bridge.
[via iFixIt]