HOW IT’S DONE
Amazon Echo Show
Is there an echo in here? Seems like Alexa’s talking to us from a lot of devices now. The new Echo Show adds a screen to bring even more Alexa, so she can watch you while she listens. Creepy? Maybe. Endearing? OK, yeah, a little. Hey, Alexa, let’s “Drop In” on another teardown!
MAJOR TECH SPECS:
7-inch touchscreen display ≠ with 1,024 x 600 resolution Dual 2-inch stereo speakers Intel Atom x5-Z8350 (2M cache, ≠ up to 1.92GHz) processor 5MP front-facing camera Eight-microphone array
KEY FINDINGS:
Like most Echo devices, we start from the bottom. After peeling up the taped-in rubber foot, we spy a handful of T5 Torx screws. But with all screws dispatched, there are no seams — we seem to be screwed, ≠ for now. We hunt for new ingress points; it turns out the screws ≠ at the bottom were a red herring — ≠ the speaker grille is the real ingress point. Under the grille, we find some sound-dampening fabric (like the stuff rolled around the original Echo) and more screws. But still no dice removing that front panel — time to get to work ≠ on what looks like the digitiser. iOpener, engage! We lift the digitiser to reveal... more screws under the bezel! Unsurprisingly, ≠ the digitiser cable disappears ≠ into the frame, holding the digitiser captive for now. Fortunately, we can free the front frame, under which Amazon hid some hefty speakers. Our hard work and early screw removal pay off! Finally, we get ≠ to see what this Echo has to ‘Show’ for itself. Alexa’s new form is powerful. ≠ How powerful? Well, the wall adapter outputs 15V DC at 1.4A, meaning there’s 21W driving Alexa. Someone needs to pull Alexa back down to earth, and luckily we spot ≠ a burly braided cable grounding ≠ the Show. That juice is going somewhere, and it looks like ≠ those speakers are thirsty. Out comes the main board, hiding its chips under an inscrutable jigsaw puzzle of EMI shields. The display itself is another matter. It’s guarded by some impossibly tough foam tape that requires you to break the display rather than ≠ lift it out. So first we did the former, then the latter. The panel is a model TV070WSM-NMO, made by BOE. ≠ We half expected it to be borrowed from the similarly-specced Kindle Fire, but we’ve not seen it before. Repairability Score: 4 out of 10 ≠ (10 is easiest to repair). The Echo Show uses standard T5 and T6 Torx screws. While they may not get much wear, the most wear-prone components (buttons and power jack) are soldered to boards, which complicates replacement. The digitiser is not fused to the display, but must be pried up from tough adhesive to do any repair. The display is adhered tightly in the mid-frame, and is difficult to remove without damage. Any repair requires cutting through and replacing lots of tough adhesive.