Teardown: What makes the Amazon Fire TV Stick tick? I had a model new first-era Amazon Fire TV Stick mendacity around, which I’d by no means gotten round to tearing down (we’re a predominantly Roku household), so I gave it to him as a Christmas present. Alas, he wasn’t able to get it online, and neither Comcast nor Amazon was in a position to successfully resolve whatever situation he was having with it, so Amazon despatched him a substitute unit (which works tremendous). He gave the original again to me (minus the remote control, which is now in use with the replacement Stick), so I’ve revisited my past teardown plan to see the way it compares to the Roku Streaming Stick, whose teardown EDN printed back in January. The PCB-embedded Bluetooth and Wi-Fi antenna structures are clearly seen, however we’re going to should do one thing about that Faraday Cage. The larger of the 2 dominant ICs is the system processor, Broadcom’s BCM28155, containing (among different things) a dual-core Arm Cortex-A9 CPU array operating at 1 GHz and a VideoCore IV graphics core.
Next to it is Broadcom’s (now Cypress Semiconductor’s) BCM43242, which handles dual-band Wi-Fi and Flixy TV Stick Bluetooth duties. Now again to the topside. Underneath it is more pink stuff. That giant IC dominating the panorama is an Elpida Memory B8164B3PF-1D-F 1 GByte DDR2 SDRAM. Next to it’s the real cause for the Faraday Cage, a smattering of wireless energy and RF circuitry accompanying the BCM43242, but the place the heck is the nonvolatile storage? Wikipedia tells me it’s eight GBytes in capability (so it ought to be pretty massive in dimension), and these people even figured out its type (e.MMC) and the right way to reprogram it (they also have a pleasant picture of the PCB topside with the steel shield fully eliminated). But the place is it? Then I remembered: Elpida Memory went bankrupt in 2013, and Micron Technology acquired it. Micron happens to make not only DRAM but additionally flash memory, including e.MMC flash reminiscence.
I bet that if I were to desolder that DRAM, I’d find an 8 GByte e.MMC flash reminiscence module underneath! By the best way, with the teardown complete and no chance of restoring the unit back to fully useful situation (which, as common readers know, I’m at all times in favor of doing, then donating it), I stumbled across this discussion thread on iFixit’s site, which has me questioning whether the unit was working fantastic after all, but just wanted to have its settings fully wiped. When you buy a Wi-Fi-supportive gadget from Amazon, as I did on this case, and they know your community credentials, as they do in my case, the gadget comes pre-configured and ready to connect, which is great, as long as you don’t give it to someone else as an alternative! Oh effectively, sound off together with your ideas in the comments! Brian Dipert is Editor-in-Chief of the sting AI and Vision Alliance, Flixy streaming and a Senior Analyst at BDTI and Editor-in-Chief of InsideDSP, Flixy streaming the company’s online e-newsletter. Are streaming sticks the present and future? I really just like the teardowns, Flixy streaming cease me if I mentioned this earlier than, FOCUS and LIGHTING! I’ll proceed to ask for better images. Totally agree with the earlier commenter – I love Brians’s teardowns and likewise his crucial gadget opinions, however the photo high quality is embarrassing. My thirteen year previous 6 megapixel Nikon D40 DSLR still blows away any cell phone digicam with ease – use a DSLR Brian, it doesn’t need to be expensive one!
But whereas the Fire TV Stick 4K Max is a value on the WiFi 6 entrance, there are literally some fairly great, latest 4K streamers from the likes of Roku and Google that cost lower than what Amazon is offering right here. This is not an Echo Buds 2 situation either, Flixy TV Stick where a handful of technical compromises are forgivable as a result of it is just so much cheaper than the competitors. The new Fire TV Stick 4K Max is as good because it gets from the company’s streaming stick line, however until you reside and die by Amazon’s product ecosystem, it’s not a needed upgrade. The newest Fire TV Stick is truly iterative, with next to nothing in the way of thoughts-blowing new options. Instead, Amazon is touting extra highly effective tech guts (specifically a quad-core processor and 2GB RAM) that supposedly make it forty p.c sooner than the previous 4K mannequin. I didn’t have a kind of available for facet-by-aspect testing, but regardless, this thing hums alongside beautifully in a method final year’s 1080p mannequin merely couldn’t.
I was largely constructive on the revamped Fire Tv interface Amazon launched last yr, however I’ve by no means felt better about it than I did while utilizing the 4K Max. Scrolling horizontally by means of its varied app and content rows is clean as can be, whereas stated apps and content also load quickly enough. Bouncing again to the house menu is equally slick. The 2020 Fire Stick had noteworthy UI lag and that is nowhere to be discovered here, so far as I can inform. As for WiFi 6, the benefits are much less clear at this level in time. It’s a faster and better version of WiFi, however you will not get much out of it and not using a suitable router. Those are getting extra inexpensive by the day, Flixy streaming however we’re still in the early adopter section of the WiFi 6 rollout. Chances are the router your ISP gave you does not support it. Now, I do have a WiFi 6 router in my home, however I didn’t sense an appreciable difference in Flixy streaming with the 4K Max compared to what I get out of a Roku or Chromecast.
