Amazon Echo Teardown: Easy To Fix If You Know How

Listen up! The Amazon Echo has been given the teardown treatment. The device that's always listening, waiting for you to give instructions or tell it what you want to buy from Amazon, has been torn apart by iFixit. Not holding much back, the Amazon Echo is a lot of speaker and simple circuitry; but it's not got a lot to do, so we'll forgive the simple internals on this one. We also appreciate how easily repairable the Echo is, scoring a 7 out of 10 on iFixit's scale.

Like a technological can of Pringles, the Amazon Echo holds it's components in a stacked formation. This is a byproduct of its form-factor, but also makes the Echo pretty simple to repair. iFixit loved the speaker placement and ease of removal, since those are something they consider will fail more than anything else.

Three circuit boards throughout the device also make for some easy repairs, and allow for more precise pinpointing when it comes to identifying (and fixing, of course) trouble.

Still, it's clear you're not meant to take the Amazon Echo apart. A fabric shroud over the speaker cutout is affixed with adhesive, and iFixit says you'd have to tape it back in place should you remove it. The fabric also requires a knife to cut it off/out, so now you're wielding a switchblade at your Echo. That sounds a lot more fun that it is, I bet.

Echo might be easy to repair, but it's still a fairly complex device. It also has no documentation, so if you do try to crack it open, you'd better document your steps.

We're also not sure if Amazon makes parts readily available. They like to keep things proprietary. If you ever do have issues with your Echo, at least the fix is easy — so long as you know what you're doing.

Source: iFixit