iFixit's Google Chromecast Teardown Reveals Simple, Heat Dissipating Dongles

As iFixit has been known to do, they've subjected another new tech device to their detailed teardown process. This time it was Google's new Chromecast 2015 and Chromecast Audio streaming dongles. The double teardown revealed that there's little to complicate the devices, and while repairability is close to nil, that doesn't play much of a factor here, as iFixit explains. They didn't apply their usual scoring system, since "These devices are essentially a board in a box."

While there's little chance of someone being able to fix or repair a malfunctioning Chromecast, the fact is that they only cost $35, so it's probably going to be easier to just replace one. However, there was one thing that iFixit praised in this regard, and that's the internally detachable HDMI cable. "It adds longevity to the Chromecast 2015 by addressing damaged connectors and loose connections," the site wrote.

As for the rest of the teardowns, among the interesting things they found were Google's plentiful use of thermal compound for reducing heat. This is expected to reduce the overheating issue that was often found with the original Chromecast.

The adaptive antenna array was found to be attached to the motherboard, featuring three integrated PIFA antennas. iFixit also noted that the two dongles were nearly the same internally, both using baby blue thermal paste, with an LED indicator and a reset button in the bottom half.

As for the parts, the new Chromecast models each rely on 2GB of flash memory from Toshiba and a dual-core ARM Cortex-A7 media processor from Marvell, while the Chromecast 2015 has 4GB of RAM from Samsung, and the Chromecast Audio uses 2GB of RAM from Nanya.

SOURCE iFixit