Gadgetory

Alexa what's inside the Amazon echo hmm I can't find the answer to the question I heard well the echo may not know the answer but I know another way to find out and perhaps in the process we'll also find out what makes this a smart speaker I'm Bill Detweiler and this is cracking open heart speaker park microphone part Star Trek computer in your house the echo is around nine and a quarter inches tall and three and a quarter inches wide or about the size of a one liter drink container its controls are minimal there are speaker on/off and action buttons on the top as well as a rotating and lighted volume ring on the bottom is the connector for the power cord from the outside that's really about all there is to see other than the microphone and speaker holes that cover the echoes black plastic shell so to learn what really makes this speaker smart we'll have to break out our screwdrivers and crack it open to get inside the echo you'll need to go through the bottom so first I removed the rubber base now unfortunately I used a bit too much force and tore it during the process but since it's on the bottom no one will really notice when I put the echo back together four screws hold the bottom cover in place once I removed them and disconnected a few cables I could remove the cover which also holds the power board now the lower speaker cover comes off next followed by the outer shell and a thin piece of fabric which sits behind the speaker holes we now get our first look inside the echo on the bottom is a two-inch tweeter followed by a two and a half inch woofer now the system board is mounted to the side of the internal frame and air chamber and finally a volume ring control button and microphone assembly is located on the top another set of four screws hold the tweeter in place and after removing them I can lift out both the tweeter and the woofer after detaching a few cables and removing a few more screws the system board came off neck although much of the processing for the echo happens in the cloud there are a few cool chips on the board including a Texas Instruments DM 3725 digital media processor a 250 Meg Samsung mobile DRAM chip a 4 gig Toshiba NAND flash storage chip and a Qualcomm QC a 60 to 34 wireless chip now lastly I removed the volume ring assembly which is made up of several layers all sandwiched together and covering the microphone and control board now on the top of the control board are the LEDs and contacts for the speaker on/off button and the action button on the underside are microphones and more LEDs various LED drivers and audio processors and the volume control wheel with the echo completely in pieces our teardown is complete well now we know that there's plenty of cool tech inside the echo and we got a look at the speakers and air chambers that help it deliver pretty good sound as small bluetooth speakers go but did we find out what makes the echo smart well yes and the answer is as with most digital assistants like Apple's Siri Microsoft's Cortana or Google now the cloud somewhere and massive data centers armies of servers collect a recording of your voice process your request and then send a response back down to the echo in essence the echo is just the ears and mouths of Amazon's Alexa voice service so the echo is only as smart as that service is which I would say is average as digital assistants go where the echo really shines however is its always-on capability day and night it's sitting there waiting for you to make a request now yes this is a bit creepy but it's also incredibly useful sure I could take my iPhone out of my pocket hold the home button and ask Siri to do the same thing as the echo but that's just not as easy as walking into my kitchen and asking Alexa what the weather is to turn on the news or to set a timer so I don't burn what I'm cooking I've used the echo for several weeks and found it to be incredibly useful and as close to a Star Trek computer as any digital assistant I've tested now if I could only get the echo to wake up when I say computer now for more information on the Amazon echo including real-world tests and pricing check out David Carr noise full CNET review to see more teardown photos and read my full Hardware analysis go to TechRepublic comm forward slash cracking over