Google Home teardown reveals Chromecast internals, lots of glue

iFixit breaks apart Google’s connected home gadget, to find it’s powered by the same internals as last year’s Chromecast.

As now mandated by law, the launch of any new gadget must be accompanied by the obligatory iFixit teardown. Today’s product of choice: Google Home, which gets X-rayed and then prised apart by the site.

Most notably, the teardown reveals that Google’s voice-controlled gadget is in fact powered by the same core internals as last year’s second-generation Chromecast dongle — an Armada 1500 Mini Plus (with two ARM Cortex-A7 cores), along with 256GB of storage and 512MB of DDR3 RAM.

Also of note: If you’re determined to tear this thing apart, you’ll need a good deal of heat to dislodge the touch board and its PCB from the top of the device, along with a serious amount of force. Elsewhere, you’ll find an additional board housing the SoC and memory tucked inside the speaker housing.

Overall, Google Home earns a repairability score of 8/10, with the device losing points for the super-sticky glue used in the touch board, and the fact that the power port is soldered directly onto the mainboard.

Head on over to iFixit for more of Google Home in various states of undress.