Toward the end of my late-April teardown of Walmart’s first-generation Google TV-based onn. 4K Streaming Box, which EDN quickly augmented by publishing my dissection of its “stick” sibling, the onn. Full HD Streaming Device, two weeks later, I wrote:
I’ve also got an onn. Google TV 4K Pro Streaming Device sitting here which I’ll be swapping into service in place of its Google Chromecast with Google TV (4K) predecessor. Near-term, stand by for an in-use review; eventually, I’m sure I’ll be tearing it down, too.
With apologies (although I know of at least one reader that won’t be disappointed), I’m going to alter that planned content-publication cadence. Thanks to a gently used onn. Google TV 4K Pro Streaming Device that I subsequently found at notable discount to MSRP on eBay, you’re going to get that teardown today. And although I hope that TheDanMan (and the rest of you) get something(s) useful out of this project, I already did. More on that after the break(down).
The onn. 4K Pro Streaming Device teardown
Let’s start with some overview shots of our patient, as-usual accompanied by a 0.75″ (19.1 mm) diameter U.S. penny for size comparison purposes. I’d incorrectly mentioned back in the late April teardown that this device has dimensions of 7.71” x 4.92” x 2.71”…those are actually the package dimensions (in my slight defense, every other review I’ve found parrots the exact same info from Walmart’s website). It’s ~4.25” on each side (a rounded square in form factor) and 1.5” tall (rounded top, too), per my tape measure. And my kitchen scale says it weighs ~9.9 oz:
Around the front is a button that, when pressed, causes the remote control (assuming it’s in Bluetooth broadcast range) to emit a tone so you can find it buried between the sofa cushions (or wherever else you might have absentmindedly put it). Given its first-time inclusion and placement prominence, such scenarios are apparently quite common! Unseen behind the mesh on both sides of the button are microphones in an ambient noise-squelching array arrangement for the device’s also-first-time integrated Google Assistant (now Gemini, I guess) voice interface.
The left-side switch controls the mics’ muted-or-not status. Unmuted in its current state, it exposes a red background when slid to the right. You’ll see later what else turns red:
Around the rear are (left to right) the reset switch, a (first-time once again) optional wired Ethernet connector, the HDMI output, a USB-A 3.0 connector (useful for, among other things, tethering to local mass storage for media playback purposes), and the “barrel” power input:
Speaking of which, now’s as good a time as any to show you the “wall wart” power supply:
Back to our patient. The right side is comparatively bland:
And last, but not least, here’s the bottom:
with a closeup of the label, revealing (among other things) the 2AYYS-ORPK4VTG FCC ID.
If you were thinking that the rubber “foot” (specifically, screw heads underneath it) was a likely pathway inside…well, you’d be right:
And here we go (in what follows, I admittedly followed in the footsteps of this video)…
Hopefully, you’ll read this next bit before you go ahead and rip the top half off. Don’t. Two wiring harnesses require detachment first, one more fragile (and difficult to disconnect) than the other:
I’ll ruin the surprise at this point (sorry). The red-and-black wire combo in the lower left quadrant goes to the speaker. The flex PCB one in the upper right ends up at the dual-microphone array. Stay tuned for more revealing pictures to come.
The former was straightforward to detach:
The latter, a bit trickier:
requiring that I first lift up retaining clips on both sides of the connector soldered to the PCB.
Let’s focus on the top half of the chassis first:
The large metal piece is, likely already unsurprising to you, given the piece of grey thermal transfer tape attached to the middle of it, a big ol’ heatsink for the PCB-housed circuitry normally located directly below it (along with adding heft to the overall assemblage’s weight):
With the heatsink out of the way, the speaker underneath it (and at the very top of the device when fully assembled) is obvious:
Below the speaker are four side-by-side square light guides that route PCB-located LEDs’ illuminations to the outer topside of the device; you’ll see them in action shortly.
And below them is a mini-PCB containing the MEMS microphones:
The mini-PCB is held in place by two brackets, themselves held in place by two screws:
With them removed, there’s still a minor matter of some adhesive to deal with:
Voila:
After retracing my steps to put the mic mini-PCB back in place, I tackled the output transducer next. First, I removed the transparent housing around its backside, which both transforms this portion of the design into a closed-box (i.e., “sealed”) speaker enclosure and suppresses the sound it generates from “leaking” into the microphones’ inputs:
Once again, with aspirations of returning the device to a fully functional state post-teardown, I reversed course and put everything back together again, then switched my attention to the lower half of the chassis. You can already tell, even from the overview image, where the thermal tape on the heatsink had originally attached:
Before going any further, here’s a look at both sides of the rectangular Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) antennae on both sides of the device, lower left (inside view first, then outside):
and upper right (ditto).
The Wi-Fi subsystem is dual-band (2.4 GHz and 5 GHz), so I’m guessing there’s one antenna dedicated to each band. The cables initiating at each antenna terminate at RP-SMA connectors on the lower right corner of the PCB. Also shown here is the Fn-Link Technology 6252B-SRB wireless communications module that manages both Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth, and the Bluetooth antenna itself. And in the lower left of the photo is one of the four PCB-resident LEDs, each surrounded by grey rubber, into which the square light guides seen earlier are inserted:
Here’s another perspective on the Bluetooth antenna:
Above the wireless communications subsystem is a piece of grey tape which, when lifted out of place, reveals what I believe is the (presumably class D) audio amplifier for the speaker output, judging by its proximity to the speaker cable harness connector:
At lower left, again, identity-assumed per its connector proximity (this time for the microphone array flex PCB) is the corresponding (both amplification and digitization?) subsystem for the microphone inputs. To its right are the other three LEDs:
In the upper left is, I believe, the device’s power generation, regulation, and management subsystem (proximity-assessed once again; note the input barrel connector above it):
Underneath the piece of foam bridging between the USB-A 3.0 and HDMI connectors is what I originally thought might be something substantive, semiconductor-wise:
Alas, it ended up being just a few more passives:
And of course there’s the sizeable Faraday cage dominating the PCB landscape. But, putting whatever’s underneath it (although I already have ideas) aside for a moment, let’s first get the lay of the land overview of the PCB underside:
Whaddya know…there’s another thermal tape-augmented heatsink here:
And another foam square-augmented Faraday cage:
Prior to popping it off, I first need to fully free the PCB…which necessitated disconnecting those previously glimpsed Wi-Fi antennae connectors:
That’s better:
Note once again the antennae on either side of the underside chassis’ insides, and the heatsink in the middle. Above the left-side antenna is the microphone mute switch:
which, when assembled, mates with the PCB-mounted switch assembly at far right on this shot:
About that Faraday cage…as previously mentioned (and as always), I’m striving to return this device to full functionality post-teardown, so I need to be careful when popping the top off:
Success! Not much to see here, but a bunch of passives, likely associated with ICs on the other side of the PCB. The thermal tape similarly likely assists in removing heat generated by those other-side ICs. Even though heat generally goes up, some of it will also radiate through the PCB, ultimately destined for dissipation by the previously seen heatsink on the bottom of the device:
Speaking of which, let’s return to the larger Faraday cage on the PCB topside.
Careful…careful…
I’m two for two. And as expected, the “meat” of the semiconductor content is here:
In the upper left is the 3 GByte DRAM, likely multi-die stacked in construction (as I’ve discussed in detail recently), and marked thusly:
Rayson
RS768M32LX4
D4BNR63BT
2402CNPFV
The results of a web search on “RS768M32LX4” suggest that it’s LPDDR4 in technology and 3733 Mbps in peak data transfer rate.
To its right is the Amlogic S905X4 application processor, whose presence I already tipped off to you in late April. And below them both is the 32 GByte e.MMC flash memory storage module:
FORESEE (from Longsys, strictly speaking)
FEMDNN032G-A3A55
H23092453972340
001
Here are some side views of the PCB, after putting the Faraday cage covers back in place:
And after carefully reconnecting the Wi-Fi antennas:
and the microphone and speaker cable harnesses:
squeezing the two halves of the enclosure back together and reinstalling the screws and rubber “foot”, I connected the wall wart, plugged it in, and crossed my fingers:
Huzzah! The four red lights you see in this photo indicate that the mic array is currently muted:
And lest you doubt, the HDMI output is fully functional, too:
About that on-screen remote-control notation…I earlier mentioned that the gently used device I tore down today delivered ancillary benefits for me. Had I not been an honest fellow, the benefits might have been even more bountiful. When it initially arrived, I powered it up and noticed that it still had the previous owner’s Google account info configured in it, including access to purchased content (and potentially, the ability to both buy and rent even more of it if I so desired). I immediately factory-reset it and then messaged the seller with a heads-up to be more thorough about wiping devices before shipping them to their new homes in the future!
The remote control
But about that remote control…as alluded to earlier, this is actually the second onn. 4K Pro in my possession. I bought the first one from Walmart last August, right after they were released:
which you can chronologically tell, among other reasons, because Walmart has subsequently transitioned the packaging’s color scheme and broader contents:
The other means of indicating when I’d bought it is that, although Walmart advertises it as including a remote control that not only supports the aforementioned “Find Remote” functionality and embeds a Google Assistant-supportive microphone in addition to the mics in the device itself, but also offers backlit keys and a “Free TV” button:
at least some (including mine) initial onn. 4K Pro shipments came for unknown reasons bundled with a prior-revision remote control absent those latter two features. Here’s the one that was in the box alongside my original device:
And, to my ancillary-benefits comments, here’s the full-featured newer-version one that came with the device I more recently acquired off eBay:
Here are both remotes alongside my original device and other in-box goodies that came with it:
mimicking another one of Walmart’s “stock” images.
Here’s a PDF copy of the Quick Start guide that’s also in the box. And speaking of which, here are the results of my packing everything back into the box, simulating (in reverse, albeit also including both remotes; I now have a spare in case “Find Remote” ever fails!) what the insides looked like when I unpacked the original device late last summer:
With that, having passed through 2,000 words a few paragraphs ago, I’ll wrap up and await your thoughts in the comments!
—Brian Dipert is the Editor-in-Chief of the Edge AI and Vision Alliance, and a Senior Analyst at BDTI and Editor-in-Chief of InsideDSP, the company’s online newsletter.
Related Content
- Walmart’s onn. 4K streaming box: A Google TV upgrade doesn’t clobber its cost
- Walmart’s onn. full HD streaming device: Still not thick, just don’t call it a stick
- Google’s Chromecast: impressively (and increasingly) up for the video streaming task
- The Google Chromecast Gen 3: Gluey and screwy
- Google’s Chromecast Ultra: More than just a Stadia consorta
- Google’s Chromecast with Google TV: Dissecting the HD edition
- The Google Chromecast Gen 2 (2015): A Form Factor Redesign with Beefier Wi-Fi, Too
- Google’s Chromecast with Google TV: Car accessory similarity, and a post-teardown resurrection opportunity?
- The Google Chromecast with Google TV: Realizing a resurrection opportunity
The post Perusing Walmart’s onn. 4K Pro Streaming Device with Google TV: Storage aplenty appeared first on EDN.
