Vizio Co-Star Teardown

How fast is this little box? Is there a hamster running on a miniature treadmill inside? Would it fare well against our spudgers? We knew of only one way to find out. During our journey, we found the Co-Star to be an easily-fixed device, although there's not much inside to fix — it is, after all, a (circuit) board in a box. Even so, the little guy got a great 8 out of 10 repairability score: all screws are of the Phillips variety, it pops open with ease, and most internal components are readily accessible. Oh, and we took apart the fancy remote as well — because that's how we roll.

© iFixit

Here's the specs on the Co-Star:

• Marvell Armada 1500 1.2 GHz Dual-Core Processor
• Marvell 88DE2755 QDEO Video Processor
• Nanya NT5CB256M8GN-DI 1 GB RAM
• Samsung K9GBG08U0A-SCBO 4 GB NAND Flash
• Marvell Avastar 88W8787 WLAN/Bluetooth/FM SoC

As soon as we're inside, we pull off what looks like an EMI shield — only to find a thermal pad sitting on top of a sea of small resistors. It's not often that we encounter cooling for the back side of a motherboard, but Vizio took extra precautions since the Co-Star has no fans. A grand total of just five screws and two cables must be removed to free the motherboard. We're used to device innards being dominated by a single component, but those space hogs are usually batteries or power supplies. In the Co-Star, over a third of the real estate is instead inhabited by the aluminum heat sink. Why such a honker heat sink? The answer lies in air movement. Without fans to circulate air, there is no forced convection. Therefore, the Co-Star must rely on conduction and natural convection to keep the processor cool. Modders, take note: the Co-Star's silver bezel comes off easily and would probably look pretty slick when painted neon green.

© iFixit

Some fun factoids on the Co-Star's remote: Both keyboard bezel and rubber button cover easily detach from the rest of the remote, making it a cinch to clean off grime after prolonged use. An abundance of glue secures the trackpad to the front of the Co-Star remote, but pretty much everything else comes apart with relative ease. Chips inside the remote include:

• Synaptics T1021A Touch Controller
• Renesas R5F2133 16-bit Microcontroller
• Maximum MAXQ610 16-bit Microcontroller with Infrared Module
• Broadcom BCM20733 Human Interface Device Bluetooth 3.0

----- The rest of the images and info can be found on iFixit.