Kinect killed in teardown tragedy

Microsoft's new toy meets the iFixit boys

5 November 2010 9:11 GMT / By Paul Lamkin

An iFixit teardown is fast becoming a tech launch ritual. No big launch goes by without the repair specialist taking a look at the device's innards. It's like a hi-tech autopsy for the rich and famous.

And the latest bit of kit to get taken to bits is Microsoft's motion gesture gaming system, Kinect, which has hit US shops and is due out here on 10 November.

Inside, the iFixit chaps first declared that there were three cameras; "two infra-red cameras optimised for depth detection and "one standard visual-spectrum camera used for visual recognition". However, this has since been corrected to state just two cameras on board, with one supposed camera actually being Microsoft's new IR projector.

The teardown also revealed that Kinect has a quad-aural sensor - basically that there are four microphones on board.

The brain of Kinect is a Prime Sense PS1080-A2 chip, with all the sensors leading here for processing to provide a depth map and colour image data for your Xbox.

The iFixit team gave Kinect 6 out of 10 for repairability and described it as "mechanically quite complex".

Pocket-lint gave Kinect 9 out of 10 for awesomeness and described it as "truly revolutionary".

See our full Kinect for Xbox 360 review

And also check out Launch games for Kinect - all you need to know