Cobo Tablet is no longer avaialble from cobo.com. Crafted from 304-grade stainless steel, the Cobo Tablet has a fireproof threshold ranging from 1399 to 1455 ℃ / 2550 to 2651 °F.
Setup
While I like that it’s easier to insert the letters due to how the Cobo Tablet opens, I’m not a fan of using small screws as they could create weak points. The screws are so delicate that I’m able to strip the heads by hand with the tiny screwdriver that is provided. I do think that the packaging of the letter tiles is a nice touch (sandwiched between two sticky plastic sheets) and keeps them organized without being a pain to remove like most full metal sheets of tiles.
Heat Stress Test
From viewing it externally it seemed like it held up pretty well, however, upon opening the device it was clear that the rails warped and tiles were moved around. Chalking this up as a catastrophic loss.
I spoke about this with the head of Hardware at Cobo and he told me that they discovered this flaw after running their own experiment and that they are improving the design by adding two more screws in the middle of the plate to prevent the deforming. If they’re happy with the performance of this new version, hopefully I’ll re-test Cobo in Round IV of this series.
Corrosion Stress Test
While the acid burned off the printed text on the body of the device, there was no additional data loss from after the heat test.
Crush Stress Test
Like the vast majority of tile-in-rail based devices, it tends not to do well with crushing because the rails get warped, space is created, and tiles fall out.
