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title: Teardown Of An Oxford Nanopore MinION DNA Sequencer
description: A hardware teardown of the Oxford Nanopore MinION DNA sequencer, a portable device that brought DNA sequencing down to a $2,000 price point. The unit features...
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# Teardown Of An Oxford Nanopore MinION DNA Sequencer

**[Hackaday](https://daily.dev/sources/hackaday)** · 2 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments

## Summary

A hardware teardown of the Oxford Nanopore MinION DNA sequencer, a portable device that brought DNA sequencing down to a $2,000 price point. The unit features a Xilinx Spartan 6 FPGA and a slim fan-based cooling solution. The consumable sequencer cartridges, priced at £690 each, contain microfluidics systems and high-density pitch ICs on both sides of a PCB. Though the MinION unit itself has been discontinued, consumables remain available.

## Full article

daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: <https://hackaday.com/2026/08/10/teardown-of-an-oxford-nanopore-minion-dna-sequencer>

## Questions this post answers

### What hardware is inside the Oxford Nanopore MinION DNA sequencer?

The MinION contains a Xilinx Spartan 6 FPGA, a slim fan-based cooling solution, and a consumable sequencer cartridge with a microfluidics system. The cartridge guides fluid containing genetic material over the nanopore array and features high-density pitch ICs on both sides of its PCB. The consumables are priced at £690 per unit and can be used only a few times before replacement.

_Engineers digging into biotech hardware find the latest teardowns and embedded system breakdowns on daily.dev._

### How much does the Oxford Nanopore MinION cost and what are the ongoing consumable costs?

The MinION main unit launched at $2,000. The consumable flow cells, which can sequence either RNA or DNA, cost £690 per unit and can only be used a handful of times before needing replacement. The device was trialed in 2014 and commercially released in 2015, though the unit itself has since been discontinued while consumables remain available.

_Developers tracking biotech hardware pricing and availability keep up with the field on daily.dev._

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---

Tags: [#reverse-engineering](https://daily.dev/tags/reverse-engineering), [#fpga](https://daily.dev/tags/fpga)

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