While Microsoft’s Surface Laptop might look the goods, once you get inside the thing, well, it reveals its uglier, less repairable side. As iFixit recently discovered, if something inside the portable PC goes bang, you’ll almost certainly have to get a complete new one.
Forget about screws, the Surface Laptop is almost entirely held together by glue and clips. The iFixit folks spent most of their time with a Stanley knife, tweezers and guitar pick in hand, rather than a Torx or Phillips-head.
The guts of the device aren’t much better. Forget about removing or replacing any of the components; once you’ve taken something out, good luck getting it back in.
In fact, iFixit’s final “Repairability Score” came in at a zero out of ten.
It doesn’t help that you have to break the laptop just to get inside:
Verdict: The Surface Laptop is not a laptop. It’s a glue-filled monstrosity. There is nothing about it that is upgradeable or long-lasting, and it literally can’t be opened without destroying it. (Show us the procedure, Microsoft, we’d love to be wrong.)
It’s true that modern super-portable laptops or “ultrabooks” are hard to open and fix by design, but this is just a little ridiculous.
Comments
7 responses to “The Surface Laptop Can’t Be Repaired Without ‘Destroying It’, iFixit Finds”
Most likely a move to limit 3rd Party Repairers.
Thought that was frowned upon, legally? other reason potentially for this is removing all screws lowers the weight. May not seem like much but they would add up quickly and when a selling point is “it only weighs X” then removing metal matters.
But designs like this make you wonder whether Microsoft would be able to repair it either. If their repair strategy is to give the customer a new laptop, then that’s a bit wasteful.
Swap it with a refurbished one.
Where do you think they get refurbished devices from though?
Usually what happens is that they’ll take your broken device and repair it, or take two broken devices and combine the working components into a single device, so they’ve got a refurbished device for someone else.
If you can’t open the device without destroying it, how do you think they’d do this?
The next step after Planned Obsolescence: Limited Lifespan.
so by this design logic
anytime the keyboard fails, I get a new surface laptop
anytime there is a dead pixel, I get a new surface laptop
anytime i complain that my laptop keeps rebooting, I get a new surface laptop
seems like its best to get it with a long extended warranty to see if you can score a free upgrade next year