Surface Pro 4 Teardown Reveals It Is Hard To Repair

Earlier this month Microsoft announced the Surface Pro 4, the latest tablet in the company’s series of Surface Windows devices. With each generation, Microsoft has made changes, introduced new features, and also made lots of improvements in the process. That being said if you plan on keeping the tablet for the next couple of years, you might want to treat it extra well.

The folks at iFixit have finished their ritualistic teardown of the Surface Pro 4. According to their findings, it seems that the tablet is highly unrepairable. It has scored a 2 out 10 in terms of repairability, with 10 being the easiest, and 1 being the most difficult, so scoring a 2 basically means it would be pretty difficult to get it fixed.

So why is this? According to their findings, this is largely due to the fact that a lot of the components are stuck together with adhesive. This means that if one component fails, just swapping that part out for a new one might be hard as removing it could damage other components in the process. The display is an example as the glass panel and LCD are fused together, so replacing one part means replacing both, thus costing more money.

However the upside is that the SSD is replaceable. So in the event that the tablet’s SSD fails, you can always swap it out for a new one without too much problem. Of course at the end of the day you could always send it back to Microsoft who might charge you a premium to fix up the tablet.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Tablets
Tags: Microsoft, Surface Pro 4