Both the new Surface Pro and Surface Laptop just hit the streets this week, and both have now gone under the knife (so to speak) in iFixit's obligatory tech teardown. In addition to giving us a pretty neat look under the hood of both devices, iFixit also handed out its typical "repairability" score, and it's fair to say neither Surface fared too well.
Out of the two, the Surface Laptop received the worst score on iFixits repair scale, coming in at a 0 out of 10 (with 10 being easy to repair). The first bit of difficulty comes from what makes the Surface Laptop unique: its Alcantara-covered keyboard.
It's impossible to get into the guts of the machine without cutting into, and subsequently ruining, the Alcantara. Once inside, soldering is the real enemy, however: the CPU, RAM, and onboard storage are all soldered to the motherboard, which puts the kibosh on custom upgrades. Meanwhile, iFixit notes, the headphone jack and battery are also very difficult to access and replace.
Meanwhile, the new Surface Pro only fared marginally better with a repairability rating of 1 out of 10. The main knocks against the Pro involve the use of adhesive to hold parts in place, the inability to replace parts without removing the display, and the fact that the SSD cannot be replaced.
Ultimately, these scores only really matter if you plan to tackle any repairs yourself. It goes without saying you'll have a pretty difficult time doing so, but it's also not all that surprising given the engineering that went into both products. In any case, it's definitely worth checking out the Surface Laptop teardown and Surface Pro teardown for a pretty fascinating look at the guts of both.
