When you"re buying a gadget whose price nearly exceeds $1,000, it helps to know you can always head on over to the local repair shop to replace a malfunctioning component or two without needing to replace the whole thing if anything goes wrong. With the newest Surface Laptop and Surface Pro, however, you won"t really have that peace of mind, as iFixit"s findings for the two devices show.
The Surface Pro 6 fared slightly better than its clamshell sibling in iFixit"s teardown test, earning a score of just 1 from a scale of 0-10. That"s basically the same score as what the Surface Pro from last year earned. Compared to last year, the SSD is now soldered on and any repairs will generally still require removing the display assembly first, impairing the repairability of the 2-in-1 significantly.
A lack of improvement was also the theme for the Surface Laptop 2, which retained its predecessor"s abysmal repair rating of 0 out of 10. This was largely due to the fact that removing the Alcantara finish of the keyboard is destructive, and thus prevents repairs. The CPU, RAM, and SSD are also soldered onto the motherboard, while the battery is glued in place.
While the results may be disappointing, it is worth noting that the Surface line has been pretty dismal in this regard since its conception, owing largely to the thin and complex designs of each device.