Microsoft Surface Pro Scores Surprisingly Low Repairability Rating

When an MS product scores worse than Apple, it's an indication that build complexity isn't necessarily increasing device robustness.

Think about it this way. Each one of those 90 screws has to be placed. Every delicate, difficult connection is done an assembly line. Even if robots handled the entire process, it still takes time to build the system.

The more delicate the cabling and gluing, the harder it is to manufacture. We saw that with the iPhone 5, when Foxconn flatly couldn't build them as fast as Apple wanted.

Things to factor though is that the Surface is more durable than the iPad, unless impacts hit the screen directly then it can usually withstand a lot more force. Also, unlike most tablets this has to deal with the heat generated by a 17W max TDP processor.

They can't afford to have issues like internal components warping because of the heat. Remember, such issues was one of the main reasons for the early XBox RRoDs!

While few tablets are intended to be user serviceable...

It is interesting the SSD is not soldered though, at the very least that means they can easily offer higher capacities later on without any system redesign.

90 screws in that tiny thing!!! That's overkill! You shouldn't need THAT many screws! Most full blown laptops have far fewer screws!

90 screws... just wow.

I agree with Joel. I would have never expected a piece of Microsoft hardware to be more difficult to deal with than the iPad. Incredible.

Seriously... 90 screws... The first thing that came to mind is no much weight do 90 screws add?? And how much of that "black tar" adhesive was used that it required melting? what's the weight on that glue??

I realize that there wouldn't even be a reason to open the surface unless you wanted to upgrade the ssd but even that little bit would be nice.

I hate this whole gluing of components I just don't see why there can't be a cleaner lighter way of putting things together? Most people including myself will probably end up breaking the screen on the first try at opening it. All I can say is they better be super robust and not have any hardware problems at all in its reasonable "lifetime" only then will it not matter that it can't be opened.

well .... it is an i5 in a tablet ... there are few devices to compare it with and none of those is on ifixit teardowns

That's actually a good point, though you would think, since it's a standard platform design, something better could have been done.

man, i don't know but i like the cooling design

what is so special about the cooling design?....

It is very seldom that I make a pro-MS post, so enjoy this:

You were really going to fix it yourself?

I have a chromebook that I've totally hacked (took apart to break the connection so that I could flash the BIOS) and replaced the harddrive, but you don't hear me *****ing about the huge number of screws I had to wade through. When you have an all-in-one, you deal with the consequences.