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Surface Pro Teardown Reveals It’s Virtually Unrepairable 
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The Surface Pro is not a repair-friendly machine

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The Surface Pro is not a repair-friendly machine. In fact, it’s one of the least repairable devices iFixit has seen: In a teardown of Microsoft’s tablet-laptop hybrid, the company gave it a rock-bottom score of just one — one! — out of 10 for repairability, lower even than Apple’s iPad and the Windows Surface RT.

Let’s begin with its screen. It’s held in place with what iFixit calls “a metric duckload of adhesive,” meaning it’s pretty much superglued in place. You’ll need a heat gun and some guitar picks to even pry it off the device. There’s more super-sticky adhesive inside. The battery is so strongly glued in place that you’ll need a new back cover if you ever have to replace the battery.

Not that you’d want to. The majority of people who decide to take apart a Surface Pro will most likely break it. Four cables surround the inside perimeter of the display, so you will cut one of them unless you’re extremely careful.

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Thu Feb 14, 2013 10:33 am
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I imagine items are glued for reliability - they're not going to shift if the unit is knocked.

It's fairly inevitable that when you cram so much power into such a small space, it's going to be difficult for a user to maintain. There's simply no room for error.

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Thu Feb 14, 2013 10:49 am
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We use a similar adhesive on our industrial terminals. They have to hold the screen in place against 13 - 15 bar pressure! Here the reverse is true, they want to ensure that the screen doesn't fall out, when the case takes a bump.

Replacing the touchscreen on our terminals is a 4 hour job, removing the glue, cleaning up the casing, separating display from touchscreen cleaning, bonding new touch to display and remounting.

That said, for the average user, there are no user serviceable parts behind the screen. And for $99 you get 2 year repair service, including accidental damage, if you are worried you might need to replace defective parts. (Most probably a swap-out service.)

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Thu Feb 14, 2013 1:57 pm
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Thu Feb 14, 2013 3:22 pm
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Legend
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jonbwfc wrote:
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It agree it might not even be an issue. The iPad is also notoriously difficult to fix but that has not harmed sales. It only becomes an issue if there is a problem. If they have a swap over service then that is not really a problem to customers either.

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Thu Feb 14, 2013 4:52 pm
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