Surface Pro 7 — 1 out of 10 AGAIN?!?

This year we’ve seen some impressive repairability improvement’s in Microsoft’s Surface line of devices. The surface laptop went from one of the least repairable devices we had ever seen to a fairly repairable device scoring a 5 out of 10 on our repairability meter.

And then The Surface Pro X became the most repairable Surface Pro we’d seen yet, scoring a 6 out of 10. Now we’re really curious about the Surface Pro 7. There’s got to be some repairability improvements in here, right? Let’s find out by tearing it down!

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[kngjulien_]

"We were on the verge of greatness! We were this close!"


- Orson Krennic, Rogue One

[ste]

Just for once, it'd be nice (and a lot more useful) if you actually re-assembled something after you took it apart - it's all very well but you're only giving us half the picture. Re-assembly is not always a simple matter of 'reversing' the steps, and it's good to know how easy (or not) it actually is anyway, not to mention what everything will look like and perform like once back together.

[thepolticalone]

Glueing a battery is such a scummy thing to do. It's dangerous as well

[Da_nick_]

“Pro” with an i3 in it those “pro” products always crack me up

[peppeddu]

Glued battery and fixed SSD.
You pretty much buy a device with two unreplaceable components that degrade overtime.

[albrecht-sebastianwitte-re]

To everyone ranting and joking about the i3 and the 4 gigs of RAM: This is the entry model, and in terms of the CPU, the i3 is an upgrade from previous generations' m3 processor. Moreover, the 4 GB RAM configuration is limited to the entry model this time.

For basic office work, light multimedia and communication you usually do not need more than that. And that's where an affordable SP gets interesting for students, for example - bringing with it all the nifty and established SP features like the big, sharp display, the pen support and the desktop application usability, all in that mobile formfactor.

And for those about to tear down the gadget, it is just natural to choose the base model for that, as it means the smallest loss when breaking.

Shame the battery is glued that tightly to the base.

[alfredanil]

Battery replacement might be little bit easier for pro 7 compared to pro 4. Battery connection to motherboard visible and can be removed without removing the motherboard. So, in theory after disconnecting the battery, it can be carefully removed without disturbing other components .

[alexandrepotton]

“Pro” with an i3 processor and 4GB of RAM... That was standard five years ago

[Ultrajamz]

Yet another year I hold onto my surface pro 4 then. I’ll wait for thunderbolt or usb4 and repairability.

[jorditribo]

What do you expect to find inside a tablet? A replaceable cpu and a hard drive?

[_Digitalguy]

Now we know why battery life of the 7 is lower than the 5 and 6... And the reason? Probably the surface pro x, same reason why they did no make the bezel thinner or give it a LTE version. To make the Pro X look better despite the ARM chip. The pro X has a 38wh battery, more than that it would be heavier than what a traditional pro has been (now it's just 1 gram lighter). If they kept the battery at 45w in the pro it would have the same or more battery life than the X....

[elliotgarcia]

Hey sort of important question: even if the SSD is soldered, is there a way to get access to it if I open the Surface? There's a possibility mine might not be turning on anymore at all, and I just wanna know, before I exhaust all other options, if at the very least I can salvage my files...

[batteryteardown]

Batteries from ATL. 43.2 Wh energy battery pack. 1 cell capacity 5702 mAh. Voltage 3.785 V.

[Wfer]

With these kind of criteria, every Apple device scores 1 out of 10. The chips are also on the motherboard, the battery is glued and no option to replace the back cover easily if it breaks.

[MuhammadKharismawan]

Its pretty clear that they're kinda setting the Pro 7 aside and went in to design the Pro X.
Lesse whether they used all the new design of the X for by the normal Pro

[RayRay-lown]

I still don’t understand the “repairability” of the Pro X, like, you still have to take out the display, which is pretty risky IMO, to replace basic stuff like the battery, totally crappy bias, only the SSD is one downside from the Pro 7...
iFixit you sometimes disappoint me...

[TheSpotify]

Oof. Well, it was too good to be true, right? Still as non upgradeable as ever.
If it wasn't for the lack of headphone jack and USB-A, I'd choose the Pro X over this one.

Fingers crossed my Pro 3 still keeps going nicely :)

[Tigerex]

same design for basically 4 years, same bad design inside.

[dta]

can't believe why they added removeable ssd for their surface pro x but this feature is still absent on their mainstream lineup

[KizaruB]

So about that repairability you touted Microsoft. Was it only for the Laptop?