Surface Pro 11 & Surface Laptop 7 Teardowns - Repairable, AI Powered Devices!!!
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- Опубліковано 27 чер 2024
- Microsoft's new Surface Pro 11th Gen and Surface Laptop 7 devices are hiding more than just Apple M3 beating hardware. Take a peek under the lid to see where the latest Surface line of devices stand on the repairability scale.
Our Pro Tech Toolkit will tackle any repair.
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Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
00:56 Surface Laptop 7 up first!
01:01 Feet and back cover removal
01:24 Battery disconnecting and QR code surprise
01:57 Battery removal and specs
02:23 SSD removal
02:28 Speaker removal
02:34 Need to remove the Surflink Cable Fan
02:56 Motherboard removal
03:54 Surface Pro 11th Gen is next!
03:56 Fasted SSD removal this side of the Mississippi
04:08 Display removal is easy compared to other tablets
04:28 Surflink removal
04:35 Heat sink and fan are removed
04:44 Battery disconnected and removed
05:05 Speaker and cameras come out next
05:32 The motherboard is ready to come out
05:36 Finale thoughts and Scores
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3:43 isn't it Micron RAM?
You mentioned SK Hynix
Correct, these are Micron! The Surface Pro uses SK Hynix. You can find a link to the full chip ID’s at the bottom of the blog post: www.ifixit.com/News/96998/from-0-10-to-8-10-microsoft-puts-repair-front-and-center
It sure is. The Micron logo is clearly visible. The 'model' numbers on the chips doesn't give me anything on Micron's part finder, but it most likely is a customized version specifically for Microsoft, or simply branded as such.
Bottom cover held with magnets... this is the sort of attention to detail you rarely see from PC vendors these days. It's clear that Microsoft is taking repairability very seriously. Thumbs up.
No glue holding the feet on either, that's one of the big annoyance points with hidden screws too.
It looks like MS is making progress compared to previous models. Good on them!
"Bald" of you talking about my grandpa's hair
I see what you did there
@@iFixitYourself He barely shaved that joke in there.
Who remembers when "Surface" was a smart table, before Microsoft rebranded the name into a line of computers? That table was pretty cool, but I don't know a single business that owned one.
I remember those tables. It was cool as heck, I thought we'd see them in coffee shops and stuff at some point but that never happened. It must've been real expensive
I remember the first such table. It didn't use touch sensors, it used cameras to track hand movement. One step up from a Ballmer-era concept video.
I saw one at a lounge. Was pretty cool… had a 4player game on it… each side was a player. I can’t remember much though.
Yeah I remember those, you could lay out documents on them like they were physical things and the idea was to work collaboratively sitting around it. Turning it into an entire brand was a good idea though because it’s a good name.
I don't want to remember the surface rt. But we have 3 at home still (3 siblings)
From nightmare to repair to solid 8 score, WOW!
Why can't Apple make an easy repairable device like that
they can, they just won't
"Durability"
@@Pray4MePls23 "stupidity" (Apple that is...)
Money.
Microsoft sells a bunch of these computers to corporate customers who want repairability. Apple doesn't.
Replacing the 256GB SSD on my Laptop 7 with 2TB later today. I read the service manual yesterday, but your teardown really assuaged any worries I had about the process. Love how easy MS made accessing the internals. In previous generations, you basically destroyed the rubber feet to get them off.
Nice. How much does that 2tb storage cost you?
Be aware the surface laptop 7 voids warranty if upgrading SSD. Unlike previous models
@@darren6028 how do you know this? And how they gonna know anyway?
@@asianstud7 I asked Microsoft. They will also confirm on their live chat. They confirmed the SL7 voids warranty this series. I noticed on this teardown there is a silver sticker on the ssd. Maybe that’s how they know.
@@darren6028 oh I see. So they give you the option to upgrade but will void the warranty if you do. That's a rock and a hard place
we also need to upgrade the ram modules like SSDs
Hence LPCAMM2.
That's more on Qualcomm to make designs with detached RAM chips than on Microsoft. All snapdragons so far have them stuck on the chip.
@@leonro Nope, no change is needed from Qualcomm. LPCAMM2 will allow OEMs to design PCBs with upgradeable LPDDR5/5X/5T. But LPCAMM2 is very new, hence won't be mainstream until 2025-2026
@@leonro no, it's a choice of the manufacturers. The RAM is not part of the CPU like you would see with simpler SoC designs that use a package-on-package approach. Board manufacturers could have opted for LPCAMM2, but I guess since that is so new, no one dared to do that and take on the additional cost.
Cost thing, that and power/speed/heat/etc etc etc. LPCAMM2 should fix most, but not all. RAM will always have plusses being near or on the processing chip, and adding connectors complicates that tremendously. So, it's a trade off: 1. Badass speed/power consumption goodness, or 2. repairability. The ram issue goes even deeper with developer thoughtfulness on ram usage, and OS abilities to control ram. Today, just buy the right machine to start with IMHO. It's kind of like expecting a Yugo to go as fast as a Tesla. Sure, you COULD do that, but it's going to require a lot of work and money. Just like replacing ram chips soldered to the board. Sure you could do that....
I've been looking forward to this teardown since the surface announcement. Many thanks.
Excellent progress, I am excited for the future.
Thank you for showing us and for your work! :) Great!
Good to see more players really getting into repairability like this.
Much better than previous Surface devices. I remember when Surface Laptops could only be accessed via destroying them, making them consumable (when the battery died, you couldn't replace it) and I also remember the Surface Pro batteries being glued in so tightly, an inverted pint glass could be stuck to the chassis (via the remaining adhesive) with no problems.
Color me impressed. Good work MS 🎉
Awesome to see for me, that the Hardware on the Surface Laptop including battery is switchable and reperable. Thats nice.
I've been waiting for this video. Repairability should be just as important as any other feature when purchasing an expensive electronic device.
Awesome & Thanks :)
Gracias por sus videos. Ustedes dictan cursos de reparacion de apple? en su pagina web no he visto nada de cursos.
Incroyablement utile ! Très bonne vidéo...
Wow, I’m actually much more impressed than I thought I’d be.
Wow, they are surprisingly servicable devices. I didn't expect this for an outcome.
Excellent teardown. I am pleasantly surprised at how repairable the Surface Laptop is, especially. Those ARM PC motherboards are also quite small compared to the one on my Zen 2 13" laptop from 2020.
Normally the RAM is stacked onto the Qualcomm SoC die itself, but I assume it is separate here to make it easier to make different RAM SKUs for the products.
I would have loved to see some mention of the surface laptop screen replacement. Aside from the battery, that is the most common repair that most people will need. I suspect that it isn't very pleasant if it wasn't even mentioned by a Microsoft partner.
you would just need to unscrew the hinge and put on a new display I would assume
@@NissocoMC Odd to give the repair an 8 then if the only display replacement option is a Macbook style full top assembly.
So you are confirming the flux capacitor?
Super cool indeed
Great teardown! Clear explanations of everything. Thank you!
Microsoft has really improved their repairability and I hope this puts pressure on other Windows vendors to follow. Apple does what it wants and likely won't take serious steps unless staying closed severely impacts its financials.
Are you guys going to do the new Lenovo and other SnapDragon laptops? I'm wondering if any of them have upgradable ssd and ram
The manuals were released on day 1, but I had some more issues in upgrding the SSD on my laptop since the recovery image is not yet available.
Until is it, the only option is likely to be to image your original SSD with something like Clonezilla and write that image to another SSD. And you may have to use another computer to do that because of a lack of drive cloning software that will run on Arm.
starting the video with apple the "I" on the beginning of your channel name resample it well
Neat that they put QR codes to their service manual pages, but Dell and Lenovo have had service manuals for their professional laptops for ages now (maybe not so much for consumer-oriented models....).
unreal! Here I am, trying to figure out how best to dissolve/soften industrial-strength glue to replace the 2 batteries in my Surface Book 2. Good on Microsoft for listening to its users and making such a dramatic improvement in reparability.
Amazing
Finally, an easily repairable tablet! Not gluing down the battery is a huge win here.
What do you do with these electronics?
How is this easier then a Dell Lattitude or HP Elitebook etc?
the rubber feets were glued with glue or have joints
Great news! It’s going the right way
where is the air intake vent located?
What type of SSD does the Surface Laptop 7 use? I know you said M2, but I can't find the exact one online.
Well done M$, thx iFixit👍
I would love to see the next refresh have upgradable RAM with LPCAMM2.
3:46, looks like Micron DRAM to me while you say it's SK hynix DRAM
relaxing music! name of the song pls?
awesome to see Microsoft doing this, what a upgrade!!!!
3:43 SK Hynix? That looks like a Micron logo. What am i missing?
I wonder if the next ones are gonna get CAMM2 to avoid soldered RAM...
Depends if they can fit into the thin designs coming along.
This redeemed their storage pricing scheme from Apple-esque to acceptable
I would still prefer they engineer some sort of solution for the Surface Pro that does not require you to get busy trying to pry the screen up with guitar picks. It feels like it would be perilously easy to shatter the screen while doing that, if you're not careful.
If you watch microsofts own teardown they made a display removal jig that allows display separation with no heat or manual prying required
If you move passed your naivety, you will learn how not complicated it is to avoid being clumsy
@@1rstTry but why
I didn't expect to say this, having personal experience with previous generations of the Surface Pro, but kudos to Microsoft's hardware team for these designs. Huge leaps forward in terms of repairability, even though there's still room for improvement.
If only their OS wasn't becoming more of a spyware and losing useful settings and features with each update...
Friendly reminder that detailed repair manuals and screws should (and used to be) the standard and the bare minimum.
They even write which screwdriver you need? Just reminded me of a certain company developing new screws just to screw us over! (good one!)
A score of 8 seems a bit high for the Surface Pro when removing the screen is still such a pain. That paper-thin glass is still a problem for all but the most experienced techs and basically necessitates a screen replacement if the battery goes bad. In contrast, the Samsung and Apple tablets have much thicker glass and much thinner adhesive which means the screen can be removed without damage.
Yeha, 5-7 would be more realistic as the score
This isn't the case. The method ifixit uses to remove the screen is not the easiest, microsoft actually recommends using a display debonding jig and opening pick, which allows easy separation of the display with no heat required, and anyone would be able to do it. You can see this in microsofts own disassembly videos of the recent surface pros.
I was going to say 8 seems low for the laptop. It seems about as good as the Framework... what more could you realistically want?
@@fjjwfp7819 Those Microsoft videos are made to make the device look easy to repair. I can tell you from experience that the $60 little jig does almost nothing to help me when I'm trying to open a 2+ year old device full of normal wear and tear with old adhesive and micro-cracks on the display threatening to ruin my day.
This could easily be avoided by making the glass thicker or making the adhesive thinner.
He did say that the Surface Pro was rated by the tablet repairability score as opposed to the Laptop repairability score that the Surface Laptop was rated against. The Tablet repairability score most likely assumes heat to remove a glued-down screen. An 8 is reasonable considering the internals when calculated to a tablet score, but a 6 would be more accurate if you treat it like a laptop
This is interesting, I am glad to see Microsoft doing this with their laptops. I hope this is a continued trend, and that we see other manufacturers adopt the same consumer friendliness
Kudos! 🎉🎉 Microsoft
As much as I despise M$ and their spyware, finally upping their repairability and handing out manuals is nice to see. Good job.
Gotta apploud Microsoft here. It should be like this with every company...
Nice job Microsoft! I like the changes. Now I am just waiting for upgradeable ram and CPUs in devices like these and I am sold. In the mean time I will hang onto my five year old tablet and keep using my regular nice and upgradeable laptop. (Too bad I can't upgrade the cpu or gpu. Whatever, change is slow.)
Be aware the surface laptop 7 voids warranty if upgrading SSD. Unlike previous models
"Back when your grandpa still had hair!"... where does that leave you?
I believe those DRAM chips are Micron DRAM...
Snapdragon X Elite 🚀 🚀
8/10 for surface pro is not fair given the fact that the battery connector is hidden underneath the heat dissipation system
What Microsoft uses to run x86 applications on ARM is not an *emulation* layer but a *translation* layer which basically converts the system calls into language that ARM can understand instead of having an ARM CPU pretending to be x86
so it's like Rosetta 2?
@@billkormas3460 indeed
ok
Kudos to Microsoft.
Surface is way better than others
Big props to Microsoft for the laptop, but I think the 8 on the tablet is too generous with the screen the still glued down. "Everyone does it" is not a good excuse and it never will be.
0:00 - iMac crying in Snapdragon...
Snapdragon X ❤❤❤
Lol a fan in a tablet? Wat?)
5:22 Sounds like the perfect insult to a Klingon
AI is a bug, not a feature. Also, its not real AI, its just a marketing term.
8 score on a device that requires you to unglue a paper thin display to access the battery? What the actual f*?
hmm, i think we have to thank Framework for showing others how it can be done - surface laptop feels very similar
the biggest test will be parts availability
If you say so. Other manufacturers were headed in that general direction anyway.
Would love to watch your video. But your loud background music prevents me.
Imagine Linus Torvalds trying to sell Linux with a custom PC he makes. I think Microsoft should support existing ARM hardware, like those guys who made it run on a Lumia Phone, or that other attempt for Raspberry. Both sucked because no drivers. That's where Microsoft should help.
still no schematic I see.
All cool and so but I still won't buy an ARM based laptop until it has socketed RAM and storage. Punkt Ende Aus!
These do have socketed storage. RAM will never be in conventional sockets because it's LPDDR5x, which can't be put in SODIMM sockets (the super-low voltage means that the noise margins are too low for that), but Microsoft could have used the new LPCAMM2 form factor.
Microsoft is clearly getting ahead of any Right to repair regulations coming rom the EU and the US. Either way, that's so awesome. You can swap out the battery in 4-5 years and keep using your laptop like it's new. Not to mention less than $100 gets you a 1TB SSD on Amazon and you can get rid of the 256GB, making the Surface Laptop $1,300 for 16GB/1TB. I f*cking wish my MacBook Pro could do that. :D
One thing is for sure, that Surface devices are now better than ASUS.
Batt-hry
8/10 is probably too high
This being Qualcomm devices, no level of repairability will save them from the inevitable end of software support.
Alright, I'm buying Surface! Bye bye MacBook!
what about the screen assembly on the Laptop 7? Screens can be repaired when they have fault on their motherboards and they are very hard to work with because they are fragile and difficult to separate from the shell..
I'm not a computer engineer, but I'm pretty sure having your heat pipes run directly over the battery isn't a good idea. Especially on something as powerful as a surface pro 11. Then again it's not that powerful to begin with.
The surface tablets have had that for years and it seems they haven’t caused any issues
I may be wrong but from the video it looked like the battery is split into two cells & the heat pipe runs between them with some room to spare on both sides so I don't think its heat affects the battery much
@@Sithhy that is correct, but still. It seems like a bad idea.
@@Sithhyit’ll still spread heat right into the battery cells though! i’ve never seen design with a hot heat pipe jammed in between batteries
The heatpipe doesnt run over the battery, but the battery management circuitry, which assist with its cooling.
Why can’t consumers buy the new x86 Surface Pro?! It’s for businesses only but I wouldn’t even consider a new Surface if it doesn’t have that 30 years of backwards compatibility. It was always its unique selling point over iPads, I don’t want ARM CPUs!
Nothing is stopping you from buying the x86 Surface Pro 10 from the Surface for Business store, or ordering it from one of Microsoft's dealers such as PC Connection or CDW. There is no gatekeeping preventing that. However, it won't show up in big box stores such as Best Buy, and it is only offered with Windows 11 Pro (not Home) so you'll have to pay the premium for that.
Still nowhere near to what is the norm where you can easily pop off the back to upgrade the RAM, replace the battery, upgrade the storage and change the WI-FI card with ease.
Hynix memory is bad, it has a lot of problem in 3090 GPU
3:44 Isn't that icon on the ram chips; Micron ? maybe an error by ifixit ?
I wish windows laptop could stay windows laptop while beeing better at being windows, but it seems we are on the same track as apple now, it start with no ram upgrade and slowly, we will loose what make windows fun, swapping out components
Framework is NOT the cause of mainstream laptop/handheld companies making their devices more repairable. They are less than 00.0003% of the market… large companies aren’t threatened by them 😂
Threatened? If a big corpo like Microsoft sees that small laptop company does something neat like using magnets to hold bottom cover, then if possible might as well use it on their machines. Not as much as threatening, but getting some strong inspirations from lil bro
The real "threat" is the EU.
Way too much work
I will never buy any Ms laptops or tablets, as I like to be able to upgrade my system as well as have easy access to everything.
Expecting these thin and light devices to be upgradeable like old-school desktops might be unrealistic.
Surface line's biggest flaw and a deal breaker is easily the Spyware 11 operating system they come with.
lol.. i more worry with my phone than my pc.. android/ios are more spyware since they are more personal than desktop/laptop.
@@TheZaman_ On phones it's completely unavoidable, since at the very minimum you're subject to GSM triangulation, but there's no reason to agree to the level of spying and outright manipulation Microsoft just casually engages in.
@@ginx2666 i see no prob with windows.. im worried more on phone bout that.
ARM-based Windows 11 is way better than x86-based Windows 11.
Says the guy that doesn't do any enterprise software development work.
Too bad it's running Spyware, Malware and Adware disguised as an operating system called Windows. 😂
If it uses Linux or some other operating system it would have been a good buy.
Just install Linux?
The only people who want to use Linux don't value their time. It's a POS. It is funny you whine about spyware while no doubt using Google search, watching UA-cam, and carrying a smartphone around with you all day.
@@ChrisBa303 Linux would be a nightmare on a Surface Pro. Linux is a nightmare period.
I like the features on windows 11, but thats just me
Sounds like you're looking for a Framework!
Arm on Windows isn’t going to be a thing honestly. They tried it with Windows 8 up to now and it never worked. The charm of windows and X86 is that I can run games from the 90s with modern OS and hardware without any problem (most of the time).
It already is a thing. Windows 11 on ARM is far better than Windows 8 was. You're talking about eons ago. It will be more of a thing in the future. If you want to play games, then just buy something with an x86 chip. Most people aren't buying Surface Laptops and Surface Pros with gaming in mind.
It will be a thing, eventually. The difference between now and when Windows RT first came out is that major strides have been made in getting legacy x86/x64 software to run on Windows on ARM and now you have major software like the Adobe Suite, DaVinci Resolve, Google Chrome, Spotify, WhatsApp, on Windows on ARM.
Drivers are still a pain in the butt, though, so progress still needs to be made. It's not easy to overcome decades of x86 incumbency.
I don't think anyone buys any of these ARM laptops for gaming. Use your X86 desktop for that.
@@yony120 If everyone uses their x86 desktop for gaming, then why would software companies allocate resources to write software for both ARM and x86, when they can save money by only writing software for x86 ?
@@longdang2681 Because people use laptops?
Huge question! What type of keyboard does the surface laptop use? Is it actually reliable or will it fail once dust start building up under the keyboard keys like apple's butterfly keys did?
I've looked online about this and no answer 🥲