this is the Microsoft Surface book - and
just like all the surface devices we
tore down this year it did horrible on
our ability scale how bad did it do we
gave it a 1 out of 10 was just a little
bit better than the surface laptops 0
out of 10 but that's not really saying
very much so today I'm gonna walk you
through how to design a laptop tablet
thing that's horrible for repair you've
got two options when starting with a
surface book tear down do you start with
a display tablet hybrid or the dot
keyboard hybrid well if you want to
start with the easy one first don't do
either they're both extremely glued
together but today we'll go ahead and
start with the tablet the opening
procedure is pretty usual for a surface
lots of heating and prying and the glass
is relatively flexible but there is some
real thick adhesive along the top edge
which required a lot of extra heating
and prying once you're in you can see
the display cables are held captive by a
snap-on bracket which is difficult to
remove and even more difficult to remove
without bending or breaking it this is
the 13.5 inch PixelSense display that
has a resolution of 3000 and a pixel
density of 267 PPI the sensor array
bracket comes off next revealing a
couple of hidden screws holding the
motherboard in place and speaking of
screws there are a total of 11 t4 Torx
screws holding the bracket in place and
then another 14 holding the motherboard
in place even after all those screws
were still connected to something
underneath the motherboard and says
there's no clear answer as to what it is
yet we'll just settle for taking the
speakers out turns out it was the two
front facing cameras one infrared and
one 5 megapixel that were the reason the
motherboard wasn't lifting up they're
both glued in place and sitting on posts
making prying them up and off pretty
tricky when you can finally lift it up
and out the motherboard is still
connected to the headphone jack the dock
connector and a couple other cables but
once we turn it over we can finally
figure out how to disconnect them this
board is home to the seventh generation
Intel Core i5 processor with the
integrated Intel HD graphics 620 GPU you
can also see the eight gigabytes of SK
Hynix made ram there is one bright spot
on this teardown this version of the
surface book hasn't lost this removable
storage this is a 256 gigabyte Samsung
p.m. 961 SSD the battery remains in the
case since it's totally glued in place
this 18 watt hour 2387 milliamp hour
battery uses a press connector that
hides under the motherboard to get power
to the tablet this makes it extremely
difficult to disconnect the power when
attempting a repair lastly we have the
very cool docking mechanism that keeps
your tablet secured to the keyboard when
you're in laptop mode this is the same
system we saw in the first surface book
and it uses a muscle wire lock when
electricity runs through the wire
heating it up it contracts which pulls
the black pulley inward against the
spring lifting the lower arm of the
linkage that lower arm holds a very tiny
rod captive the rod serves as a grip
that holds on to the base units metal
tab when the linkage is retracted the
rod rolls out of the way and lets the
base go so that's it for the tablet
let's take a look at the keyboard dock
Man Alive this thing is glued in place
not only around the edges but all around
the trackpad and across the middle of
the panel getting this thing off without
deforming it is a serious challenge not
only that but the battery is glued
directly to the underside of the panel
so when you're heating the back panel to
soften the adhesive you're also heating
up the battery which is not fun once we
got the back panel in the battery safely
off and disconnected it it turns out it
has the same specs as the last surface
book we took apart 51 watt hours or 6800
milliamp hours at 7.5 volts the SD card
reader and the dual USB board comes out
as two modular units which is nice and
we're left with our bases motherboard
this board was where we found the
dedicated NVIDIA GPU last year but since
this model shipped with integrated
graphics there's none to be found here
so let's review for a minute the surface
book 2 scored a 1 out of 10 on our
repairability scale for the following
reasons
on the upside after the difficult
opening procedure the SSD can be
replaced but let's get real the display
assembly consists of a fused glass panel
an LCD and is difficult to remove and
replace the processor and RAM are
soldered to the motherboard and strong
adhesive holds many components in place
including the display base cover in both
batteries and finally many components
are on the backs of their respective
boards requiring a motherboard removal
to replace simple components that's all
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see you next time
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