Microsoft built their new service book
to be a creative workhorse and is
calling it the ultimate laptop will the
new design eat into Apple sales more
importantly will it score better than
its brother the surface pro 4 on our
repairability scale we got our hands on
the new surface book to answer all these
questions and more let's tear it down
hi I'm Gwendolyn with iFixit and today
we're tearing down the Microsoft Surface
book Microsoft describes the surface
book as a high performance laptop with
exceptional power and versatility but it
also happens to be a tablet once it's
been ejected from the dock that means
you're getting to tear downs for the
price of one and we're going to start
with the tablet path getting into the
tablet was a familiar exercise and
frustration
just last week we spent a good part of
the day trying to get the surface pro 4
open so we knew we'd need our eye
openers heat and careful prying we know
the drill and even though the glass is
the same thickness as the surface pro 4
it definitely felt more flexible and as
it's a bigger display more difficult to
pry up opening the surface book revealed
metal brackets covering the cable
connectors on the display similar to the
ones found in the surface pro 4 and
apparently the motherboard is upside
down meaning all the connectors seem to
be on the underside of the motherboard
getting this thing out is going to be
challenging the connectors have been
dealt with and the display is finally
free this is a 13.5 inch pixel sense
display with the resolution of 3000 by
2000 and a pixel density of 267 pixels
per inch on the back of the display we
find a chipset similar to that of the
surface pro 4 display we noticed a
number of intrigue ICS and 4 mega bit
multi in multi out serial nor flash
memory peeling up a thin foam layer
confirms our earlier suspicion that the
motherboard is indeed upside-down and
surprisingly sprawling but we've got
some other work to do before we can get
it out turning our attention to the
sensor array along the top of the
surface we find a whole host of goodies
including the ambient light sensor the
infrared emitter and LED privacy light
indicator a microphone and cameras the 8
megapixel rear-facing camera came out
without a fight but the 5 megapixel
facing camera and IR sensor are glued to
the chassis and trap beneath the
motherboard assembly which makes for
some tricky prying before we take a look
at the chips on the motherboard we take
a moment to pluck away its brushless 0.5
amp fan the cooling system and the
surface book bears a passing resemblance
to the large copper plate tucked under
the battery of the surface pro 4 the
cover silicon instead of lithium ions
continuing our journey to the
motherboard we remove the SSD this 128
gigabyte Samsung TM 951 SSD is the same
one we just saw in the surface pro 4 the
motherboard is finally free on the board
you'll find the Intel Core i5 6300 u
processor and eight gigabytes of Samsung
made lpddr3 SDRAM you can find the
complete list of all the chips we've
identified at ifixit.com next to come
out was the battery which was glued to
the case just like the one we found in
the surface pro 4 this is an 18 watt
hour 7.5 volts 2387 milliamp hour
battery that should power the tablet
portion undocked for an alleged 4 hours
with the tablet completely torn down we
turn our attention to the base the base
is home to the keyboard trackpad and
several ports including 2 full size USB
3.0 ports a full sized SD card reader
and on the other side we have the mini
DisplayPort and the surface connect
fourth like the tablet portion opening
the base is the same old story so we
pull out our eye opener and prying tools
and get to work when we get the base
open we find a battery attached to the
lower panel this is the real power
behind the surface book with 51 watt our
6800 milliamp power at 7.5 volts the
base battery provides nearly three times
the juice as the tablet combined with
the tablet battery you get 69 watt hours
which is just a little bit shy of this
year's 13 inch retina macbook pro after
the battery we pull out the SD reader IO
board and GPU board assembly with a
point three amp attached fan finally we
reach the bottom of the stack and get a
look at that fancy dedicated GeForce GPU
this is a custom job that the Internet
has deduced is about on par with the
geforce 940 m lastly we removed the
inge mechanism the cable slide free of
their basic home fairly easily but they
disappear into the spine of the hinge
the segments are secured with various
screws so hinge spine and cables are
likely replaceable should they wear out
we've come to the end of our teardown
which means it's time to talk
repairability
and I fix it it's our mission to teach
people how to repair everything so we
give every gadget we tear down a repair
ability score between 1 and 10 10 being
the easiest to repair and 1 being the
most difficult the Microsoft Surface
book scored a 1 out of 10 and here's why
after a difficult opening procedure the
SSD can be replaced so to the glued
battery in the display
however the base battery is very heavily
glued the display assembly consists of a
fused glass panel and LCD and is
difficult to remove and replace the
processor and RAM are soldered to the
motherboard strong adhesive holds many
components in place including the
display base cover and both batteries
and finally many components are on the
back of their respective boards
requiring motherboard removal to replace
simple components and that's our
teardown for the complete teardown
including tons of beautiful high quality
images head on over to ifixit.com
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