this year we've seen some impressive
repairability improvements in Microsoft
service 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 ability meter and then the
surface pro X became the most repairable
surface Pro we've seen yet scoring a six
out of ten
now we're really curious about the
surface pro seven there's got to be some
repair ability improvements in here
right let's find out by tearing it down
well we're not off to a great start in
typical fashion
this display is glued on tight and took
several rounds of heating and prying to
get it off once off we can easily see
where the battery connector is so we
disconnect it before we do any other
disassembly four screws secure a large
shield that covers pretty much
everything and once it's removed if we
get a better idea of our order of
disassembly first out is the heatsink
and its large black sails these black
stickers are part of the passive cooling
system and help with heat distribution
we spots them easy to remove modular
components so the micro SDXC card reader
and the surface connect port come out
next removing this long bracket that's
securing all the cameras and sensors
allows us to take out the speakers and
then all the cameras we spot the eight
megapixel rear facing camera the five
megapixel front facing camera and the
windows hello face authentication camera
the motherboard is held in place by just
a few screws and once you've removed
them it slides right out on the board we
spot the dual core 10th gen Intel Core
i3 processor the four gigabytes of
lpddr4 X RAM and 128 gigabyte SSD
unfortunately for this surface pro both
the RAM and SSD are soldered to the
motherboard so don't plan on doing any
upgrade we're left with the battery
which is totally glued to the rear case
the battery is rated at forty 3.2 watt
hours which is actually a little lower
than the surface pro six is 45 watt hour
battery well we're disappointed to find
out that there's been no real change in
the surface pro 7 so not surprisingly it
scores the same as a 6 with a measly one
out of 10 and here's why the only upside
to the extent that screws are used
they're all standard Torx fasteners but
on the downside all repairs require
first removing the display assembly
which is stubbornly glued in place
expensive and prone to shattering the
battery is also firmly glued in place
requiring tons of heat and
crying or solvents to remove the RAM SSD
and CPU are all soldered to the
motherboard replacing any of these
components requires a full motherboard
replacement if you want to see what a
more repairable surface device looks
like check out our surface laptop 3 and
our surface Pro X teardown and if you
haven't already click that little
subscribe button
happy fixing