recently we tore down the surface laptop
three and found that Microsoft had
greatly improved us repair ability it
went from being one of the worst devices
we have ever seen to earning a
respectable 5 out of 10
today we've got our hands on the
brand-new surface pro x with a sleek
redesigned form factor and a brand new
anodized aluminum case we're wondering
if the Pro X got any repairability
upgrades there's only one way to find
that out and that's to tear it down
spying a secret port on the back of the
surface pro X we find a hidden
compartment that's home to a removable
SSD SSD upgrades and replacements don't
get much easier than that this 128
gigabyte SSD is the same type of
replaceable drive we found in the
surface laptop 3 with no other secret
compartments to be found we turn our
attention to the display which is the
usual way of opening a surface pro
device if you've ever taken apart a
surface pro you know the display can be
tricky
they're usually held in place by strong
adhesives and take a long time to remove
this one does feel noticeably easier to
separate but you still need a ton of
careful prying to get it off the display
is attached to the motherboard by a long
cable and both sides of the connector
are either hidden beneath the heatsink
or shields speaking of shields every
conceivable thing on this board is
covered by a shield all the screws
connected cables everything is covered
by these shields that have to be scraped
up and off the board hours later when we
have all the shields off we finally get
to work on removing some components
first up the nano-sim and the SSD port
the speakers come out next and so does
the surface connect board trying to make
our way to the cameras we run into a
little puzzle there's a front-facing
sensor bar that's holding the cameras in
place but it's connected to something
mysterious under the motherboard
fortunately just loosening it up a bit
allows for enough space to remove the
windows hello camera that handles face
authentication the 10 megapixel
rear-facing camera and the 5 megapixel
front-facing camera the motherboard has
a few screws holding it in place but
once they're out the board slides right
out of the case on the board we can see
the sqn processor the Microsoft
collaborated with Qualcomm on and the
eight gigabytes of lpddr4 X Ram we're
left at the battery which is still
unfortunately glued into the case this
is a seven point five eight bulb thirty
eight point two watt hour battery which
microsoft says will provide you with
about 13 hours of typical device usage
with our surface pro x completely
disassembled it's time to talk
repairability the surface pro X scored a
six
and here's why on the upside the user
removable SSD makes for easy upgrades
and data security that doesn't require
device destruction to the extent that
screws are used they're all standard
Torx fasteners many components are
modular and can be replaced
independently almost all repairs require
display removal with an improved
procedure that needs no heat but in the
Sesa taste careful prying but on the
downside the battery is firmly glued in
place with this connector pinned under
the motherboard requiring near total
disassembly for service if you want to
see more Microsoft tear downs check out
our surface laptop 3 video and while
you're there hit subscribe
happy fixing