Microsoft Surface Laptop 3 Teardown: What Could Be Inside?

• Microsoft Surface Laptop 3 Teardown: What Could Be Inside?

• Microsoft Surface Laptop 3 Teardown

The Microsoft Surface Laptop is so unique that is a pain in the ass to open, then think about how hard is going to be to repair. This is why the company engineers have made up their mind and show users more flexible solution and upgrade options down the road. 

The latest Surface Laptop 3 teardown is from iFixit, they showed us that removing the bottom four rubber feet gives access to some screws and from the front. The teardown seems to look easy for them, perhaps not to a normal engineers. However there are few strange things seen along the way. For instance, the upper keyboard case isn't glued in place but held together by magnets, which is an awesome touch, but unfortunately, there are some metal shields covering the components that are difficult to remove and once you remove them, it’s even more difficult to refix it back.

The M.2 SSD is held together by just a single screw, you can easily remove it, the form factor might be M.2, but the SSD features a smaller length and not the regular (normally seen) in notebooks. iFixit also shows us that removing the cooling solution only involves the removal of a couple of screws and this change is extremely helpful in case you want to reapply thermal paste on the CPU and GPU.

Keep in mind to gain access to the motherboard, you will need to remove a large number of metal shields. Just like the SSD, the display is also easily removable and requires a few screws to get detached. This all will be bit easy if you fellow steps, now the critical part is here, the battery removal. The fact is there isn’t a way to remove the 45.8Whr unit as it’s firmly glued in place. Replacing the battery is the part to be afraid off.

Now let's listen to what iFixit have to say. They gave us 5 out of 10 repairability score for the latest Surface Laptop 3 teardown, making replacing components and entering the innards of the machine miles better compared to the mess Microsoft offered in the form of its original Surface Laptop. But hey.., if your battery gets issue, the only way to get it replaced on the Surface Laptop 3 is to visit the company’s for replacement or an authorized repair center.

Credit: iFixit