Microsoft finally built a repairable Surface Laptop

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  Oh wondrous day! Pry loose one of the new 15" Surface Laptop's feet with a pick or spudger and you see an actual screw. It's Torx, mind you. But still, it's a screw! [credit: iFixit ]

iFixit completed its teardown of Microsoft's new Ryzen-powered 15" Surface Laptop 3, and—to absolutely everyone's surprise, very much including iFixit's—the teardown didn't permanently break anything.

When the folks at iFixit tore down the first Microsoft Surface Laptop, they didn't get much further than removing the rubber feet before the device was irreparably damaged. The entire thing turned out to be one giant wad of glue, fabric, spot-welds and hate that earned the original Surface a "perfect" 0/10 repairability score, right up there next to Apple's AirPods (which it would never even occur to most people to attempt to disassemble).

In case you weren't sure, this was the teardown that shared a 0/10 score with the original Surface laptop. (credit: iFixit)

This year's 15" Surface Laptop 3 is an entirely different story. Well, not entirely different—but it's definitely a big change of heart. There are still some nasty bits to the Surface Laptop 3's construction—in particular, the battery is glued down and a bear to remove safely—but the iFixit crew managed to get the entire thing disassembled into its component parts with a minimum of blood and cursing. Better yet, iFixit left it in proper condition to be reassembled again.

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