Feedback on Surface books (worst pc ever ?)

Hello everyone,

This is feedback on my experience having had 4 distinct surface book 2 13" over the last 4 years. I bought 1 and the 3 others were replacement ones.

To introduce myself and give a bit of context, I am a STEM student in a top 20 university in the world and I essentially do Mechanical engineering and Data Science. Therefore I have all the time in my bag and run big simulations on it.

Therefore, 4 years ago, I took the surface book 2 for its incredible specs and also its ability to take notes in tablet mode.

• 1st surface book, screen battery not detected anymore
• 2nd surface book, tablet frame expanded creating a gap of around 3mm all around because of the different expansion coefficient of the material
• 3rd surface book, screen expanded then cracked in the middle after heating up during a simulation
• 4th surface book, screen expanded, battery not detected

I would like to precise that Microsoft has always replaced all the broken surface books with a higher version and the support service is extremely nice and helpful. Still, I will present what are the major design and conception flaws of this product in my opinion:

• Not putting a fan in the screen when you have an i7 running in it. Indeed I do deep learning / CATIA / Abaqus simulations/photo editing and therefore it heats up. The main issue is the fact that the metal frame expands under the heat but not the glass. Therefore when it cools down, a gap starts to appear and it keeps getting bigger every time the laptop heats up. Also, the battery in the screen seems to suffer a lot from it as its durability decreases extremely quickly before not even being detected anymore.
• The tablet battery life (with an i7 and 16Go of ram) is a maximum of 1h30 with only OneNote. You cannot use it without the charger. When you use it with the charger, the tablet heats up and the pen starts lagging making it completely useless.
• Having a proprietary port on the tablet and only one USB-C on the dock. This means that you cannot use your tablet with a beamer or peripheral (even Apple does it). And only 1 USB-C makes your dongle heat up super quickly when plugging in 2 screens for example (or you can have a 200$, super heavy, surface dock at all times with you).
• The fans of the dock blow onto the screen / within the hinge. Therefore, if you "reverse" the screen and use, let's say photoshop with your pencil", the hot air blows into the closed space between the tablet and the keyboard. Therefore hot air gets trapped and best of all: the processor is right there in the middle. Therefore Adobe or any creative software cannot be used in "closed reverse mode".
• The battery life, I have the max specs but still, with 75% of brightness, do not expect more than 5-6h of battery.
• The charger/proprietary port, Apple and Dell use USB type C, Microsoft made a laptop thick as a brick with their own charger...

What I find extremely shocking is that the surface book 3 has exactly the same design issues which will inevitably lead to the same failures.

Maybe I am the only unlucky person to whom all of this happened but it happened too many times to be isolated.

Also for the price it cost, I would not recommend buying a surface book as it can only be used reliably as a laptop and in this range, they are way better / reliable competitors.

In case you were wondering, I asked Microsoft for a refund / have a surface laptop instead, they always refused and sent me back another surface book that suffered from the (more or less) same issues.

Tell me if the same happened to you or if I am only unlucky ;)