The Consumer Reports Dump on Surface - Important or Not
On August 10th - the well known publication Consumer Reports removed the MS Surface Laptops and Tablets from their recommended list due to what they call "poor predicted reliability" with estimated breakage rates of 25% within 2 years.
This caused an immediate reaction by all of the various Enthusiast sites as well as the general press and Microsoft themselves - who state that they believe the findings to be flawed..
Subsequently some content has come to light that has shown that MS had experienced return rates of as high as 16 - 17% on some models in their initial months of release and that those rates dropped down below 10% within 4 - 6 months.
So what's going on ?
As we all know - MS released the Surface line back in October 2012 in coordination with the Windows 8 operating system. The goal was to highlight a new computing paradigm where capabilities like touch and pen along with features that came later like Hello and Continuum.
The goal was to showcase these new capabilities and drive the overall industry to adopt features line touch, 2-in-1 design, etc into future models. To that end - MS has been successful in that you do see those capabilities in modern laptops.
Initially the Surface line lost money - but by the time the Surface 3 was released MS started to generate revenue. And since that time - we've seen the Surface Pro, Surface Book, Surface Studio and now the Surface Laptop. This lineup in theory gave MS a like for like portfolio to Apple.
But the reality is Surface has never really been a huge seller and maintains around a 1% market share. MS does not make the top 5 in PC sales and never will. In the most recent quarter MS generated about $831M in revenue from Surface. If you say that the average selling price across the entire Surface line is around $1500 - then you can estimate that MS sold about 554K units. By comparison - Apple sold about 4.2M Macs so nearly 8 to 1.
Let's face it - MS has only been in the "PC" business for 5 years. And like many brands, they work with Original Design Manufacturers (ODM) like Pegatron to actually build the devices. MS also does a lot of custom driver/firmware development and that has been a mixed bag. And the new Surface laptop received the lowest rating ever from iFixit when it comes to user serviceability.
When you compare their reliability to one of the top 3 - so HP, Dell or Lenovo - it's night and day. MS just doesn't have the long term engineering and manufacturing history and rigor that a Dell or HP has when it comes to building a device.
And even though MS positions Surface as a premium device with a premium price tag - they really aren't.
I just recently made a purchase decision for 2 new laptops for my family. I wanted to support all the new Windows 10 capabilities like Hello, Touch, Ink, Pen and have a 2-in-1 form factor. I also wanted the latest Intel CPU/GPU - SSD and a 1080 screen. I couldn't see spending the extra on 4K simply because the amount of content available is still limited.
What did I buy - 2 new Dell Inspiron laptops - a 13" 7000 series 2-in-1 with full pen support, Core I7, SSD, etc and a 15" 5000 series 2-in-1 with Core I5, touch, but not pen support. All in both machines cost me about $1700 or just slightly more than 1 of the new Surface Laptops would have cost me.
And that's where the problem lies for Surface. Combine that with what I've observed as an almost constant release of firmware/driver updates, etc and the reports back through the communities of issues with MS's own OS.
Bottom line is this. MS is a newbie in the PC business and while they are trying to move the needle in terms of form factor, the use of touch, pen, 3D, etc - they reality is that they are a niche player at best with a premium price tag.
Personally I won't buy one. I'll stick with the market leaders who been doing this for 30 years. I recommend you do to...
This caused an immediate reaction by all of the various Enthusiast sites as well as the general press and Microsoft themselves - who state that they believe the findings to be flawed..
Subsequently some content has come to light that has shown that MS had experienced return rates of as high as 16 - 17% on some models in their initial months of release and that those rates dropped down below 10% within 4 - 6 months.
So what's going on ?
As we all know - MS released the Surface line back in October 2012 in coordination with the Windows 8 operating system. The goal was to highlight a new computing paradigm where capabilities like touch and pen along with features that came later like Hello and Continuum.
The goal was to showcase these new capabilities and drive the overall industry to adopt features line touch, 2-in-1 design, etc into future models. To that end - MS has been successful in that you do see those capabilities in modern laptops.
Initially the Surface line lost money - but by the time the Surface 3 was released MS started to generate revenue. And since that time - we've seen the Surface Pro, Surface Book, Surface Studio and now the Surface Laptop. This lineup in theory gave MS a like for like portfolio to Apple.
But the reality is Surface has never really been a huge seller and maintains around a 1% market share. MS does not make the top 5 in PC sales and never will. In the most recent quarter MS generated about $831M in revenue from Surface. If you say that the average selling price across the entire Surface line is around $1500 - then you can estimate that MS sold about 554K units. By comparison - Apple sold about 4.2M Macs so nearly 8 to 1.
Let's face it - MS has only been in the "PC" business for 5 years. And like many brands, they work with Original Design Manufacturers (ODM) like Pegatron to actually build the devices. MS also does a lot of custom driver/firmware development and that has been a mixed bag. And the new Surface laptop received the lowest rating ever from iFixit when it comes to user serviceability.
When you compare their reliability to one of the top 3 - so HP, Dell or Lenovo - it's night and day. MS just doesn't have the long term engineering and manufacturing history and rigor that a Dell or HP has when it comes to building a device.
And even though MS positions Surface as a premium device with a premium price tag - they really aren't.
I just recently made a purchase decision for 2 new laptops for my family. I wanted to support all the new Windows 10 capabilities like Hello, Touch, Ink, Pen and have a 2-in-1 form factor. I also wanted the latest Intel CPU/GPU - SSD and a 1080 screen. I couldn't see spending the extra on 4K simply because the amount of content available is still limited.
What did I buy - 2 new Dell Inspiron laptops - a 13" 7000 series 2-in-1 with full pen support, Core I7, SSD, etc and a 15" 5000 series 2-in-1 with Core I5, touch, but not pen support. All in both machines cost me about $1700 or just slightly more than 1 of the new Surface Laptops would have cost me.
And that's where the problem lies for Surface. Combine that with what I've observed as an almost constant release of firmware/driver updates, etc and the reports back through the communities of issues with MS's own OS.
Bottom line is this. MS is a newbie in the PC business and while they are trying to move the needle in terms of form factor, the use of touch, pen, 3D, etc - they reality is that they are a niche player at best with a premium price tag.
Personally I won't buy one. I'll stick with the market leaders who been doing this for 30 years. I recommend you do to...
Comments
Post a Comment