Microsoft Creates Rare Teardown and Repair Video for Surface Laptop SE

In a rarity, Microsoft has uploaded a video that teaches viewers how to open up and repair an upcoming Surface laptop product.

On Monday, Microsoft posted a 7-minute teardown video for the Surface Laptop SE, a notebook the company is now selling to elementary and middle schools. 

Teardown videos are a great way to learn how to disassemble and repair a product, whether it be a laptop or a smartphone. But the videos almost always come from third-party repair experts such as iFixit—not the companies that created the products. 

Instead, the electronics industry has been notorious for making it hard to fix consumer electronics without going through their official repair channels. But that’s starting to change, thanks to the growing right-to-repair movement and greater scrutiny from US regulators. 

Last year, Microsoft itself pledged to expand the repair options for its products, following pressure from activist shareholders. So the teardown video of the Surface Laptop SE may be a sign of things to come from Microsoft. 

Surface Laptop SE
(Photo: Microsoft)

Then again, it could be a one-off. The Surface Laptop SE is a niche product that’ll only be available for the education market. In designing it, Microsoft also focused on making the device easy for schools to replace and fix without sending the hardware to a dedicated repair center. 

Hence, the laptop’s repairability is a key selling point for the device. The teardown video emphasizes this by showing that all parts inside can be removed as individual modules. 

We asked Microsoft if it plans on producing more teardown videos for other products. But for now, the company said it had nothing new to share. In the meantime, the company’s rival Apple is preparing to launch  a “self service repair” store that'll let consumers for the first time buy replacement parts for iPhones and Macs.