It’s been a big week at Microsoft as the company is coming off the launch of two new Surface devices. Both the Surface Laptop 3 and the Surface Pro 7 launched on Tuesday, and tech reviewers have had decent, and nice things to say.
However, some consumers who have gone out and purchased new Surface products appear to be having issues. At the time of writing many users have taken to the Surface subreddit and are complaining of possible quality control issues with their brand new products.
Of course, these issues could all just be isolated — or just coming paranoid users concerned about their new devices — but by our counts, there are now well over 10 posts on the subreddit with complaints about either the Surface Laptop 3 or Surface Pro 7.
Additionally, to be fair, there do not appear to be any similar or widespread complaints on Twitter, which is where people typically go to complain about issues with new tech products. Anyway, a quick look at the posts on Reddit appears to highlight the following issues with the new Surface devices.
- u/littleloversopolite complains of a new Surface Pro 7 overheating when just web browsing
- u/Goseki mentions that the WiFi is slow when a new Surface Laptop 3 comes out of sleep
- u/romeroha mentions a jittered, and low resolution, or black screen on the Core i7 13 inch Surface Laptop 3
- u/Gernug complains of the Surface Pro 7 fans sounding loud
- u/Rhystic1 complains of the paint chipping off on the Surface Laptop 3
- u/b_to_the_rye complains of none of the USB-C ports on a new Surface Pro 7 working for charging
- u/Nyaughty complains of a wobbly kickstand on a new Surface Pro 7, just taken out of the box
- u/TheWoolyWolves notices a rattling noise in a new Surface Pro 7
- u/Bo-9876 mentions that “Hey Cortana” isn’t working on a new Surface Pro 7
As you may recall, Consumer Reports had once stopped recommending new Surface products due to high breakage rates. Microsoft then challenged that claim, stood behind its Surface products and mentioned every generation of Surface device is getting better. Eventually, Consumer Reports restored its recommendation after examining surveys of its members. Microsoft also recently redesigned the Surface Laptop 3 itself and made it much more repairable, and the Surface Pro 7 even features replaceable SSDs. It even released a day one firmware update to address Cortana speech recognition and battery life issues.
The Surface lineup has a deep heritage, and it will be interesting to see if more users experience these same problems. If true, Microsoft might have its hands full once again, just like it did with Flickergate on the Surface Pro 4 and, Sleepgate on the Surface Book.
