Not one single Microsoft Surface device! The US based independent review journal Consumer Reports has withdrawn its coveted recommended status for all hardware under the Surface umbrella.
This, following the survey of 90,000 tablet and laptop users that the nonprofit organization conducted.
Which revealed that more or less 25% of Surface product owners were experiencing problems by the second year of the ownership. These ranged from touchscreen failures to freezing problems and system crashes, while some users failed to even get their devices to reliably boot up.
In the crushing words of Consumer Reports’ electronics editor, Jerry Beilinson:
“If you are very concerned about how long your products are going to last, it might be better for you to go with a brand that has a higher predicted reliability.”
Crushing.
Goes without saying that Microsoft rejected this assessment from Consumer Reports:
“We don’t believe these findings accurately reflect Surface owners’ true experiences or capture the performance and reliability improvements made with every Surface generation.”
And in a more detailed statement, Redmond stood by the Surface devices wholeheartedly:
“Surface is designed and built with performance and reliability in mind. We extensively test hardware and software to ensure that customers can be confident in their Surface devices.
Every generation of Surface surpasses its predecessors in performance and in reliability. Surface return and support rates are in line if not lower than industry average for devices in the same class. We are committed to ensuring the premium Surface experience for all of our customers across the entire family of devices.”
Nevertheless, this much is certain that Consumer Reports is staying put with their decision, and point to the large volume of reported reliability problems with Surface devices that they believe have made Microsoft a statistical outlier relative to other manufacturers.
Particularly to Apple, who is said to be behind the most reliable devices.
What do you make of this? Have you experienced issues, as a Surface owner? Or seen other users struggle with theirs? How widespread are these problems in your opinion?
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