Microsoft’s new Surface Pro and Surface Laptop are so easy to repair, they put Apple’s computers in the shade.

Back in 2013, the first Microsoft Surfaces were so bad that iFixit gave them a repairability score of 10/10 , and to be honest, that seemed like a stretch: you had to cut the laptop open with a knife to get to the battery. Things have slowly improved, but now the new CoPilot+ PCs are earning a solid 8/10. Between these and Lenovo’s T14 Thinkpads, is repairability finally going mainstream? At least among PC makers.

"I worked on the first generation Surface Pro and Surface laptops and I'm impressed that they've come this far. It's a stark contrast to Apple's self-interested compliance or Samsung's attempts to undermine R2R or find loopholes. Malicious compliance just isn't happening here. This seems like a genuine attempt to do better," Shahram Mokhtari, lead teardown technician at iFixit, told Lifewire via direct message.

iFixit opened up the new Surface Pro 11 and Surface Laptop 7 and found them both to be highly repairable, going so far as to call the laptop an “astonishingly repair-friendly device.” It starts with the base plate. Once you remove the screws, you won’t have to fiddle with (and potentially break) any more holding clips, because the panel is held in place with magnets.