Microsoft says it has addressed the reliability issues, which caused the entire Surface range to lose a valuable recommendation.
In an internal memo, Microsoft said high return rates were limited to the Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book launches of late 2015.
Corporate vice president Panos Panay said Microsoft “worked tirelessly” to address the issues suffered by early adopters. He also assured they were not repeated in subsequent releases.
He says that all current Surface devices enjoy high rates of reliability and customer satisfaction.
“These improvements were unfortunately not reflected in the results of this [Consumer Reports] survey,” Panay said in the memo published at Thurrott.com on Monday.
Last week Consumer Reports pulled its recommendation for Surface devices, following a survey of 90,000 users that ended in early 2017.
That means the Surface Laptop and new Surface Pro couldn’t have been included as they weren’t yet available.
High return rates
As to why the Surface Book and Surface Pro 4 experienced such high return rates, Microsoft insiders gave Thurrott two explanations.
Some sources blamed the Intel Skylake chips, others say Microsoft cocked-up when creating the custom drivers for the devices. Regardless, the flaws have given the entire family a bad name.
Last week CR said: “New studies conducted by the Consumer Reports National Research Center estimate that 25 percent of Microsoft laptops and tablets will present their owners with problems by the end of the second year of ownership.”
At the time Microsoft responded by saying: “Microsoft’s real-world return and support rates for past models differ significantly from Consumer Reports’ breakage predictability.
“We don’t believe these findings accurately reflect Surface owners’ true experiences or capture the performance and reliability improvements made with every Surface generation.”
Have you experienced any issues with your Surface device? Was Consumer Reports right to drop the entire range’s recommendation? Drop us a line @TrustedReviews on Twitter.
Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
