Consumer Reports Removes Recommendation Of Microsoft Surface Series – Microsoft Disagrees – Nobody Left Any Wiser

ByJim Miller

The publication Consumer Reports pulled it's past recommendations of Surface tablets and laptop yesterday, under the headlines
“Microsoft Surface Laptops and Tablets Not Recommended by Consumer Reports – The problem is predicted reliability, with estimated two-year breakage rates of 25 percent.”

Based on the data sampling of Consumer Reports, they made the conclusion that because stated owners of past Surface devices had reported an above average freeze rate and unresponsive touchscreen, especially after a 2 year time period, that Consumer Reports should also remove the just launched devices such as the new Surface Pro and Surface Laptop from their previous recommendation list.

Microsoft first commented on this to the press yesterday, but then followed up earlier today in a dedicated blog post countering the claims of Consumer Reports.

Consumer Reports have since admitted that their methodology is not fool proof, but what we should be looking at here are facts and numbers.

For sure, Microsoft have and have had major firmware glitches and bugs at launch on both the past Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book, and then again on the new Surface Pro now, and considering the $799 entry price, the confidence of Surface chief Panos Panay every time he unveils a new Surface device, and the apparatus of Microsoft, we should expect these devices to be near perfect from launch. But that wasn't actually what Consumer Reports pulled their recommendation based on.

I find the debacle interesting both from a consumer perspective and a computer industry perspective, so stirring up things and creating a legitimate debate and open discussion based on facts is welcome and healthy.

Consumer Report have pinned their tweet on the subject to their Twitter account with comments starting to come in, and we are seeing more comments building up on their Facebook account too.

– Tom Bowen