14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft has just launched the Surface Book 2, but just like a number of existing Surface models, it won’t be tested by Consumer Reports because of an issue that was discovered one year ago.
The consumer group says it found that no less than 25 percent of Microsoft’s Surface models were suffering from reliability issues, and as a result, evaluating the new Surface Book 2 doesn’t make any sense. As a result, they can’t recommend the new “ultimate laptop” as a worthy purchase.
Microsoft blames the methodology
But as far as Microsoft is concerned, these are just false claims of poor Surface reliability, and the company blames the consumer watchdog for using testing methods that aren’t specifically tailored to each device category, such as laptops.
“One of the things you're seeing is the reliability of our products over time, with every generation getting better and better and better. We're talking about incidents per device of less than 0.001%,” Ryan Gavin, Microsoft's general manager for Surface, was quoted as saying.
“We thought it was unfortunate the report that Consumer Reports put out, partly used the methodology that is consistent with how you evaluate home appliances and applied it to laptops. That would be like [asking] 'Has your dishwasher behaved unexpectedly in the past two years?' and if the answer was 'Yes', you'd be deemed unreliable. This is not consistent with our ongoing testing and we have a good ongoing conversation with them.”
Gavin went on to emphasise that there’s no sign of poor reliability on a new Surface model, explaining that even the telemetry data that’s being collected from customer devices shows that every new generation brings substantial improvements in this regard.
The Surface Book 2 is now going on sale in the largest markets across the world, with pricing in the United States starting at $1,499 for the base model and going up to $3,299 for the top-of-the-range configuration.