Multiple Surface Laptop 3 customers have experienced cracked displays. Microsoft says it is investigating the problem, but news of yet another reliability issue should be concerning to any Surface fan.

“A limited number of Surface Laptop customers have contacted Microsoft and have reported screens that have cracked through no fault of their own,” a Microsoft statement notes. “We are evaluating the situation and investigating the root cause of the claims.”

I first heard about this issue via my old friend Barb Bowman, a Microsoft enthusiast and consumer advocate. She reports that a growing number of customers have reported display cracks on their Surface Laptop 3s, on both Reddit and Microsoft’s Answers forum. The cracks apparently only appear on the non-Alcantara models, which is somewhat ironic, and none were the result of any accident.

In a separate report, ZD’s Mary Jo Foley quotes a Reddit user who believes the problem is due to Microsoft removing the gasket between the glass and the metal on the all-aluminum product. Whatever the cause, hopefully Microsoft can get ahead of this issue and provide a fix, something it was unable to do successfully with balky Surface Pro 4 and first-generation Surface Book PCs back in 2015-2016.

As I’m sure you know, I coined the term Surfacegate to describe those problems, which led to Consumer Reports temporarily removing its recommendation for the product lines. But Surface has had a much better reliability record since then.

Tagged with Surface Laptop 3