Remember the dark days when the Surface Laptop was a fortress? The iFixit crew wielded scalpels like surgical wizards to get under the bonnet of those. But the newer models are a doddle to open signalling that the winds of change had blown through Redmond’s back passages.

Gone are the sticky shackles of yesteryear. Instead of glue and fragile clips and everything is well and truly screwed (in a good way).

Vole has placed QR codes in the manual to point users to the right screws in just the right quantities.

On the downside, there was a Wi-Fi module that could not easily be replaced and the soldered-on RAM.

Removing the screen requires a steady hand and access to alcohol. Due to the device's tablet nature, the hardware is still modular. As with previous generations of Microsoft tablets, the storage can be swapped out without disassembling the rest of the device.

The battery is still more difficult to replace than it should be, but at least you don’t have to take the device to recycling if it dies.