Surface Pro 4 Flickergate: Here's What's Wrong

A group of Surface Pro 4 customers have banded together to raise awareness of issues they are having with their machines' displays. The group, calling the incident "Flickergate," claims to be more than 1600 strong.

A Microsoft support forum thread has almost 1,400 responses as of this writing, with hundreds of customers saying that their screens flicker. The Verge first reported the issue.

"We are aware that some customers have experienced a screen flicker on Surface Pro 4 and are monitoring the situation closely," a Microsoft spokesperson told Laptop Mag. "Customers impacted by this should contact Microsoft support."

Perhaps the strangest part, though, is that several owners are claiming that putting the device in the freezer serves as a temporary fix. The problem is a hardware issue, so it couldn't be fixed with a simple software update.

Last August, Consumer Reports yanked its recommendation of the Surface lineup because its "predicted reliability" was worse than other brands. Some members of the Flickergate group have reported getting replacement units, and the site states that "if the issue is a hardware fault, then Microsoft should recall affected devices."