Microsoft patches flickering display problem on Surface Book and Surface Pro 4

Surface Book and Surface Pro 4
Your eyes will no longer be plagued by a flickering screen

Since the launch of the new Surface devices from Microsoft, we've heard about a number of issues, one of the more major problems being screen flicker – fortunately that's one which has now been fixed.

And a good job too, as there's nothing more irritating than a display which is flickering on and off in seemingly random fashion.

Some folks have apparently managed to implement workarounds in some cases, but now there's no need to be tinkering yourself, as a fresh firmware update from Microsoft is in the process of rolling out which cures this ailment on the Surface Book and Surface Pro 4.

CNET reports that Redmond stated: "HD Graphics 520 driver update (v20.19.15.4308) addresses some display issues, including some scenarios that result in screen flickering."

A few other issues have been addressed as well, including general stability fixes, and in the case of Surface Book owners, they also get updates for the keyboard and trackpad.

Problems aplenty

Hopefully Microsoft is also busy addressing the other major issue which has popped up with the new Surface devices, namely a rapidly draining battery which is allegedly caused by Windows Hello.

There's a list of issues which have affected the Surface Book which is as long as your arm, including other problems with the screen such as display driver issues popping up randomly at frequent intervals, and colour temperature problems when scrolling web pages.

You can always expect some bugs with new hardware and software, but the latest Surface models certainly seem to be taking the biscuit in this respect.

Darren is a freelancer writing news and features for TechRadar (and occasionally T3) across a broad range of computing topics including CPUs, GPUs, various other hardware, VPNs, antivirus and more. He has written about tech for the best part of three decades, and writes books in his spare time (his debut novel - 'I Know What You Did Last Supper' - was published by Hachette UK in 2013).