Surface Pro 4 - Screen won't wake from sleep

I bought my Pro4 15 April. It started out fine. Issue with pen resolved with update, but now have more frequent issues. Screen 30% of time displays text as pixels, 15% of time does not wake from sleep and doea not have 100% functionality in tablet mode. I'm disappointed and while at first I recommended it, now when someone inquires I explain the issues I had that day. Disappointed.

Hi, Neil.

Thanks for the info on your experience.  It does not lead me to the same conclusion about hardware though since the replacement machine brought a new system image.

For compelling evidence that there is a relevant hardware difference one needs to install the same c:-drive image on two platforms and find clear evidence that one shows the problem and the other doesn't. To run this test and then return both systems to normal will usually take more than two hours.  My Microsoft Store in Tysons Virginia has been cooperative when I wanted to do that by allowing me to use a known-good platform.  This is a useful thing to try before wasting time on a replacement that may be the identical hardware you had the problem on.

I have not done that with this issue.  If someone has, I'd like to know.

Already done, read my posts. Lot 1613 SP4 works great, better in many ways than older SP4s. Identical image loaded on 3 SP4s. Older two display typical problems. Lot 1613 runs great. Better performance, better battery life--much, much better--so far no sleep or crash problems. Clearly, the older two have a hardware problem not shared by the new unit. Whether MS has changed something in the design, improved QC, or I just got lucky with the new one I have no idea.

More evidence that the no-wake issue is hardware.  I bought my SP4 back in January at Best Buy.  It had no-wake right after the February updates enabled S0 sleep.  Exchanged twice through Microsoft, and both replacements also had the no-wake issue.  That's after installing recovery images, running update over and over, and all the other "fixes" that online support suggest.

Recent travel took me near a Microsoft Store.  Told the staff that my third attempt to get a working SP4 had the no-wake problem, and they were happy to immediately replace it with a brand new lot 1615 machine.  Not a single no-wake error since - machine has been up for 8 days since last reboot with frequent sleep during the day and overnight.  All power settings at out of the box defaults.  The difference with all of the earlier machines is night and day.

Although the problem is much better after this last driver refresh, mine still wedges often enough to still be really frustrating.  Yesterday's Monday morning meetings were interrupted by my SP4 once again refusing to wake (I undocked it, snapped on the type cover, and then closed it to put it to sleep).  As usual, forced power-off/restart was required, losing data in the process.  (Seems like it prefers wedging right after you've said to someone, "See, look at this - I've got it right here...")

Pretty sure my lot 1604 machine isn't ever going to work correctly.  Rumor on the street has it that the Intel power management problems aren't going to be fixed until Kaby Lake, which is also rumored to be the chipset in next year's Surface Pro 5.  

Skylake (SP4/SB) owners presumably just have to live with this unholy and house-of-cards fragile mess of patched drivers and firmware to work around the fundamental problems baked into the Skylake silicon...