DittoHistorically I have fared well with Apple over the years, including the new MBP, which I know an unusually high number of people seem to have had trouble with. Mine has been perfect out of the box.
I think I have had to exchange 1 MacBook Air and a couple of iPods through their generations, but between my wife and I we have had countless numbers of iPods, iPhones, iPads, MacBook Pros, iMac, Mac Pro's, Apple Watches, Apple TV's, etc. She had a 40GB Gen 3 iPod that just finally died this year. My 160GB iPod Classic is still kicking, knock on wood
The last device I had this many returns with within such a short span was the GoPro Hero 4, the last laptop I had so much trouble with was HP back in the mid 2000's. I guess I was probably due to run into a trouble streak.
On the bright side I am getting very efficient with the setup procedure with all my apps and accounts. It takes me less time every setup!
Hopefully your sister fairs well with the Surface Laptop. At least in general, it seems that electronics either fail early or last years. I am keeping my fingers crossed for this one falling into the later category.
My sisters Surface laptop set-up went fine and transitioning to Win10 Pro from Win10S was 2 clicks and 10 mins
Only thing we found was Hello worked better ie 100% by re doing the recognition, as the setup one was flaky and she is very happy she did not opt for the rMB even though she has an Ipad and Iphone