I disagree. The Surface line, which came out in 2012 and has been continuously refined each year after, are some really beautiful, inventive, and highly technical pieces of hardware. The hinge on the Surface Book especially generated a bit of buzz when it came out, and the rest of their lineup is quite solid.

To say this also ignores the XBox and its controller, which often trades places with the modern PlayStation controllers for what is considered best-in-class.

Microsoft has plenty of hardware design capabilities.

You are right, of course. The Xboxes are better and better hardware-design-wise each generation, and the Surfaces are highly rated.

I should have been more specific - I was thinking of the CPU and GPU design.

Is kind of strange, but I think Microsoft have some of the best keyboard and mouse on the market. ( Or at least use to have since I no longer use them ) And Surface Laptop, while far from perfect, you could see their continuous refinement year after year. Most company give up after a while. But Microsoft is actually making lots of progress for the PC industry.