Check out my pic which is the repaired/refurb replacement. I'm not saying every country's will look like that - heck it might only be the way they look in Australia. Mine was also shipped in a padded white bag with a blue Surface sticker and the clear plastic. But my replacement had clearly had previous use - scratches and a nice chip in the paintwork.
If it comes in a brown box chances are it's probably a refurb. Some people with early problems reported receiving replacements in the fancy retail boxes - which are definitely brand newies. There may be cases - it has been suggested if units are overstock etc they may still be brand new even if shipped in the small pain brown cardboard box, but my question to this would be, if you had a stack of brand spankers sitting in the back of a store or at Microsoft HQ, for example, which have never even been opened, why would you then remove it from the fancy packaging and shove it in a tiny brown box? That only hurts its resale value. And what do you do with all those pens?....
If the unit cosmetics are pristine and show no signs of wear/use, you may be lucky and received a perfectly new device. Check the build date too, which provides another indication. If it was built early, it's almost definitely been in someone's hands before yours. Try the battery test I suggested in here (or maybe it was in a different thread).
I'd love to know the ratio of brand spankers to refurbs for each country that are sent out as replacements these days. I'm not absolutely sure, but going off the stickers on the brown box I believe the replacement I received did not originate from Australia. Which, if that is the case, is a bit of a cheek on Microsoft's behalf when I'm not allowed to buy a Surface Pro in the US, bring it to Australia and then demand I be covered by the local warranty if something (probably haha) goes wrong. Nope, I'd have to ship it off at my own cost to the USA to be covered by warranty.
