Where "value" is purely monetary, I think that pretty succinctly sums up my experience/views on the Framework product line.
They make good laptops, but you can generally get more for fewer dollars. If you're shopping on price, you can probably just skip right over their entire product line.
That doesn't mean that their offering doesn't have value. It has value has a vote with your wallet for sustainable, repairable products. It has value as an easily repairable and customizable laptop. It has value in some esoteric use cases it can be customized into (e.g., 4xM.2 NVME slots).
Would love to see some reviews just get this out of the way up front and spend more words on the product itself.
Personally, I'm glad there's a company out there serving a market niche besides being the lowest cost, most value-engineered product. I don't mind paying a bit extra for that in exchange for the other value I get out of it.
(And all that said--at the high end specs their prices get a fair bit more competitive. The price to upgrade a laptop from 16GB -> 128GB on Dell's site is _more than an entire FW16 w/ Ryzen 9 + 96GB RAM_.)
I think the repairabilty makes it hard to even compare monetary value, since in theory, you'd be keeping the same body, while swapping out the mainboard. Is it cheaper to buy two other laptops compared to one laptop + mainboard? That's what, a 3-5 year timeline? Who knows what prices/capabilities/etc will be like then.
Yeah, I personally take that into account however I can see why someone may not.
Framework has released fairly consistent upgrades for the Framework 13, but there's no guarantee that they will continue to do so, will release upgrades for the Framework 16, etc.
I think in a few years when they've been in business for closer to a decade than not and released updates across the whole product line, it'd be pretty hard for anyone to make an argument that that _shouldn't_ be factored in.
I think monetary value can be accomplished by streamlining a second hand marketplace. If you've purchased a device the vendor can keep track of what and when. It should be relatively simple to put the known device or part back in the shop. Depending on the part and age they can also buy back and refurbish parts. A standard discount on an upgrade if you return the old part. Etc
One could even allow other manufacturers to offer parts and do certification for a fee.
It should be possible to push down prices and make update paths more appealing.
I am happy to pay more money given the companies goals, and that extra money is an investment to me. If I didnt buy it they have one less sale, and I won't have contributed to making the world have more companies like framework. I have hope others are doing the same despite them not being the cheapest.
If they stop delivering, ill not buy their next thing, and ill be sad.
I really love the lavender — VAIO-core! I do wish I could get the other modules in lavender too, but I understand why they wouldn't want to fractally-complicate their stock keeping for those items.
> the Laptop 12 can only fit a single DDR5 RAM slot, which reduces memory bandwidth and limits your RAM capacity to 48GB
> Old, slow chip isn't really suitable for light gaming
I wish the reviewer would specify what phrases like “light gaming” mean to them. My FW12 is in a later batch that won't ship for a few more months, but I'm coming from a ThinkPad T470s where I already do “light gaming” (mostly TBoI Repentence and Team Fortress 2 with mastercomfig medium-low). I can't imagine the 13th Gen graphics would be worse in that regard than my old laptop's 7th Gen.
Not having Thunderbolt seemed like kind of a bummer to me too, but then again my T470s has it and I can't think of a single time I ever actually used it for anything. I tried one of those external GPU enclosures once, and it was kinda cool just to see that such a thing was possible, but I've never been one to want to tether a laptop with a thicc cable lol
Is it unreasonable to think Framework should be able to make a laptop competitive with the 5 years old MacBook Air M1? I get that Framework focuses on making repairable machines, but does that prevent them from making a fanless, hi dpi, good performing, long battery life machine?
I wouldn’t expect parity with an M4 machine, but it doesn’t seem unreasonable to think they should be competitive with the much older M1.
I have the same complaint with Lenovo (I usually buy ThinkPads). Where are the fast, fanless, hidpi, long battery life laptops?
> Is it unreasonable to think Framework should be able to make a laptop competitive with the 5 years old MacBook Air M1?
Kind of unreasonable. I mean which Intel or AMD cpu can be run fanless and perform well?
On the topic of displays, my understanding is that they "kind of use what they can get". That's how there can be a 13 display with rounded corners in a straight edge case.
What you're asking are the things I'm looking for, though still every time I go into their forum I see enough thermal, fan noise issues and AMD firmware bugs, that I'm still on the fence on buying one.
I wish them luck with the 12, for me sounds like a model for "true believers" because it doesn't seem to compete well enough with run of the mill chromebooks (or an Air) that are more established in the students segment.
It isn't the chip which determines whether it's fanless. Basically every modern chip supports power capping and then the power cap is determined by how much heat the machine can dissipate.
What that really determines is multi-thread performance. Fanless laptop that can dissipate the power of one core? No problem. Fanless laptop that can dissipate the power of all the cores? For that you have to lower the clock speed quite a bit. Which is why you see AMD chips on older TSMC process nodes getting better multithread performance than Apple's fanless ones.
The cost/benefit ratio of adding a fan is extremely attractive. The alternative way of doing it is to add more cores. If you have 8 fanless cores at 2 GHz, how do you improve multi-thread performance by 50%? Option one, clock them at 3 GHz, but now you need a fan; cost of fan ~$5. Option two, get 16 cores and cap them at 1.5 GHz to fit in the same power envelope, but now you need twice as much silicon, cost of twice as many cores $500+.
The number of people who pick the second option given that trade off is so small that hardly anybody even bothers to offer it.
Apple continues to do it because a) then they get to claim "see, they can't do this?" even when hardly anybody chooses that given the option, and b) then if you actually want the higher performance one from them, you're paying hundreds of dollars extra for more cores instead of $5 extra for the same one but with a fan in it.
If someone besides Apple made a fanless laptop that had competitive performance with Apple's offerings (i.e. not a $200 Chromebook with a Celeron or a cast-off 5 year old smartphone CPU), I'd absolutely buy one. I got excited when the Qualcomm Snapdragon X was being discussed pre-launch, but then it came out with performance worse than the original M1 and it turned out that Qualcomm lied about giving it first-class Linux support. I really dislike Mac OS, but when I can't use a PC laptop in bed or on a couch or on my lap without it overheating, I'm not able to switch away. It's a shame that the entire PC industry is fine with selling laptops that will overheat when not used on a rigid flat surface.
Sure, and you can still find fanless devices, but then they'll typically be the ones not focused on multi-thread performance. And if you don't care about that, e.g. because you're offloading heavy workloads to a server or you just don't do anything compute heavy, then you can find a lot of fanless offerings with low core counts that are actually quite inexpensive. You can get some fanless Chromebooks for under $200.
The per-core efficiency of Apple and AMD CPUs on the same process node is pretty much identical. This has become harder to directly compare because they're now using alternate process nodes from one another, but have a look at this chart for example:
What do we see at the top of this chart? TSMC 3nm (M3/M4), followed by TSMC 4nm (Ryzen 7000U/8000U), TSMC 5nm (M1/M2), TSMC 5nm/6nm mixed (Ryzen 7000H), and then finally we find something made on an Intel process node instead of TSMC.
The efficiency has more to do with the process node than which architecture it is.
It's too bad they don't have Epyc on that chart. Epyc 9845 is on TSMC N3E and that thing is running cores at a >2GHz base clock at less than 2.5W per core.
Intel's T variants in the Core series can be passively cooled. They have pretty good burst performance in case you need it. I don't know if there are laptops using them (I only have fanless desktop systems with these CPUs).
> I mean which Intel or AMD cpu can be run fanless and perform well?
I don't follow CPU news and have no idea what lake they're at now, but I'd be surprised if Intel and AMD didn't have a chip competitive with an M1 by now.
When I google "fanless amd intel laptop cpu" I find this old thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31142209 which does suggest some fanless machines exist. That's from 3 years ago so surely there are even more options today, no?
> but does that prevent them from making a (...) hi dpi (...) machine?
It pretty much has that though? 1920x1200 at 12.2" is 185.59 PPI. Standard DPI (PPI) is 96. HiDPI to my knowledge isn't properly defined, but the usual convention is either double that or just more than that - the latter criteria this display definitely clears, and the former (192 PPI) is super super close, to the extent that I'd call it cleared for sure.
It's pretty hard to not clear at least the latter criteria on a laptop anyways. You'd see that on 720p and 768p units from like a decade or two ago.
The baseline of 96ppi is nominal only. Form factor and intended distance from screen matters a lot. In the laptop form factor, you’re aiming for more like 110–125 as 1×. Apple laptops range from 221–254ppi as 2×.
186ppi is designed for 1.5×, an uncomfortable space that makes perfection difficult-to-impossible, yet seems to have become unreasonably popular, given how poorly everything but Windows tends to handle it. (Microsoft have always had real fractional scaling; Apple doesn’t support it at all, downsampling; X11 is a total mess; Wayland is finally getting decent fractional scaling.)
Yeah the focus really should be on multipliers. Is it a clean multiple of the typical “normal” DPI resolution for that screen size? You’ve got a great screen. No? It’s a compromise. Simple.
1.5x looks ok mostly (though fractional pixels can cause issues in a few circumstances), but across platforms nothing is handled as well as 2x, 3x, etc is. I have a 1.5x laptop and wish it were either 1x or 2x.
The appropriate display scaling multiplier for this screen is 200% (2x), which is exactly why I regarded it pretty much clearing even this bar. On Windows at least, you can only alter display scaling in 25% increments (this is also why application designers are requested to only feature display elements with pixel dimensions that are cleanly divisible by 4), and so the closest fit for this laptop's PPI will be exactly the 200% preset option.
Using a lower preset than this is trading PPI for screen real estate. I don't think that's reasonable to introduce into the equation here. Yes, you match the relative size of display elements by virtue of (potentially!) being closer to the screen, but in turn you put more of the screen into your periphery, just like with a monitor or a TV. I don't think that's a fair comparison at all. An immersive distance (40° hfov) for this display is at 37.1 cm (a foot and a bit) - I think that's about as close as one gets to their laptops typically already. This is pretty much the same field of view you'd ideally have at your monitor and TV too, so either you use this same preset on all of them, or we're not comparing apples to apples. Or you just really like to get closer to your laptop specifically, I suppose.
There's PPI and then there's PPD. If they want more PPD (which is what's field of view and thus viewing distance and display size dependent), that's fine, but then it's not PPI they should be complaining about.
This might sound like a nitpick but I really don't mean it to be. These are proper well defined concepts and terms, so let's use them.
I wasn't thinking about the difference between PPI and PPD, so thanks for the clarification.
The bottom line is that I work with text (source code) all day long and I would rather read from a display with laser printer quality than one where I can see the pixels like an old dot matrix printer. Some displays are getting close to 300 DPI which is like a laser printer from 35 years ago.
I can definitely appreciate that. I just think it's important that people argue the right thing. It provides insight to the variables and mechanisms at play, and avoids people falsely giving rhetorical checkmates to each other, like I kind of did to you.
The brief version is that if someone has a screen real estate concern, they need to look for the PPI, but if they have a visual quality concern, they need to look for the PPD.
Maybe it will be elucidating if I describe a scenario where you will have low PPI but high PPD at the same time.
Consider a 48" 4K TV (where 4K is really just UHD, so 3840x2160). Such a display will have 91.79 PPI of pixel density, which is below even standard PPI (that being 96 PPI, as mentioned).
Despite this, the visual quality will be generally excellent: at the fairly typical and widely recommended 40° degree horizontal field of view, you're looking at 3840 / 40 = 96 PPD, well in excess of the original Retina standard (60 PPD), which is really just the 20/20 visual acuity measure. Hope this is insightful.
But nobody knows what baseline PPD is (47) and you can't actually specify a laptop screen in PPD, you can only specify it in PPI. So I think it's reasonable and maybe even preferable to use PPI here.
I can understanding finding it reasonable, it's just not getting at the heart of the problem.
It also introduces an element of uncertainty: as you say, you can't specify a laptop screen's PPD since that's dependent on viewing distance. But that's exactly the problem: it's dependent on viewing distance. Some people hunch over and look at their laptops up close and personal, others have it on a stand at a reasonable height and distance. To use PPI is to intentionally mask over this uncertainty, and start using ballpark measures people may or may not agree with without knowing.
To put it in context, for this display, "Retina resolution" (60 PPD), i.e. the 20/20 visual acuity threshold, is passed when viewed from 47.09 cm (18.54 inches, so basically a feet and a half). I don't know about you, but I think this is a very reasonable distance to view your laptop from, even if it's just 12.2" in diagonal. It corresponds to a horizontal field of view of 32°.
You could say it masks over the uncertainty in some ways, but it doesn't introduce that uncertainty. Asking for a laptop with 100PPD doesn't even make sense.
> Asking for a laptop with 100PPD doesn't even make sense.
Won't deny, since again, PPD depends on your field of view.
Yes, if you shop for "resolution and diagonal size", you may as well shop for PPI directly. This just doesn't generalize to displays overall (see my other comment with a TV example), as it's not actually the right variable. Wrong method, "right" result.
> The threshold for sharp edges is much finer, and the things we put on computer displays have a lot of sharp edges.
And the cell density is even finer. It was merely an example using a known reference value that lots of people would find excellent; I didn't mean to argue that it's the be-all end-all of vision. It's just 20/20.
PPI doesn't generalize across different types of display but it works pretty well within a category of monitor, laptop, tablet, phone. For TV you probably just assume it's 4K and figure out the size you like.
It's wrong but it's wrong in a way that causes minimal trouble and there's no better option. And if you add viewing distance explicitly, PPI+distance isn't meaningfully worse than PPD+distance, and people will understand PPI+distance better.
Eh, I suppose. Just the criteria of "is it hidpi? yes/no" readily mislead GP for example (i.e. it definitely is, just still "not hidpi enough"), so I felt it would be helpful if the mechanism at play was clarified. Maybe I came off too strong though. Felt it would be clearer to use the correct variable at least, than to try and relativize PPI.
I guess, but even without measuring pixel inches/degrees it feels clearly wrong to me to say that proper 1x on a 12 inch laptop screen is only 960x600. 1280x720 or 1280x800 makes more sense to me.
Windows' "real fractional scaling" gives me clipped window borders, maximized windows bleeding onto other screens, and fuzzy-looking applications. I'm curious if Apple's downsampling method works better, because I am not impressed with Microsoft's method.
Yes, it does. It always renders internally at 2x which means that's all applications have to support. Then it downsamples the final framebuffer to the resolution of the display.
I think the parent comment is referring to its parent's question "Is it unreasonable to think Framework should be able to make a laptop competitive with the 5 years old MacBook Air M1?"
That the Framework 12 is not extremely lagging behind the M4 (subjective comparison) might lead one to believe that it would be competitive with an five year old M1 Air. Taking a quick look at "Cinebench R23" from 2020 [0], Macbook Air M1 comes in at 1,520 and 7,804, which compares favorably to 2025's "Cinebench R23" in which the Framework 12's i5-1334U scores 1,474 and 4,644.
The answer is it isn't competitive performance-wise. Given the M1 seems to have some native Linux support through Ashai, the Framework's advantages over the 5 year old MBA M1 seem to be user accessible hardware changes, touchscreen and longer hinge throw.
They didn't describe the full specs of their test rigs (that I saw) but a similarly spec'd Macbook Air is going to get better battery life than the equivalent Framework 12 or 13 based on the 10 hours they quoted for the 12. (The 13 gets even less). And saying that the best possible CPU framework offers in a 13 inch format beats the consumer line of Macbooks.. sometimes.. you would really need to like/need Linux. At which point, get the cheapest Macbook Air M4 you can and then just use the money you save to get a decent NUC.
There are many different methods through which one can develop against/on Linux. For example, I have a pretty low spec'd Macbook Air and several different test machines at home that I do remote development against. I prefer a low-heat, high battery life, good performing machine like the Air over a power hungry, loud, and constantly overheating workstation. But, those are my preferences -- some people want to have a single interface through which they do all their work, and the most powerful Linux laptop money can buy. If that's the case, Framework is great!
Exactly that is what I think, and I do think it is just not possible.
I’m searching for a new laptop, I want unix, so either linux or macos. I was looking at framework, system76, tuxedo and slimbooks, and mac air. I want an ANSI keyboard, which seems an oddity in Europe (there is English iso, which viscerally hate)
If you want thunderbolt ports, and some good specs, mac air is cheaper. And I’ve heard with arm processors you can tun linux at almost native speeds… I’m almost decided for Mac Air…
If somebody wants to add something to make me change my mind, you are more than welcome.
BTW I’m replacing a 2016 Macbook pro, which was buggy as hell, and I learned to really hate it. Also I’m not a fan of MacOs… but !4$ I cannot beat it.
Lenovo X9 Aura is pretty great. 80 Wh battery which gives you 6-10 hours of usage, 15’’ 120 Hz 3k OLED screen, new 3 nm Intel CPUs. Only half as fast as my M4 but less than one third the price, with an upgradable SSD and a customer-replaceable battery. My only gripes are the soldered 32 GB of RAM and that they only put one USB C connector on each side, otherwise a tremendously good machine for that price. I think it has a fan, haven’t noticed it yet though.
And M1 laptops are what about three years from the vintage list? They'll be e-waste at the end of this decade even while other laptops fail to match it.
It's lifespan is practically defined by how long it gets security updates after Apple obsoletes it, and your ability to install other operating systems when that ends - there is only Asahi Linux, and Asahi is still figuring out M1 support.
"Repairable" is a bit of a fool's errand. It really hinges on availability of spare parts, supply chain, etc. They will never sell enough of this niche product to nerds to make that a long-term reality.
An old MBP is far more repairable because so many were made there will never be a shortage of parts on eBay.
While an emphasis on repairability is noble, the false prophet of brick-like pluggable USB modules ain't it.
The newest Apple laptops all have easily replaceable ports that do not require replacing the logic board, so that novelty is even more useless.
I'm far more likely to buy a RAM stick off the shelf and install it in a Framework than I am to desolder the RAM from a Macbook.
Similarly, if I spill orange juice on a Framework, I can just buy a new keyboard and install it in a minute. If it were a Macbook, I'd probably throw away the whole thing, since I'd have to disassemble all of it to get to the keyboard, and it would take me hours, if I even managed to not break something.
So, "Macbooks are more repairable than Frameworks" is quite the take.
Or, upon spilling the juice, realize you can get a Surface Go on sale at Walmart (which this seems to be a clone of) for a bit more than a replacement keyboard and your time (which is way more than a minute) and toss it in the trash anyway.
It really doesn't seem like you're trying to engage constructively here.
Framework sells keyboards for the Framework 13 for ~$30. I can find a Surface Go on sale for as low as $500.
No, I don't think anyone's going to throw out a $500-$1000 device because it needs a $30 part and maybe 15 minutes of work (steps here: https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Framework+Laptop+12+Input+Cover...) and they could instead replace their laptop with a tablet for a mere $470 more.
> It really doesn't seem like you're trying to engage constructively here.
So I'm not allowed to disagree? For the record: I think the Framework laptop, while a noble cause, is a foolish endeavor as executed and they will be out of business in 5 years.
I'm assuming you've stocked spare parts because by the time you need a new keyboard, there is a chance they will be out of production (or out of business) and those parts, now rare, will be fetching $100s on eBay.
>"Repairable" is a bit of a fool's errand. It really hinges on availability of spare parts, supply chain, etc. They will never sell enough of this niche product to nerds to make that a long-term reality.
I don't think that's the case - there are plenty of people who realise that eWaste is a problem, and I've lost count of the number of times I've been asked why a laptop can't just have a "new CPU" fitted to speed it up when everything else works. In reality this means a new system board, but Framework does this.
>An old MBP is far more repairable because so many were made there will never be a shortage of parts on eBay.
That's not comparing like with like. I've done a -lot- of fixing of old (2012-era) macbooks and secondhand parts are always a crap shoot. Plus there are lots of minor changes between otherwise identical-looking parts which mean they don't fit (such as the higher-DPI screen connector between 2011 and 2012 for otherwise identical-looking parts which are indistinguishable until it doesn't quite fit.
>While an emphasis on repairability is noble, the false prophet of brick-like pluggable USB modules ain't it.
That's adaptability and means you can get the IO you need. The computer could be entirely non-repairable and have this, or it could be framework where everything is available brand new as a spare part if you need it.
>The newest Apple laptops all have easily replaceable ports that do not require replacing the logic board, so that novelty is even more useless.
I think you might be misinformed here. Lots of stuff is now serial locked and won't work even if you swap it over. And that's not counting some of the terrible low-level engineering stuff which people like Louis Rossman highlight (such as placement of higher-voltage lines right next to direct-to-cpu lines in display connectors). And I'm sure you know about the simple voltage controller that fails that Apple won't allow the original supplier to sell to anyone else.
Even replacing the battery in my 2022 MBP (which I'm using now and absolutely love) would be a trial compared to the framework. One of the USB ports has always been dicky and I've just left it as is precisely because this is a can of worms.
Watch some dosdude1 repair videos of examples of how much work and skill is needed to do something such as upgrade the storage in a MBP/Air. And compare this to the framework. They are several orders of magnitude different in terms of skill level.
If you go to the Framework website you can still find spare parts for their first gen laptops, because one thing they did is make sure that the latest gen parts are still compatible with their first gen.
Also, on a Mac if the memory or storage dies, you need to replace the whole motherboard, that isn't true in a Framework laptop. You can't even say that those parts will be difficult to get in the future because they're off the shelf parts.
I will not even start on the fact that replacing other parts that commonly break in a laptop like the screen or the keyboard are hard to do in a MacBook (needs to disassemble almost the whole laptop) vs doing it in Framework that is much easier and probably takes 20 minutes even without experience.
FrameWork is not openly hostile towards right-to-repair, and do not actively sabotage repair efforts. Try calling Apple and ask for spare parts or circuit diagrams. Anything you find is either leaked, cloned/copied or trash-picked. It barely qualifies as spare parts.
One of my mentors had the great sentence: "I dont buy laptops- they suck, because they are tailored to transport. I buy desktops- and connect them via internet to flat transportable terminals. And desktops can be upgraded, merged, reused and send to the closet as server at the EOL-"
And he was kind of right. For almost all purposes, even for gaming in a way- a remote desktop is kind of superior. Yes, stadia is dead- but for everything else- this shall do.
One could argue, that the "reusability" of the laptopbricks, in a desktop-server blade like structure is the biggest argument for the framework as a laptop though.
You are absolutely right- forgive me, im kind of out of touch with the whole steam revolutionizing gaming on linux.
I think the comment about the "transporttax" on hardware, ergonomic and cooling still holds up though even in a world where things like steam-deck exist.
Even more so, if you may have lightweight ar-headsets one day, with a glorified cellphone + mouse and keyboard.
I am of the same mind. Desktop for heavy lifting and a mid-range Chromebook (technically a chrultrabook now) for browsing w/ a lightweight yet modern feel.
I do think the plunge to leveraging a desktop/server across devices does require an understanding of ssh/rdp and tailscale/reverse proxies though, which is why it isn't as popular as it could be.
I've been using my framework 13 for a while now and it's been a great laptop - part of what pushed me over was their mission of making devices lives longer, my hope is and was that maybe the vote of confidence they survive long enough to build up to a model the Apple fans here would want or at least not complain about.
I'm not sure that will ever happen. I own a Framework 16 (and am pretty happy with it), because I value repairability a lot. But the level of repairability and modularity that Framework is targeting comes with tradeoffs. This is simply the reality. Size, build quality/sturdiness, thermals, and more are going to take a hit when you have the extreme level of repairability and modularity. Framework laptops are probably never going to be the right solution for every kind of customer. And Macs are probably close the furthest thing on the opposite of the spectrum. Every choice is designed to tweak the design, aesthetics, battery life, etc. almost always at the expense of repairability. Someone who likes the part of the pareto frontier that Macs operate on is almost definitionally never going to be a Framework fan.
For me, they are great, and I plan to continue to support them. But not everyone is interested in the tradeoffs inherent in their philosophy, and that's also fine.
How has the build quality stood up so far? My concern with these has always been that laptops do generally get banged up a bit when travelling around, and if half of it is snap fit and designed to detach instead of being all glued together like typically, then it has a higher likelihood of falling apart when you really don't want it to.
Might still be worth it if they keep producing spare parts for a decade or more, every single time my laptop's battery goes dead it's a after the manufacturer has stopped production of that model entirely and it becomes impossible to buy a new one lol.
As much as I like the ideals Framework is espousing, I'm seriously considering just making a folding shell for a Raspberry Pi 5 (maybe Pi 500) and a second gen Wacom One 13 (stylus w/ touch screen) and a battery.
We saw that there was a gap in the market for laptops that treat Linux as a first-class OS target, and we design our products with that audience in mind. That there are other people in the world who don't need Linux is totally ok.
My kid is a bit young, but this is the laptop he'll be getting in a year or so to replace the garbage Chromebook he's currently using (which has steadily gotten flakier since purchase).
First class Linux support is requirement #1; Framework's repairability on top of that means there's not even anything else to consider. It will be the third Framework in our house. My wife is happily using the second, having easily switched to Ubuntu from Windows 10(?) when the video cable connection in her Dell XPS flaked out and made the screen useless.
The market doesn't profitably support running desktop Linux on a laptop outside of a business/development setting, in which case it's the IT department buying the laptop and I don't get to choose. Which means "this Dell or this Thinkpad". Chromebooks don't count because they are just Google data-hoovering appliances not real laptops.
I'd be a lot more into Framework if they had come out with a single other GPU option than the Radeon 7700S that's been the only GPU option available since the brands launch. The 7800M and 7900M have both been out over a year or more, and Framework has made zero mention of when or even if those models would ever be available as upgrades for Framework devices. I don't even really play games, but for my video editing workloads, more GPU cores and VRAM make a world of difference, and the RTX 3070 level of performance out of the RX7700s that's thus far the only GPU option for Framework devices just doesn't cut it. There's just no way I'm spending $2500+ USD for a laptop that has worse performance than devices costing half as much at this point.
They just aren't really delivering on the promise of "Future upgradeability" in any kind of meaningful way so far, and I just can't see the value in purchasing what's undeniably a wildly overpriced machine based on promises that have yet to be delivered upon. They've had plenty of time to communicate when, or even if, new GPUs are coming, yet there's been absolute radio silence from the on this front.
Personally I think they need to focus more on actually delivering on the fundamental promise of the brand, that being future upgradeability, than on releasing new devices, as until they can demonstrate they are committed to delivering on their promises, I won't be buying any of their devices.
> The Core i5 version of the Laptop 12 lasted around 10 hours in the PCMark Modern Office battery life test, which isn't stunning but is a step up from what the fully specced versions of the Framework Laptop 13 can offer. It will be just fine for a long flight or a full day of work or school.
This is the key. Framework 12 is a model aimed at schools and corporations. I wouldn't be surprised to see a ChromeOS version of it appear for schools. Which is great if they can tap into that market.
I wish them the best, but if they can't compete with a MacBook Air on price despite Apple's huge profit margins, then maybe it's just not meant to be. People used to talk about paying the "Apple tax," but how many people are willing to pay the "Linux tax?" Mac OS is a similar Unix with the usual tools, and you can rent a VPS if you need Linux on an x86 sometimes. An MBA with an M4 will last 5+ years with a battery swap, and still probably perform better than whatever Framework releases in 2030.
I guess I'm not the target customer for this. I can see myself tinkering with a desktop, but I'd rather just have a laptop that runs fast and long enough, and stands up to abuse for 3-5 years.
> "A sturdy, thoughtful, cute design that just can't compete in its price range."
People will pay untold thousands for a Mac, but God forbid when a PC manufacturer charges more than $599 for a laptop. If you're whining about the price, Framework isn't made for you. Go buy that Acer that you really want. The Framework is Sam Vimes' expensive boots that are made to last[1], and I've happily paid in full to get a pair.
> People will pay untold thousands for a Mac, but God forbid when a PC manufacturer charges more than $599 for a laptop.
The article compares the FL12 to laptops of the same price range, including other framework laptops to note that it falls short.
The FL12 has worse performances and battery life than an M1 Air, for more than an M4.
The point of the article is that the 12 should either be a lot less expensive or it should be a lot better. It's not whatever nonsense you're dreaming of.
The core philosophy of Framework is repairability and modularity. Yes, you are paying extra for those things, and so people who do not value them, should probably not buy Framework. These comments are full of the old cliche of judging a fish in a tree climbing contest.
Repairabilty and modularity come with tradeoffs. Not everyone is going to value those tradeoffs and therefore shouldn't buy a laptop where those are the priority. But some people do value those things, and telling them to "get a MacBook" is just silly.
You can repair a Mac by handing it (and possibly your wallet) to Apple and letting them replace entire large subsystems to remedy the issue and pair the new parts. A few years back (pre-Apple Silicon) I got a new top case, keyboard, battery, and trackpad because the button in the trackpad had failed. Pretty good deal on a laptop that was nearly 3 years old, in fairness.
To repair (or upgrade) a Framework, you buy the part and install it. That's worth something to me!
Incidentally, I also have a last-gen ThinkPad P14s Gen 5 AMD and it's a flimsy POS. Already needed a new motherboard and battery and spent three weeks sitting at the service center while they rounded up the parts. Wish I'd bought another Framework 13.
I really don't understand this argument about price. It seems extremely competitive on price to me. Am I crazy or am I really seeing 48 GB and 2 TB for $1500? For $1500 you get a 16 GB 512 GB macbook air.
This is a key part of our product value prop. Our memory and storage upgrade pricing is much lower than most other laptop makers, and you can find your own on the open market for even less. Other laptop makers can preserve their overall margin by overcharging on those upgrades, which lets them price their base SKUs more aggressively. We accepted the tradeoff of not gouging on upgrades.
In terms of phones, I largely disagree with the conventional wisdom that repairable, upgradeable, Androids are better for the environment, more cost effective for the user, etc than iPhones. It's true you can't upgrade the battery yourself, but that's a different quality from whether the battery can be upgraded. And iPhones have a much higher resale value, so they're going to end up in landfills more slowly. I personally bought and use a used iPhone 11 that came with a replaced battery, and it's great! Old iPhones have a long useful life after trade in and resale, even if people buying new models here don't see it.
So I'd love to know how much this is the case for laptops like these as well.
For example, "repairable" is useful to the extent that repairs actually need to happen, and it seems to mean "self" repairable, though again that's a different dimension from whether a service center can do it. And whether you need self repairable is not a thing about longevity, environmental impact (since repair centers suffice for that), but rather convenience and possibly price. But price isn't the factor here because the thing is so damn expensive to begin with.
"Upgradeable" is useful if you want to.... improve a piece of it but not the chassis? Screen? How necessary is this? Do people really do that? I've been happy to use a laptop for half a decade or more, until finally upgrading everything all at once.
> It's true you can't upgrade the battery yourself, but that's a different quality from whether the battery can be upgraded.
And how many people end up upgrading the battery is yet another quality. I would suspect a small fraction of phones with upgradeable batteries actually gets battery upgrades. Having upgradeable internal components generally correlate strongly with recyclability... however once again, in my pessimistic estimation, only a small percentage of recycling actually amounts to anything.
I don't know, my guess would be that the majority of iPhones have their batteries upgraded. Apple currently still gives you money for trading in back to an iPhone 8! They probably upgrade the battery and put it up for sale in the developing world, I would guess.
I only paid $250 for my used iPhone 11, and that's not even as old as they go.
I imagine most of HN is shielded from the flourishing secondary market of old phones because they can easily afford the latest and greatest (counting even a couple years back). But at least where I live in Indiana, there's a pretty thriving ecosystem of yard sales and reuse, and people are not just going to simply throw away a functioning phone. An iPhone that's almost a decade old still has value, and there are repair shops that could put a new battery in it to keep it going for a little while yet.
If you don't think batteries get upgraded, what do you think happens? Do people really just throw their phones in the garbage?
It doesn't just mean self-repairable; you could still go in to a service center. It just wouldn't have to be an Apple approved one. And would be a lot cheaper due to the reduced costs of labor, and likely increase of third-party parts, particularly if they become modular / standardized. I had a friend who'd replace phone screens and batteries, but at some point it was no longer worth the hassle.
I also feel like Android phones stop getting OS updates (including security fixes) much faster than iPhones. You can root them and install a newer version of Android, I guess, but the vast majority of people won't do that.
Also, I haven't been on Android in a few years, so maybe I'm wrong and this isn't a problem anymore, but it certainly was in the past.
I like keyboards with those half-height keys. I don't use arrow keys much, so it's nice that they don't take up so much space that other parts must be compromised.
I really don't like this design though where the left/right keys are full size (or other designs where they put things like page up/down buttons above the left and right buttons). I don't mind that the arrow keys are a squished inverted T shape, but I really do think they should get to be an inverted T shape. When I do want to use arrow keys, I want to be able to easily locate them by touch without looking down at the keyboard.
Probably my preference over there is half-height inverted T, with just gaps above left and right: I'm happy to do Fn for page up/page down/home/end, and find this is the easiest layout to use by touch. Of course full-height is good too, but only if all four directions are going to be full height.
Ah, so in two rows
pg up, up arrow, pg down
left arrow, down arrow, right arrow
I do like that layout, I have an old Dell Precision like that (though even its small keycaps are pretty big). My Framework 13 has the funny full-size left and right on either side of half-height up/down, which is kind of annoying, but you can get used to it, mostly.
The half-height keys are fine. I've used HP machines w/ them for years and gotten used to them.
Sharing the arrows w/ Home/End is awful, though. I don't know how anybody could live with having to use a modifier key to get those. I already combine modifiers with Home/End a ton. Having to add 3rd modifier (Ctrl-Shift-Fn-Left) to get "select from here to the top/bottom" sounds like painful hand gymnastics.
I can't tell you how much I need TKL. I'm so tired of seeing numpads and not navigation keys. Literally all day long I'm using shift-home, ctl-shift-end, ctl-arrow, ctl-shift-arrow, pretty much any combination. I need these keys.
Define "wrong"? Ctrl-Fn-Super-Alt has been used for ages by everyone except IBM/Lenovo and Apple[1], and (for what it's worth) Fn left of Ctrl is explicitly not recommended by ISO[2].
There aren't many laptops with Control key in the correct spelling and placement like how and where it is on HHKB, even most MacBooks except JIS builds get it wrong.
Lenovo seems to be joining the rest of the world with Ctrl | Fn, based on the new ThinkPad I was issued at work a few weeks ago. I know the older Fn | Ctrl systems had a BIOS option to swap them, but I'm not sure if the new ones still have that.
On keyboards with a sane layout, the ctrl key can be pressed with the meat of your hand rather than one of the fingers. This is harder on a laptop keyboard than it is with a proper desktop keyboard, but is still possible.
... as long as the keyboard has the proper layout, with ctrl in the far bottom left. One thing that Apple gets wrong and this keyboard gets right.
What do you all use for a modern web development machine. 16GB of ram is no longer enough, I will soon upgrade to a new MBA with 32GB, but I still fear that won't be enough. I was looking at the latest framework and you can get it with 96GB of ram for $2k, that's $3600-$3800 for a mac and it's a much larger mac than I want. A quick scan of Dell and Lenovo non workstation class laptops didn't show any with more than 32GB.
I've never got upvotes reciting this but won't stop doing: there's right amount of sluggishness that the majority wants, and both software bloat and debloat happens until it hits honey-like sublime-to-some lagging is achieved. Only software and technologies that are _buttery_ smooth, not ethanoly smooth, will survive, and nothing will ever solve the software sluggishness that frustrates some, which unfortunately include myself.
The Thinkpad P15 workstation line of laptops support 128gb of memory. I've seen refurbished gen 1 at around 600 USD and 128gb of ram (has 4 slots) is another 250 USD on top. (Give or take, I'm converting from euros, and the US market doesn't VAT so it should be cheaper than that)
No datasets. Most of the size is just apt packages and tools bundled into the layers. Around 5GB are "useful" things, and another 15GB are a couple of arguably justified tarballs (only one of which is needed).
Where "value" is purely monetary, I think that pretty succinctly sums up my experience/views on the Framework product line.
They make good laptops, but you can generally get more for fewer dollars. If you're shopping on price, you can probably just skip right over their entire product line.
That doesn't mean that their offering doesn't have value. It has value has a vote with your wallet for sustainable, repairable products. It has value as an easily repairable and customizable laptop. It has value in some esoteric use cases it can be customized into (e.g., 4xM.2 NVME slots).
Would love to see some reviews just get this out of the way up front and spend more words on the product itself.
Personally, I'm glad there's a company out there serving a market niche besides being the lowest cost, most value-engineered product. I don't mind paying a bit extra for that in exchange for the other value I get out of it.
(And all that said--at the high end specs their prices get a fair bit more competitive. The price to upgrade a laptop from 16GB -> 128GB on Dell's site is _more than an entire FW16 w/ Ryzen 9 + 96GB RAM_.)
Framework has released fairly consistent upgrades for the Framework 13, but there's no guarantee that they will continue to do so, will release upgrades for the Framework 16, etc.
I think in a few years when they've been in business for closer to a decade than not and released updates across the whole product line, it'd be pretty hard for anyone to make an argument that that _shouldn't_ be factored in.
One could even allow other manufacturers to offer parts and do certification for a fee.
It should be possible to push down prices and make update paths more appealing.
https://community.frame.work/t/community-market-category/522...
If they stop delivering, ill not buy their next thing, and ill be sad.
> the Laptop 12 can only fit a single DDR5 RAM slot, which reduces memory bandwidth and limits your RAM capacity to 48GB
According to this post from a Framework team member, a single 64GB SODIMM will work too and just didn't exist yet at the time Intel wrote the 13th Gen spec, so they only advertize 48GB: https://community.frame.work/t/64gb-ram-for-framework-12-sin...
> Old, slow chip isn't really suitable for light gaming
I wish the reviewer would specify what phrases like “light gaming” mean to them. My FW12 is in a later batch that won't ship for a few more months, but I'm coming from a ThinkPad T470s where I already do “light gaming” (mostly TBoI Repentence and Team Fortress 2 with mastercomfig medium-low). I can't imagine the 13th Gen graphics would be worse in that regard than my old laptop's 7th Gen.
Not having Thunderbolt seemed like kind of a bummer to me too, but then again my T470s has it and I can't think of a single time I ever actually used it for anything. I tried one of those external GPU enclosures once, and it was kinda cool just to see that such a thing was possible, but I've never been one to want to tether a laptop with a thicc cable lol
Wait, are 64GB DDR5 SODIMMs finally out? I’ve been monitoring that for ages but almost lost hope.
https://pcpartpicker.com/products/memory/#ff=ddr5_sodimm&Z=6...
I wouldn’t expect parity with an M4 machine, but it doesn’t seem unreasonable to think they should be competitive with the much older M1.
I have the same complaint with Lenovo (I usually buy ThinkPads). Where are the fast, fanless, hidpi, long battery life laptops?
Kind of unreasonable. I mean which Intel or AMD cpu can be run fanless and perform well?
On the topic of displays, my understanding is that they "kind of use what they can get". That's how there can be a 13 display with rounded corners in a straight edge case.
What you're asking are the things I'm looking for, though still every time I go into their forum I see enough thermal, fan noise issues and AMD firmware bugs, that I'm still on the fence on buying one.
I wish them luck with the 12, for me sounds like a model for "true believers" because it doesn't seem to compete well enough with run of the mill chromebooks (or an Air) that are more established in the students segment.
What that really determines is multi-thread performance. Fanless laptop that can dissipate the power of one core? No problem. Fanless laptop that can dissipate the power of all the cores? For that you have to lower the clock speed quite a bit. Which is why you see AMD chips on older TSMC process nodes getting better multithread performance than Apple's fanless ones.
The cost/benefit ratio of adding a fan is extremely attractive. The alternative way of doing it is to add more cores. If you have 8 fanless cores at 2 GHz, how do you improve multi-thread performance by 50%? Option one, clock them at 3 GHz, but now you need a fan; cost of fan ~$5. Option two, get 16 cores and cap them at 1.5 GHz to fit in the same power envelope, but now you need twice as much silicon, cost of twice as many cores $500+.
The number of people who pick the second option given that trade off is so small that hardly anybody even bothers to offer it.
Apple continues to do it because a) then they get to claim "see, they can't do this?" even when hardly anybody chooses that given the option, and b) then if you actually want the higher performance one from them, you're paying hundreds of dollars extra for more cores instead of $5 extra for the same one but with a fan in it.
Depends on your metric. A fan makes noise, attracts dirt that needs cleaning, needs more space ...
I really love my fanless devices, even though they never will reach the speed of activly cooled ones.
https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/cpu_benchmark-cpu_performance_...
What do we see at the top of this chart? TSMC 3nm (M3/M4), followed by TSMC 4nm (Ryzen 7000U/8000U), TSMC 5nm (M1/M2), TSMC 5nm/6nm mixed (Ryzen 7000H), and then finally we find something made on an Intel process node instead of TSMC.
The efficiency has more to do with the process node than which architecture it is.
It's too bad they don't have Epyc on that chart. Epyc 9845 is on TSMC N3E and that thing is running cores at a >2GHz base clock at less than 2.5W per core.
The problem is that manufacturers don't put much thought into building good cooling systems.
Lenovo, for instance, has so many SKUs that it's really random. A few are great, but some sound like a hairdyer or rev up too aggressively.
Apple gets this. By having a small product line, they usually polish all those details.
I don't follow CPU news and have no idea what lake they're at now, but I'd be surprised if Intel and AMD didn't have a chip competitive with an M1 by now.
When I google "fanless amd intel laptop cpu" I find this old thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31142209 which does suggest some fanless machines exist. That's from 3 years ago so surely there are even more options today, no?
You'll have to wait for Framework to offer a Snapdragon instead of Intel/AMD but they haven't announced anything yet.
Intel's integrated graphics aren't as good, but they are similar in terms of power consumption & CPU performance.
Compared to M4, well, that's a different beast entirely. I'm not sure what's the latest there.
It pretty much has that though? 1920x1200 at 12.2" is 185.59 PPI. Standard DPI (PPI) is 96. HiDPI to my knowledge isn't properly defined, but the usual convention is either double that or just more than that - the latter criteria this display definitely clears, and the former (192 PPI) is super super close, to the extent that I'd call it cleared for sure.
It's pretty hard to not clear at least the latter criteria on a laptop anyways. You'd see that on 720p and 768p units from like a decade or two ago.
186ppi is designed for 1.5×, an uncomfortable space that makes perfection difficult-to-impossible, yet seems to have become unreasonably popular, given how poorly everything but Windows tends to handle it. (Microsoft have always had real fractional scaling; Apple doesn’t support it at all, downsampling; X11 is a total mess; Wayland is finally getting decent fractional scaling.)
1.5x looks ok mostly (though fractional pixels can cause issues in a few circumstances), but across platforms nothing is handled as well as 2x, 3x, etc is. I have a 1.5x laptop and wish it were either 1x or 2x.
Using a lower preset than this is trading PPI for screen real estate. I don't think that's reasonable to introduce into the equation here. Yes, you match the relative size of display elements by virtue of (potentially!) being closer to the screen, but in turn you put more of the screen into your periphery, just like with a monitor or a TV. I don't think that's a fair comparison at all. An immersive distance (40° hfov) for this display is at 37.1 cm (a foot and a bit) - I think that's about as close as one gets to their laptops typically already. This is pretty much the same field of view you'd ideally have at your monitor and TV too, so either you use this same preset on all of them, or we're not comparing apples to apples. Or you just really like to get closer to your laptop specifically, I suppose.
This might sound like a nitpick but I really don't mean it to be. These are proper well defined concepts and terms, so let's use them.
The bottom line is that I work with text (source code) all day long and I would rather read from a display with laser printer quality than one where I can see the pixels like an old dot matrix printer. Some displays are getting close to 300 DPI which is like a laser printer from 35 years ago.
The brief version is that if someone has a screen real estate concern, they need to look for the PPI, but if they have a visual quality concern, they need to look for the PPD.
Maybe it will be elucidating if I describe a scenario where you will have low PPI but high PPD at the same time.
Consider a 48" 4K TV (where 4K is really just UHD, so 3840x2160). Such a display will have 91.79 PPI of pixel density, which is below even standard PPI (that being 96 PPI, as mentioned).
Despite this, the visual quality will be generally excellent: at the fairly typical and widely recommended 40° degree horizontal field of view, you're looking at 3840 / 40 = 96 PPD, well in excess of the original Retina standard (60 PPD), which is really just the 20/20 visual acuity measure. Hope this is insightful.
It also introduces an element of uncertainty: as you say, you can't specify a laptop screen's PPD since that's dependent on viewing distance. But that's exactly the problem: it's dependent on viewing distance. Some people hunch over and look at their laptops up close and personal, others have it on a stand at a reasonable height and distance. To use PPI is to intentionally mask over this uncertainty, and start using ballpark measures people may or may not agree with without knowing.
To put it in context, for this display, "Retina resolution" (60 PPD), i.e. the 20/20 visual acuity threshold, is passed when viewed from 47.09 cm (18.54 inches, so basically a feet and a half). I don't know about you, but I think this is a very reasonable distance to view your laptop from, even if it's just 12.2" in diagonal. It corresponds to a horizontal field of view of 32°.
> the 20/20 visual acuity threshold
The acuity threshold for random blobs of light.
The threshold for sharp edges is much finer, and the things we put on computer displays have a lot of sharp edges. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperacuity
Won't deny, since again, PPD depends on your field of view.
Yes, if you shop for "resolution and diagonal size", you may as well shop for PPI directly. This just doesn't generalize to displays overall (see my other comment with a TV example), as it's not actually the right variable. Wrong method, "right" result.
> The threshold for sharp edges is much finer, and the things we put on computer displays have a lot of sharp edges.
And the cell density is even finer. It was merely an example using a known reference value that lots of people would find excellent; I didn't mean to argue that it's the be-all end-all of vision. It's just 20/20.
It's wrong but it's wrong in a way that causes minimal trouble and there's no better option. And if you add viewing distance explicitly, PPI+distance isn't meaningfully worse than PPD+distance, and people will understand PPI+distance better.
The article shows a few charts where a Framework laptop is faster than M4 Air both in single and multicore CPU benchmarks.
Their office suite benchmarks puts it at almost 10 hour battery.
See Framework 13 Ryzen AI 9 HX 370.
To me, being able to run native Linux alone is worth its weight in gold, even if it was slower.
Every single chart in the article showed the M4 MacBook Air beating the Framework 12 by a large margin.
I don't know what charts you were looking at.
That the Framework 12 is not extremely lagging behind the M4 (subjective comparison) might lead one to believe that it would be competitive with an five year old M1 Air. Taking a quick look at "Cinebench R23" from 2020 [0], Macbook Air M1 comes in at 1,520 and 7,804, which compares favorably to 2025's "Cinebench R23" in which the Framework 12's i5-1334U scores 1,474 and 4,644.
The answer is it isn't competitive performance-wise. Given the M1 seems to have some native Linux support through Ashai, the Framework's advantages over the 5 year old MBA M1 seem to be user accessible hardware changes, touchscreen and longer hinge throw.
0. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/11/hands-on-with-the-ap...
I’m searching for a new laptop, I want unix, so either linux or macos. I was looking at framework, system76, tuxedo and slimbooks, and mac air. I want an ANSI keyboard, which seems an oddity in Europe (there is English iso, which viscerally hate)
If you want thunderbolt ports, and some good specs, mac air is cheaper. And I’ve heard with arm processors you can tun linux at almost native speeds… I’m almost decided for Mac Air…
If somebody wants to add something to make me change my mind, you are more than welcome.
BTW I’m replacing a 2016 Macbook pro, which was buggy as hell, and I learned to really hate it. Also I’m not a fan of MacOs… but !4$ I cannot beat it.
And M1 laptops are what about three years from the vintage list? They'll be e-waste at the end of this decade even while other laptops fail to match it.
Does the Thinkpad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition not meet these requirements? (It does have a fan but runs fairly cool according to reviews.)
"Repairable" is a bit of a fool's errand. It really hinges on availability of spare parts, supply chain, etc. They will never sell enough of this niche product to nerds to make that a long-term reality.
An old MBP is far more repairable because so many were made there will never be a shortage of parts on eBay.
While an emphasis on repairability is noble, the false prophet of brick-like pluggable USB modules ain't it.
The newest Apple laptops all have easily replaceable ports that do not require replacing the logic board, so that novelty is even more useless.
Similarly, if I spill orange juice on a Framework, I can just buy a new keyboard and install it in a minute. If it were a Macbook, I'd probably throw away the whole thing, since I'd have to disassemble all of it to get to the keyboard, and it would take me hours, if I even managed to not break something.
So, "Macbooks are more repairable than Frameworks" is quite the take.
Or, upon spilling the juice, realize you can get a Surface Go on sale at Walmart (which this seems to be a clone of) for a bit more than a replacement keyboard and your time (which is way more than a minute) and toss it in the trash anyway.
Framework sells keyboards for the Framework 13 for ~$30. I can find a Surface Go on sale for as low as $500.
No, I don't think anyone's going to throw out a $500-$1000 device because it needs a $30 part and maybe 15 minutes of work (steps here: https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Framework+Laptop+12+Input+Cover...) and they could instead replace their laptop with a tablet for a mere $470 more.
So I'm not allowed to disagree? For the record: I think the Framework laptop, while a noble cause, is a foolish endeavor as executed and they will be out of business in 5 years.
I'm assuming you've stocked spare parts because by the time you need a new keyboard, there is a chance they will be out of production (or out of business) and those parts, now rare, will be fetching $100s on eBay.
Yes
I don't think that's the case - there are plenty of people who realise that eWaste is a problem, and I've lost count of the number of times I've been asked why a laptop can't just have a "new CPU" fitted to speed it up when everything else works. In reality this means a new system board, but Framework does this.
>An old MBP is far more repairable because so many were made there will never be a shortage of parts on eBay.
That's not comparing like with like. I've done a -lot- of fixing of old (2012-era) macbooks and secondhand parts are always a crap shoot. Plus there are lots of minor changes between otherwise identical-looking parts which mean they don't fit (such as the higher-DPI screen connector between 2011 and 2012 for otherwise identical-looking parts which are indistinguishable until it doesn't quite fit.
>While an emphasis on repairability is noble, the false prophet of brick-like pluggable USB modules ain't it.
That's adaptability and means you can get the IO you need. The computer could be entirely non-repairable and have this, or it could be framework where everything is available brand new as a spare part if you need it.
>The newest Apple laptops all have easily replaceable ports that do not require replacing the logic board, so that novelty is even more useless.
I think you might be misinformed here. Lots of stuff is now serial locked and won't work even if you swap it over. And that's not counting some of the terrible low-level engineering stuff which people like Louis Rossman highlight (such as placement of higher-voltage lines right next to direct-to-cpu lines in display connectors). And I'm sure you know about the simple voltage controller that fails that Apple won't allow the original supplier to sell to anyone else.
Even replacing the battery in my 2022 MBP (which I'm using now and absolutely love) would be a trial compared to the framework. One of the USB ports has always been dicky and I've just left it as is precisely because this is a can of worms.
Watch some dosdude1 repair videos of examples of how much work and skill is needed to do something such as upgrade the storage in a MBP/Air. And compare this to the framework. They are several orders of magnitude different in terms of skill level.
Also, on a Mac if the memory or storage dies, you need to replace the whole motherboard, that isn't true in a Framework laptop. You can't even say that those parts will be difficult to get in the future because they're off the shelf parts.
I will not even start on the fact that replacing other parts that commonly break in a laptop like the screen or the keyboard are hard to do in a MacBook (needs to disassemble almost the whole laptop) vs doing it in Framework that is much easier and probably takes 20 minutes even without experience.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/122003
One of my mentors had the great sentence: "I dont buy laptops- they suck, because they are tailored to transport. I buy desktops- and connect them via internet to flat transportable terminals. And desktops can be upgraded, merged, reused and send to the closet as server at the EOL-"
And he was kind of right. For almost all purposes, even for gaming in a way- a remote desktop is kind of superior. Yes, stadia is dead- but for everything else- this shall do.
I think the comment about the "transporttax" on hardware, ergonomic and cooling still holds up though even in a world where things like steam-deck exist.
Even more so, if you may have lightweight ar-headsets one day, with a glorified cellphone + mouse and keyboard.
I do think the plunge to leveraging a desktop/server across devices does require an understanding of ssh/rdp and tailscale/reverse proxies though, which is why it isn't as popular as it could be.
EDIT: Yes, it looks like matte is an option and they don't charge extra.
For me, they are great, and I plan to continue to support them. But not everyone is interested in the tradeoffs inherent in their philosophy, and that's also fine.
Might still be worth it if they keep producing spare parts for a decade or more, every single time my laptop's battery goes dead it's a after the manufacturer has stopped production of that model entirely and it becomes impossible to buy a new one lol.
The SD card is a big bottleneck on the Pi.
* https://asahilinux.org/docs/platform/feature-support/overvie...
First class Linux support is requirement #1; Framework's repairability on top of that means there's not even anything else to consider. It will be the third Framework in our house. My wife is happily using the second, having easily switched to Ubuntu from Windows 10(?) when the video cable connection in her Dell XPS flaked out and made the screen useless.
They just aren't really delivering on the promise of "Future upgradeability" in any kind of meaningful way so far, and I just can't see the value in purchasing what's undeniably a wildly overpriced machine based on promises that have yet to be delivered upon. They've had plenty of time to communicate when, or even if, new GPUs are coming, yet there's been absolute radio silence from the on this front.
Personally I think they need to focus more on actually delivering on the fundamental promise of the brand, that being future upgradeability, than on releasing new devices, as until they can demonstrate they are committed to delivering on their promises, I won't be buying any of their devices.
After reading everyone's comments about price I expected it would be much worse. I might consider it after my current laptop dies.
This is the key. Framework 12 is a model aimed at schools and corporations. I wouldn't be surprised to see a ChromeOS version of it appear for schools. Which is great if they can tap into that market.
I guess I'm not the target customer for this. I can see myself tinkering with a desktop, but I'd rather just have a laptop that runs fast and long enough, and stands up to abuse for 3-5 years.
People will pay untold thousands for a Mac, but God forbid when a PC manufacturer charges more than $599 for a laptop. If you're whining about the price, Framework isn't made for you. Go buy that Acer that you really want. The Framework is Sam Vimes' expensive boots that are made to last[1], and I've happily paid in full to get a pair.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory
The article compares the FL12 to laptops of the same price range, including other framework laptops to note that it falls short.
The FL12 has worse performances and battery life than an M1 Air, for more than an M4.
The point of the article is that the 12 should either be a lot less expensive or it should be a lot better. It's not whatever nonsense you're dreaming of.
Repairabilty and modularity come with tradeoffs. Not everyone is going to value those tradeoffs and therefore shouldn't buy a laptop where those are the priority. But some people do value those things, and telling them to "get a MacBook" is just silly.
To repair (or upgrade) a Framework, you buy the part and install it. That's worth something to me!
Incidentally, I also have a last-gen ThinkPad P14s Gen 5 AMD and it's a flimsy POS. Already needed a new motherboard and battery and spent three weeks sitting at the service center while they rounded up the parts. Wish I'd bought another Framework 13.
In terms of phones, I largely disagree with the conventional wisdom that repairable, upgradeable, Androids are better for the environment, more cost effective for the user, etc than iPhones. It's true you can't upgrade the battery yourself, but that's a different quality from whether the battery can be upgraded. And iPhones have a much higher resale value, so they're going to end up in landfills more slowly. I personally bought and use a used iPhone 11 that came with a replaced battery, and it's great! Old iPhones have a long useful life after trade in and resale, even if people buying new models here don't see it.
So I'd love to know how much this is the case for laptops like these as well.
For example, "repairable" is useful to the extent that repairs actually need to happen, and it seems to mean "self" repairable, though again that's a different dimension from whether a service center can do it. And whether you need self repairable is not a thing about longevity, environmental impact (since repair centers suffice for that), but rather convenience and possibly price. But price isn't the factor here because the thing is so damn expensive to begin with.
"Upgradeable" is useful if you want to.... improve a piece of it but not the chassis? Screen? How necessary is this? Do people really do that? I've been happy to use a laptop for half a decade or more, until finally upgrading everything all at once.
And how many people end up upgrading the battery is yet another quality. I would suspect a small fraction of phones with upgradeable batteries actually gets battery upgrades. Having upgradeable internal components generally correlate strongly with recyclability... however once again, in my pessimistic estimation, only a small percentage of recycling actually amounts to anything.
I only paid $250 for my used iPhone 11, and that's not even as old as they go.
I imagine most of HN is shielded from the flourishing secondary market of old phones because they can easily afford the latest and greatest (counting even a couple years back). But at least where I live in Indiana, there's a pretty thriving ecosystem of yard sales and reuse, and people are not just going to simply throw away a functioning phone. An iPhone that's almost a decade old still has value, and there are repair shops that could put a new battery in it to keep it going for a little while yet.
If you don't think batteries get upgraded, what do you think happens? Do people really just throw their phones in the garbage?
Also, I haven't been on Android in a few years, so maybe I'm wrong and this isn't a problem anymore, but it certainly was in the past.
I really don't like this design though where the left/right keys are full size (or other designs where they put things like page up/down buttons above the left and right buttons). I don't mind that the arrow keys are a squished inverted T shape, but I really do think they should get to be an inverted T shape. When I do want to use arrow keys, I want to be able to easily locate them by touch without looking down at the keyboard.
Sharing the arrows w/ Home/End is awful, though. I don't know how anybody could live with having to use a modifier key to get those. I already combine modifiers with Home/End a ton. Having to add 3rd modifier (Ctrl-Shift-Fn-Left) to get "select from here to the top/bottom" sounds like painful hand gymnastics.
(Yes, I could map this elsewhere, but I use too many different machines.)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fn_key#Fn_and_Control_key_plac...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO/IEC_9995#Function_keys
Ctrl | Fn | windows | alt
Which matches what one should expect from a desktop keyboard (Ctrl is the left-most key)
Easily verified with a simple image search for "<brand> laptop keyboard" where "<brand>" is not Lenovo or Apple.
Which is probably also why Lenovo's BIOS has an option to swap the Fn and Ctrl keys.
... as long as the keyboard has the proper layout, with ctrl in the far bottom left. One thing that Apple gets wrong and this keyboard gets right.
I never knew they made screens that bad anymore.
* https://dogemicrosystems.ca/pub/Sun/media/logos/Sun-Microsys...
If I'm going to throw money away on overpriced underpowered laptops it's going to mnt's pockets. At least that's trying to be open hardware (reform).
Memory used by various apps:
docker VM take 8Gb for simple supabase images
Firefox take 5-8GB
BasedPyRight takes 2GB
Nextjs server takes 2GB
Web development has devolved to the point where now you need 32 GB to view a Chinese take-out menu.
Install htop/btop and be more conscious about what your machine is actually doing. Needing more than 32GB RAM to develop a website is absurd
If you use Linux, then you're not stuck pre-dedicating a big block of RAM to a VM to run docker in, you're just using whatever the container is using.