It's so cool that every individual upgrade they did here can be hot-swapped back to the older designs. That's a huge extra lift that they didn't have to do.
To be specific: There's a new lower chassis, and a new chassis top with haptic touchpad. On my older framework I could buy just the chassis top to get the new touchpad. Crazy that they could make that work.
I also just really admire the CEO for doing these semi-scripted public presentations nerding out over the new devices and shouting out specific team members who did the designs. Really hope the company is doing well.
> That's a huge extra lift that they didn't have to do.
It's sorta essential imo if they want to make good on their one value-prop: repairability and the good will that comes with it. If they start releasing a tonne of SKUs with a million different parts, they'll inevitably have to sunset parts at a clip that'll completely make useless their repairability claims.
I am a happy Framework laptop owner, but I paid a premium b/c I expect moves like this. If this would change, it would become just an over-priced laptop... might as well by another Thinkpad or Dell XPS.
That said, I'm super happy they apparently have the good sense to see this. Not all companies make moves in their best interests.
Parts are open source. Other people can keep making them. There's franken think pads from China that use a x61 chassis made 15 years after the release. I had a soup of them before I moved to framework for my daily drivers.
My heart sank when they said 13 pro and then to see that so much is backwards compatible was amazing. It's quite refreshing to see a company live up to their mission so well.
Yeah, really impressive to see that you can take a 13 and turn it into a 13 pro with just a few new parts.
I've just ordered my own 13 pro. I've been waiting for a laptop and this ticks all the boxes. I'd previously ordered a new dell xps laptop and ultimately returned it because the keyboard was busted. I would have kept it if I could have swapped the keyboard for a new one. The use of LPCAMM is also really nice. I've hoped to see this standard start taking flight and I'm happy to grab a product with it included.
Same, though the battery upgrade alone will be around $260 because of the new bottom cover, at that might just throw in the speaker upgrade as well for $19.
Not sure if I even want a haptic touchpad at all.
Nitpick: hot swap means without powering off. Not recommended for motherboards, batteries, RAM etc. The running electricity is the "hot" part, and without that it's just "swap".
I have a framework 13. It looks like eventually you'll be able to upgrade the chassis to the pro one, including the battery, for under 200? Am I reading this right? That's borderline unbelievable to me
>It's so cool that every individual upgrade they did here can be hot-swapped back to the older designs. That's a huge extra lift that they didn't have to do.
Unfortunately, as is usual for them (edit: and it makes sense; I'm not blaming them), the parts and upgrade kits aren't available for ordering (edit: or pre-ordering) yet, and likely won't be for some time, until the actual laptops are shipping. But yes, this is amazing, and the new pieces are not things I was expecting from them. As soon as it's available, I'll be taking my relatively recent AMD mainboard and putting it in a new chassis+battery+keyboard+speakers+touchpad, possibly skipping the display (I don't care much about a touchscreen, but I do care about display quality, so I'll wait for comparisons to the current 2.8k display). My laptop will, at that point, be almost entirely in a Ship of Theseus situation: I think that only the bezel and some of the expansion cards will be from the original, first-generation laptop I bought from them. That mainboard runs a number of services for me, along with an older display. A second, newer one is waiting for RAM to be a reasonable price (since the RAM it was using is now on my current mainboard); I had planned to use it for some of my research, but maybe I'll end up putting it into this older chassis and have a spare laptop again.
That all this is possible is wonderful, and a credit to them in staying true to their stated ideals.
> Unfortunately, as is usual for them, the parts and upgrade kits aren't available for ordering yet, and likely won't be for some time, until the actual laptops are shipping.
Why would you expect otherwise? I fully expect any OEM to place itself at the front of the queue for parts coming from its suppliers. If for some reason they sold parts before the laptops started shipping, I'd fully expect impatient customers would build complete machines from parts ahead of the shipping dates, which would wreak all kinds of havoc on logistics.
Unfortunately, as is usual for them, the parts and upgrade kits aren't available for ordering yet, and likely won't be for some time, until the actual laptops are shipping.
It's unfortunate that they can't sell you something that hasn't been manufactured? That doesn't yet exist?
HN is really scraping the bottom of the barrel for things to complain about.
It's kind of mind boggling to me that they have a tight chassis, AND it meets their buildable/ugpradeable/repairable goals, AND their backwards compatibility is reaching back five years now.
I think a number of people would have expected these to eventually require a trade-off. Especially coming from pc-building land, where we see new non-backwards-compatible CPU and RAM sockets every 6 or so years.
There's a version of this where Frame.work said, "Design tradeoffs mean the 13 Pro is a new platform that is largely not backwards compatible, but don't worry, the 13 series will still get 5+ years of support and parts" and everyone goes "Aw, well, I guess that's reasonable."
I really want to emphasize that it's looking like Framework is creating a laptop with _better_ backwards compatibility and build-ability than a desktop PC.
All this is to say that this is very very impressive!
They could have done a much more minimal version and called it a day. Being able to swap individual components of the chassis into a 5 year old model is, to me, going way above and beyond.
I was really hoping for 6 USB-C ports, dual NVMe, a flush bezel, a better webcam, and most of all, I was hoping for a cooling design upgrade that doesn't cause the computer to self-roast if placed on top of a sofa due to ventilation blockage. Bleh.
As soon as I saw the email announcement for the 13 Pro, my face fell. My assumption was that this was a brand new, incompatible chassis, and that my current 13 would be obsolete, and if I want to go further, I'd have to buy a whole new chassis in one go. Essentially a full laptop replacement, completely betraying the entire point.
And then I click through and see the compatibility table and my jaw drops. Amazing! Yes, it's a new chassis, but all the parts that matter will fit into my old chassis. And if I want to upgrade the chassis, I can even do that piece by piece as well, not all at once.
I'm also glad to see another Intel mainboard, and one with the new, actually-powerful iGPUs. A part of me has considered over time defecting to AMD, but I'm still just more comfortable with Intel, for some reason that probably isn't rational. My one concern is that their CPU options top out at 4 performance cores; the i7-1370P I have right now has 6. But I know these days it's hard to reason about real-world performance just by core count, especially with the different flavors of cores we have now.
Another worry: the thermals of the original 13 chassis have never been great, and I'm concerned that the new mainboard will throttle a bunch under load when installed in the old chassis.
At any rate, I may not upgrade this year, given RAM prices. I have 64GB of DDR4 in my current laptop, and replacing that with the same amount of LPCAMM2 LPDDR5X is probably more expensive than the rest of the laptop itself.
But maybe over the next few years I'll ship-of-theseus myself into a new laptop.
I had the same emotional ride. I'm glad they've kept to the "brand promise" of being able to upgrade an old machine.
I'm two years into my fw 13 and think I'll start by upgrading the chassis. I also bought 64GB of DDR5 (it was on sale, if you can imagine such a thing) - The trackpad, speakers and battery are the parts of the machine that I don't really love so will be happy to upgrade those.
I think if I can I'll keep the silver top cover - A bit of a "I had a fw before they were cool" statement
I think the term “throttling” has done some poisoning of the way we discuss laptops. It’s like a derogatory word that implies instability or something like that.
I wouldn’t think of thermal performance in laptops as “throttling,” think about it in terms of “how much power is this laptop manufacturer deciding to give the chip versus its maximum possible rating and what does that mean for me?”
Performance per watt has a massive diminishing returns curve so you often do NOT want a laptop manufacturer to push the chip to its limit.
Obviously, framework has a limitation that many other similar laptops don’t have by having one fan rather than two, but for these chips in particular I wouldn’t be very concerned as they just don’t consume enough power to create a lot of heat.
I don’t think you need to be concerned with the chassis cooling in the original versus the pro because I think most of the heat dissipation design is on the mainboard. Both versions of the laptop just have a big opening on the bottom for intake then spit out the exhaust out the back. The new chassis is unchanged in that regard.
This concept of “throttling” becomes more of a “design tradeoffs” discussion especially in the world of gaming laptops, which is why I don’t like using the term “throttling.”
Is the thin and light MacBook Pro-sized Zephyrus G14 “throttling” because its RTX 5070ti is being fed less power than a big thick Lenovo Legion? I say no, it’s just being tuned to the intended use case. No, you don’t get the “full power” of the GPU but even the thickest laptops generally don’t get that compared to desktop systems.
The main problem with Framework 13 thermals is that if you just put it on top of a bed or sofa, the cloth blocks the bottom ventilation holes and the PC roasts itself with zero airflow. It's fine placed on top of a table, just not on a soft surface. I wish they would fix this glaring issue. Most normies are just going to place their laptops on the couch or bed without thinking about it.
Macbooks have a better design here. They are safe to put on top of sofas and beds. No ventilation holes on the bottom.
Looking at Intel's specs, it seems my current CPU has a base of 28W, boost up to 64W. The high end part Framework is selling for the 13 Pro has a base of 25W, boost to 80W.
So seems basically the same on the low end, with the new part boosting quite a bit higher. Presumably you get more perf per watt on the new CPU, but still.
Does anyone know whether the AMD chips are more performant? I like AMD more as a company, especially since I like healthy competition. I'd prefer an AMD chip if it's as efficient and performant as the Intel ones.
> My one concern is that their CPU options top out at 4 performance cores; the i7-1370P I have right now has 6.
I was looking at benchmark comparisons between my i5-1240P which has 4 performance cores and 8 efficiency cores, and the Ultra 5 325 which has 4 performance cores and 4 low-cache ultra low power efficiency cores.
This is my plan as well, start with the chassis and find a newer mainboard second-hand. I configured a 2TB SSD and 64 GB of LPCAMM2 RAM to see the price for the new 13 pro and it was doubled from about 1500 CAD to over 3200 CAD before tax. Upgrading the mainboard, when I have a perfectly functioning (and fast) 12th gen Intel i5, is out of the question for now.
If you ever decide to buy the whole new system, buy it without memory and storage from Framework and of course DIY instead of assembled. You can get them cheaper elsewhere. They aren’t Apple-level overpriced for memory but they are noticeably overpriced.
This advice is a bit more difficult with the current LPCAMM situation. In the US, besides Framework, I was only able to find a 32GB module from Adorama, seemingly a left over new stock Crucial module that I assume must be discontinued in Crucial-branded form, or eBay. But it is far cheaper than Framework’s price ($250) and seemingly still available.
(Interestingly, Adorama’s website says that it’s “trending.”)
You’ll save at least a little bit of pocket change buying your SSD elsewhere at the very least.
I'm really looking forward to having this as the go-to laptop to recommend to devs again. The original Framework chassis was really showing it's age next to e.g. a MacBook Pro or the new XPS 14.
Having mainline Linux on a system with 24h+ battery life in a 13" case is pretty damn impressive.
Can't attest to framework, but after switching to an arch based syttem on my Quite low level HP Envy 13'' I get about 130% - 170% of time out of the system.
Yes, I am running mostly in dark mode now. Yes, I am using the terminal significantly more often now (80% of the time). But also I have always a browser, always Slack, WhatsApp, Obsidian and more often than not a few other things running on virtual screens.
Just the added battery life made this my daily driver. Yes - I so, so want to buy a framework. Still waiting for the multicolored international keyboards - and also the prices for memory just kill it for me right now. The system I would love to have is about 2k more than a few months ago. I just can't splurge that much right now.
Don't see why it wouldn't - as long as pstate etc. works it should be the same. I'd argue it's probably better given that modern desktops use far less resources in the background compared to Windows
I bet they don't publish Linux numbers because it depends on which desktop you use etc.
I'd be surprised. Granted, not quite apples-to-apples, but I have the original Framework 13 chassis, 13th-gen Intel mainboard, original battery, and I've never gotten more than 5 hours or so, 6, maybe, at most, on Linux. Yes, the new 13 Pro comes with a larger batter, and maybe the new mainboard is more power-efficient, but 24h+ sounds way too optimistic.
Keep in mind the Ultra 300 chips also only have recent support in the kernel. The battery life likely isn't great for now (as with previous gen Intels right after release).
It makes sense to me that for now the benchmarks would be Windows specific.
They have a battery live stream from 100% to 0 linked on their product page which is broken. Hopefully they'll fix it and add both linux and windows version of the test.
I don't see why it wouldn't? I have a 16" MSI laptop with an 11th gen Intel processor (known for horrible battery life), I use Arch/Hyprland and it gets 5-6 hours with a battery degraded to 68%. Which is still in the ballpark of what most users said they got on Windows when this model was new.
Linux battery life is fine and on par with (or possibly better than) Windows these days if you don't do anything silly (I'm sure some distro and DE consume silly amounts of power just because, but it doesn't have to be that way).
Based on reports about Panther Lake, the new process, plus a 13" screen and large-ish battery, I believe the battery life claims.
Yes, it was not mentionned often in the list of complaints about the fw 13 because the chassis was good enough but my main gripe was that it felt flimsy.
Strangely it was not flimsy and held its own but it felt flimsy and to be honest I never was quite able to tell why. What one want for a premium laptop is the satisfying rigidity of a Macbook and it didn't have it.
So for me this new chassis is a banger release. It's amazing that I can just drop my "old" hardware in it and it would just work.
The LPCAMM2 memory is both the biggest plus for me, and the biggest challenge for it given how rare it is to find in stock, and the premium price over LPDDR5 and crazy prices of it.
this looks exciting. We are allowed to choose between Windows, macOS and Linu at my job so I might consider this when we are due for an upgrade in a year or 2. Feels wrong to discard our M2 Pro machines when they are perfectly capable of my relatively minuscule workloads at the moment, it only slowed down once when I had a memory leak in Safari from a AWS tab
This looks suspiciously like something I could buy : a lightweight well made Linux laptop, with long battery life.
I currently use a MacBook and won’t get near a windows machine.
Two questions
1/ will there be a 15 inches version ? ( I’m not getting any younger I like bigger screens )
2/ software-wise how reliable are the suspend/resume and all the laptop features ? I’ve been using Linux for about 30y and to me this is typically the bits that usually fail. To put it differently, how confident are you that things will work properly out of the box ?
Other than that , I love what you’re doing, please continue.
As other comments have noted, we have Framework Laptop 16 for folks who want bigger screens, and we had some updates for that product today too: haptic touchpad option and an entry-level Ryzen 5 version.
We've been sending pre-release hardware to developers at a bunch of distros to make sure that the core use cases like suspend/resume work as expected out of the box. You can check our general Linux support at frame.work/linux
I want to say as a fw13 owner that people don't realize that the 3:2 screen ratio gives you extra vertical space compared to your typical notebook and the screen does not feel small at all. That was an excellent decision from their design team.
I’m not @nrp but I think I can safely answer this one:
> 1/ will there be a 15 inches version ? ( I’m not getting any younger I like bigger screens )
They make a Framework 16, so a Framework 16 Pro now suddenly seems like a possibility, but I don’t think they’re going to make a 15-inch when they have the 16.
Hi! Congratulation on the launch, I hope the users will like these!
Please, I do have a question about Desktop: there have been numerous reports of noisy PSU fan and little feedback from FW [1], could you shed some light on the situation? Are you seeing noisy PSU yourself, are there plans for a fix or another PSU? I understand you wanted a separate, and thus reparable Flex ATX PSU, but maybe just one larger fan for the whole case would have worked better (c.f. Steam Machine)?
For those of us that, say, just got a new battery months before this was announced... a while ago (I forget when), there was talk of possibly sharing designs to enable repurposing them as power banks. Any word about that?
Also is there a way of exposing an existing touchpad to that new control board for your external one? (Or keyboard I guess, but the use case is that I had to replace my keyboard too, and for what was available at the time ended up just going with a whole input cover. Truthfully, I was already curious about exposing it to USB-C before hearing about this, and prefer wired anyway, but am also curious about the more immediately relevant part of the question.)
Are you guys thinking about pushing to improve the linux software experience at all? To me that could almost be another selling point, if Framework 13 came with some downstream patches that improved sleep, power management, multi-display and hi-dpi monitor handling, etc.
And secondly how healthy is framework as a company, and to what extent do you make money from consumers vs sales to big companies?
I don't know how relevant is the parent argument these days, but pfu see released HHKB with trackpoint. Even despite dropping their signature topre switches, I consider this one of the best purchases. My wrists can't thank me enough.
We're going to publish more Linux benchmarks as well. We have s0ix noted (7 days), and we're trying to make some more repeatable productivity-oriented workflows for Linux to use. We expect that Phoronix will publish some pretty thorough power efficiency tests too. We'll certainly be providing them with review hardware.
Hey Nirav, congrats on the newest release and I'm really eyeing the 13 Pro.
A couple of questions:
1. How are the thermals? I've had mixed experiences with my 11th gen FW 13 throttling under load with the fan sounding noisy. It's fine if I'm alone but if I'm at a team gathering, it's noticeably loud.
1. Intel Core Ultra Series 3 is super efficient for video conferencing. That's a use case that Intel has specifically been optimizing for, so as long as you're using video conferencing software that leverages hardware encode/decode, which should be most of them at this point, the fan should stay off entirely.
2. We have one hand open on the lid for each generation of 13.
What's the sleep situation? I have an ancient Dell with S3, which is totally fine, and a Mac for work, which is fine, but the modern standby situation, as summarized by people who are mad about it, sounds bad.
First off, Framework is maybe the most exciting company I've seen over the last 5 years. My Framework 13 AMD is a wonderful machine. Thank you to your and your team for the incredible work and commitment!
Two questions:
1. Will there will be a concrete guide to upgrading a standard Framework 13 to the Pro. I watched the video and read the page a few times, and I'm a bit confused what the whole process is and if all the required upgrades need to happen together, or if they can go piece meal.
2. With all the different components and increasing SKUs, I'd be a little worried that if I didn't upgrade to a Pro in the near future, that the old hardware would no longer be supported and it'd be a headache to upgrade at some point. Can Framework guarantee that there will always be an upgrade path within a size and line?
Again, big thank you to Framework and I look forward to using my Framework 13 for a long, long time :)
I'm excited for the new speakers - that's been one of the biggest pain points on my 13.
- Is the Dolby Atmos configuration available for Linux as well as Windows? Or more generally, will the speakers sound as good on Linux as they do on Windows?
- Will we be able to get audio comparison samples between the old and new speakers?
Really happy to see the new chassis for the 13 Pro! I own the 16 myself, and have been really happy with it, and am excited to see the haptic touchpad + unibody modules hit the marketplace. Those address the largest build quality issues I had with the device.
You probably can't comment on this, but just to note it, I would be very excited to see the 16 get a similar Pro chassis.
Now that you have a custom touch-screen. How long until you release a tablet (Surface-pro-like) form factor? I'm still using my 2017 Surface Pro because the form factor is amazing, but no one has come up with anything to compete with it.
I know it's not the most ideal form factor for a repairable device, but I can dream.
Has anyone tried Qwen 3.6 35B A3B on the 370 version with plenty of ram and if so what's the best tokens per second you can get, with the ideal quant, like maybe the U GGUF at 4 bit
Q4_K_S Qwen3.5 30B-A3B runs at around 29 t/s for me on the 370 version with 64 GB of RAM, running llama.cpp without any tweaking. I haven't tried Qwen3.6 yet, but could download it tomorrow; since I have a 128GB FW Desktop at home, I tend to use that remotely rather than my laptop directly, which preserves my battery.
Hey, love that thing and I am considering to sell my current laptop to get one, but I wanted to first know if the laptop features pen/stylus support? I guess not, as it is not using a full glass cover like the 12 and otherwise it would have probably been advertised, and can we expect in the future an upgrade path towards that (by replacing only the panel or the whole top part maybe?)
I love it, I've been waiting for years to buy a Framework, but my current laptop has so far refused to die. I think it's now finally old enough to justify upgrading.
Will the new keyboard colour schemes come to other locales? I love the orange/black/grey but probably not enough to learn American English.
The touchscreen is backward-compatible with the old/regular FW13, so I imagine the regular FW13 screen is forward-compatible with the Pro. (Of course, I don't know if they'll sell that configuration or if you'd have to cobble it together from the marketplace.)
200g is weight of a smartphone, there's no way touch weighs that much.
Framework 13 Pro screen seems to have plastic surface as before, not glass-laminated (which I guess could add 200g, but it's not a requirement for laptop touchscreen)
Question: did the hints given at https://frame.work/nextgen include any secret messages you want the public to know about? Maybe the secret was missed during the run up to today?
Ultra X7 358H is the config we've used for most of our battery life tests, and efficiency should be very similar on the X9 config. We're keeping the SKU stack simpler and just having a single display option that has touch. You can disable touch in your OS though if you don't want to use it.
I preordered a 13 Pro with Ryzen, which I'm already very excited about. Reading between the lines of your video announcement, though, it seems like the Intel experience might be more optimal (you pointed out Intel's new low power efficiency cores and Dolby sound being tested with Intel).
If I want the best battery life and sound possible with Linux, should I switch my preorder to Intel?
What I am also curious is around memory management. On the Intel, I can get at most 64Gb RAM for now, 96Gb in the future. On AMD I can get 128Gb right now. Do they differ in how they can share RAM with the GPU? Do either need me to specify how much is vRAM and how much is available to the CPU, or are them both unified, similar to how Apple Silicon does it?
It looks like not (you'd assume they'd have called it out if it was). I really don't understand the utility of a touchscreen without a 360 degree hinge.
I just realised that the credit card I used to place my preorder will expire next month. Will there be an option to update my card details when I need to pay the full amount?
Yes, you'll get notified when your batch is getting ready to ship, and you can update your payment information. You can also update the default payment method in your user account any time.
And anyway the performance of this CIX chip is really bad compared to the Snapdragon X2 or current x86 chips. Jeff Geerling has geekbench results here:
It's interesting what political issues people make paramount. Apple does ewaste as a service but don't have a fraction of the criticism and infighting as the open source community.
I really want to love this thing but at least in the UK, matching specs it comes out as more expensive than the MBP - even worse when you factor in potential discounts/sales which framework doesn't offer.
I’d just keep in mind that you’re comparing a niche product from a startup breaking into a notoriously competitive market who are also doing the harder task of making these slim devices user upgradeable to a product from one of the largest companies in the world, with a CEO that is well known for being a master of supply chain, and with all of the economies of scale.
And they’re miraculously within 10-20% of each other.
Dumb comparison, because buying a Framework is a single transaction where I exchange money for a computer, and buying a Mac is an entrypoint to “The Ecosystem” where Apple wants to squeeze me for $<pricing_tier>/month forever.
I've bought two Apple products in my life, both Macbook Pros, one in 2014 and one in 2021. I have a Pixel phone, zero transactions in the App Store all-time, pay $0 to Apple on any kind of subscription basis. Not disagreeing with the nature of their incentive structure, but if they're intentionally crippling their hardware division somehow to squeeze me for money, they're really bad at it.
Buying a Mac is also a single transaction. Yes, they have lots of other services they want to sell you on but you're in no way obliged to take them up on it.
It's really not, though. You don't even need an Apple account to set up a Mac.
I pay $3/month to Apple in exchange for full-quality backups of decades of photos, but I could easily stop doing that, or switch to another provider, if I wanted to. (I don't, because $3/month is extremely fair for what I get.) I've never paid for any other Apple service and likely never will. The OS never, ever nags me about services - compare that to Windows!
Also very sad that the M5 dominates the X7 358H in singlethreaded performance, not to mention the M5 Pro that dominates it in both single- and multithreaded performance.
Everything that isn’t a MacBook will be more expensive than a MacBook, so you should choose a price you want to spend and then evaluate if you prefer a Framework or a Mac at that price point. If your available spending power is too low for a Framework, you’re not getting a Framework — and, separately, if you want a Framework for some reason specific to the Framework and can afford one, then the price of a Mac isn’t relevant unless a Mac can satisfy that same reason.
I've wanted to get a Framework for a long time now, but their lack of shipping to Israel (and active prevention of using Freight forwarders) has prevented me.
If they were willing to sell me the 13 Pro, I'd sell my Yoga Pro 7 in a heartbeat to replace with a 13 Pro
I bought a Thinkpad P16s with 64 GB of LPDDR5x ram in October 2024 for just over $1100.
64 GB of LPDDR5x will add $849 to the price of a Framework 13 Pro. Thats insane. I would love a future Framework 16 Pro but that will probably run $3500 for the configuration that I would want if memory and storage prices don't come down.
how would they compare over 10-15 years though. with one you are able to swap out the motherboard when you want an upgrade and with the other you have to buy a completely new device.
then when it comes to repairing broken parts they are on opposite ends of the scale where apple actually go out of their way to make it harder for you to do that and its probably more expensive as well since only apple certified repair shops have access to certain parts
Comparing it to a MacBook misses the point. The reason to buy the framework is modularity, repairability, customisability. You can upgrade your CPU, add specific ports you want, change ram. You can't do any of that with a Mac.
In his presentation, Nirav compared it twice to a MacBook. Even saying they want to build the MacBook of the Linux world iirc. While I also agree with you, it’s still a valid comparison.
I'll take this opportunity to report on my Framework Laptop 13 experience. I've had it for over a year.
The case is warped in multiple places. One USB C module doesn't accept a power charge reliably. It can overheat and shutdown. If the case flexes a little the trackpad stops responding - it needs to be on a flat surface. Power brick died.
On the plus side, my partner had one and when she threw it away she gave me her parts and I was able to swap some out. That was cool.
Adding to the review thread: I bought a Framework 13 in 2021. I'm sold on the ideal, I really like the chassis and the keyboard, and I _love_ the screen ratio. I replaced several parts and own every type of connector. I really liked my 13!
I just had my mainboard die, and I was advised there currently isn't another mainboard in stock that works with my old DDR4 RAM. They don't have any newer DDR5 RAM in stock apparently either, so I was out of luck and ended up buying a Lemur Pro last week.
In my experience, the Framework hardware is great but very flakey and frequently needs replacing.
Support is awful; they'll repeatedly ask you to do things you've already done (and shown proof of), they can take days to get back to you, and are generally unhelpful. They also didn't think to mention to me when I said I needed to buy a new laptop and their parts were all out of stock that they had a new machine coming out in the next week, which is insane to me. I would've been an easy convert. Sometimes I think it's bots doing the support, but if that was the case, they'd reply back faster.
Time will tell whether I'll return back to the ecosystem, but the support experience (and the hardware being poor enough that I frequently need support) is putting me off for now.
In general, coming from a MacBook, I’ve had more quality issues with the framework, but fixing them has always been possible with a little digging. I’ve enjoyed the experience of learning how to take apart and fix my gear, but I’m also the sort of person who darns holes in his socks, so ymmv.
I contacted their support because my charging cable frayed and I thought I was still in warranty. Turns out I'd miscalculated and I was a year out but they replaced it for free anyway.
Their support has been very responsive and helpful every time I've contacted them so I'd be surprised if they wouldn't have helped the GP.
I'll be excited to buy one of these (or the newer iteration) if component prices ever return to pre-2025 levels. AUD$800 for 32GB RAM is insanity (which is of course not within their control, but my purchasing impulses are - at least for now).
Finally a haptic trackpad. Unfortunately not having one was a dealbreaker when purchasing my laptop last year, but next upgrade I'll be able to consider them again.
Has anyone made the jump from a Mac to Framework as a daily driver? This is the first model to get my attention as a possible candidate for a full switch to Linux.
I did last year after deciding that Apple's software just isn't for me anymore. I've always had a Linux desktop around (and used to daily drive Linux on a laptop years ago) so I was happy to consolidate on my preferred platform.
Biggest gripes I had are:
A) battery life (both during use and standby just kinda sucking on Linux in general compared to os x, not exactly framework specific but I did get used to how amazing my m1 pro for longevity)
B) the case looking nice but feeling a little flimsy
C) the speakers are pretty bad (though I did get turned on to easyeffects and there is a profile for the 13 which helped a bit)
D) macs completely spoiled me trackpad wise
It seems like they are taking a stab at all of these in some way and I'm excited to see how it goes, especially with so much being backwards compatible.
All the same gripes from me. None enough to be a deal breaker, but every once in a while I'll do something on my GFs macbook pro and be blown away by how solid it feels.
I use a MacBook Pro at work and a Framework 13 for personal use. The biggest downside to my Framework 13 is the low battery life; I’ve been getting only about 5 hours on Windows 11. Other than that, I like my Framework 13.
I am very excited about the Framework 13 Pro and it’s dramatically improved battery life. It’s unfortunate regarding RAM prices, though; I only paid $96 for 32GB of DDR5 RAM back in December 2023 when I ordered my Framework 13 (I bought my RAM on Newegg). It’s much more expensive today. I’d like to upgrade, but I can’t afford it at today’s RAM prices. With that said, because the RAM is still modular in the Framework 13 Pro, I could settle for a lower configuration and wait until a later date to upgrade the RAM.
You could do what I'm considering doing, which is sell my old Framework at market price. The 64GB of RAM that I bought for $200 at the same time you did is now worth almost $800 on Amazon new.
I was a Mac guy for 12+ years and switched to Linux on desktop + Framework about 2 years ago.
It takes time. On many dimensions, the Framework running Linux is laughably worse. I never thought about battery life while the lid is closed until my Framework.
That being said, running Linux is very fun and can be productive if you choose a well-supported distribution and desktop environment. I landed on KDE Plasma and Fedora/Kununtu. It has been my daily driver and I see no reason to go back.
My gateway to Linux was buying an old Thinkpad T580 and messing around Arch Linux. If you’re on the fence, this may be a good place to start.
> I never thought about battery life while the lid is closed until my Framework.
In the days of S3, I never thought about it either. Ironically it's on my Mac that I have to remember to hibernate if I won't use my laptop for a week or whatever, because it'll die if I don't. It just happens to be that it was on a Mac on which I first tried "modern standby" features.
Anyway I feel you. This big battery life improvement is what has convinced me my next laptop can be a Framework.
I’ve been on Fedora Gnome but wonder if I’d like Plasma. I know that I can try it on a USB stick and I’ve also read that other people have made sure to install their operating system and their files on different partitions to make distro switching easier.
Yeah, last June. I switched from an M1 Air to a 13”, 7640U.
I’m running Fedora. Other than some h265 and heic codec/file format issues, (I’ve had to convert videos and photos to more open codec/format), it’s been a great machine.
I miss the battery life of the M1 but I enjoy the comfort of knowing I can upgrade storage or fix anything I want when needed.
Other than personal web browsing, I do web development and tinkering with music creation (Bitwig).
I don’t think I’ll ever buy another Apple machine. I want to use devices that are repairable, support those companies, and use software that is open source or multi-platform without continuing subscriptions.
Now that I’m personally invested in Linux, I’d like to contribute to desktop app projects that are open source since now, I am also a user.
I have gradually been moving my digital life away from Google and Apple/iCloud.
I never used a Mac for my personal machine, but I've always used them as my work machines. I purchased the first generation of the Framework 13 AMD laptops And it's been my personal machine ever since. It's a damn fine machine and I love having full control over the components in my machine without some OEM nonsense for repairs that manufacturers like Dell try to pull (wouldn't accept non-OEM batteries for me in the past).
The battery life is the biggest negative compared to a MacBook, but that seems to be better now (though I doubt it, or anyone, can compete with the power/performance that Apple is putting out now).
The issue with my advice to you though is that I prefer Linux. And I would be running Linux at work if I could. Mac OS is fine, but I do prefer Linux as my main operating system.
If I didn't specifically want to run Linux, though, I would probably be using a MacBook, despite their lack of repairability.
All that said, I really love my framework and I don't intend on buying another machine any time soon, especially because I can upgrade my Framework 5 years from now (hopefully).
I have a MacBook Air M2. I bought a framework 13 last year right before the RAM shortage. I really wanted to love it but ended up returning it due to really bad battery life performance (NixOS). Still on the MacBook today, but heavily considering the new framework
I was on a Macbook Pro (multiple models for many years) and jumped to the 12th gen intel framework. It is fantastic laptop, just showing its age a bit (mostly battery life as I still have the smaller battery and 12th gen intel wasn't that great for battery).
I upgraded the screen and speakers, nothing else really needed changing throughout the years.
I was so tired of the bad docker performance on macOS that I went to a framework with Linux. Linux on a laptop (Fedora/Gnome specifically) worked so much better than I expected too.
I'm hopeful I can pre-order this new model as well.
No Ryzen options? Also no 1600nits display for working outside. Battery and display brightness are the only reasons I'm sticking with Macbook Pro.Sad it's not a priority for any other manufacturer. Because that's all you need, quality display, battery and remote access.
Intel got a lot of attention during the keynote, but the Ryzen AI 300 series mainboards are available if you want them. It's one of the first few choices in the configuration flow.
Man, I want to get a Framework, but I'm held back by the lack of trackpoint. Yes, I know it's not going to happen officially, but I just can't see myself using a laptop without one. So, until someone figures out some mod or 3rd-party part I'm sticking with Thinkpads.
Dell Precision used to have track points. Now the only holdout is Thinkpad. I sometimes wonder how much the track point itself keeps that product line successful.
That being said, thinkpads are almost as upgradeable as frameworks. The latest t14 received a better score from ifixit than framework for repairability (first ever to get a 10).
> The latest t14 received a better score from ifixit than framework for repairability (first ever to get a 10).
Hm, I wish they had scores for the X230 and older; I'd like to see how they compare. IMO they're better, if nothing else because you can replace RAM, SSD and battery without unscrewing the entire bottom.
I’ve been a MacBook guy for almost a decade now, but I’ve been watching Framework since their first announcement. This is the most appealing Framework device I’ve seen.
The new display, battery life, the new Intel chips, and LPCAM2 memory all look great. I love my M1 MBP but Apple’s software quality has been rough the past year especially. I think this is also the first time the Framework 13 has officially supported Thunderbolt? Depending on how macOS 27 turns out I may seriously consider the 13 Pro as my next laptop. I’d slap Fedora Workstation on it and call it a day.
I was lucky enough to be at the event and I can say the 13 Pro feels great in the hand. Overall chassis stiffness, typing (I guess due to the increased chassis stiffness), and the new touchpad all feel premium. Between that and the battery life, I think this really has a chance to win over a lot more current MBP users.
They write their own software. And firmware. Other OEMs can just beg their tier 1/2 suppliers to get their shit together and put components to sleep properly by making windows, drivers, and firmware work well together.
Also things like lpddr5x, ssd controller built into the SoC with cache in unified ram (instead of running a whole ass separate computer with its own ram on an m2 stick) etc
Great point about the storage. That is another place where the repairability meme is really not helping. Moving the storage controller up into the host SoC is a good idea and the PC world should adopt it.
Apple's storage controller is not even a PCIe peripheral internally, so it's saving power and latency cutting out that interface, even when it's active.
Mainly because Microsoft wants to have "connected standby": the CPU is running in a low power mode (not powered off like "old" S3 sleep), can be turned on periodically and can turn on other devices even when the computer is "sleeping".
My Zen2 based Lenovo laptop has 6-7 hours of battery when doing basic tasks in both Windows and Linux, but sleep on Linux lasts a week while on Windows it's empty in 24 hours.
> Mainly because Microsoft wants to have "connected standby"...
And that is OK, as long as they provide a way for you to disable it. I do not want my laptop to be doing things when I put it in sleep mode. Nothing at all. Save battery life above all else when sleeping. But Microsoft does not appear to provide a way to do that. At least none that I can see.
Macs have that too, just implemented well. In addition, CPUs with connected standby don’t have the normal sleep so even on linux they run in connected standby. Maybe its less buggy in your case? Consider yourself lucky, lots of people encounter problems with sleep on linux
Trying to reduce idle power use of a simple esp32 based project I did a while back... Yeah it is indeed tricky. Apple having full control of their hardware supply chain, firmware and software helps a ton. And PC standardization issues do no good either.
On the other hand framework is actually in a good position to do something about it. Similar to valve. I think they do have more control than a regular PC vendor when also using Linux ad they have a very limited portfolio of devices and can actually upstream software fixes.
I think it's just a vertical integration thing. They know what's in the machine and they can make sure that their suspend path puts every peripheral to sleep. Linux has no idea what's in your machine and there may be some device in there somewhere that freaks out if the machine goes to sleep without saying goodnight. Even a 50mW draw will destroy the suspend power budget. Chromebooks have similar vertical integration with respect to ChromeOS and they also enjoy long sleep life. Hypothetically an integrator like Framework can also guarantee this but I can't vouch for it being true, and they would not have any control over Ubuntu updates after the laptop is delivered to the customer.
Just to beat my favorite dead horse, this is why the insistence on SO-DIMMs "BEcAuse it's rEpAIrAble" has wrecked the reputation of a lot of laptops. DDR on a stick is fundamentally hostile to sleep power draw. Soldered-down LPDDR memory has always been massively superior for energy savings, and LP-CAMM finally solves the issue.
How does soldering memory help reduce sleep power consumption vs. using a socket? What is different other than how they are physically connected to the board?
Well to be fair they only kind of quasi-exist for consumers right now. As far as I can tell Crucial was providing the only consumer accessible lpcamm2 modules on the market right now.
Crucial is certainly the only option that comes up looking on amazon or newegg right now. Lenovo has some OEM modules but they are obviously marketed as replacement parts to just their laptops, not sure how the warranty and support for them would be outside a lenovo product.
But the Crucial brand was unceremoniously sacrificed by Micron to the AI gods at the beginning of this year. So will these lpcamm2 modules even be available once current stock runs out? The 64gb module is already sitting at $1000 on newegg.
Samsung is making lpcamm2 modules but no telling when those will actually hit the market and be accessible.
As a heavy fractional scaling user, as long as the display has enough DPI, it's a non-issue. At my last job I was happily running 1.35 scaling, and I run my TV at 1.5 scaling. Make sure you're using a sane compositor, which excludes DWM; most Wayland compositors should run just fine.
Which is something like 2/3rds successful in my experience (I use this daily), and requires tons of fiddling to get things looking even mostly reasonable (lots of misalignments and funky padding otherwise). And lots of applications don't respect it and you're stuck with too-small controls when it fails. Which makes it a noticeably-worse success rate than fractional scaling, afaict.
I still use it because the end result on some of my most-used applications is nicer, and it seems to be slightly-noticeably better performing (on a high framerate screen). So it's good enough for my tastes. But it really isn't anything I'd call "successful".
Man, this looks really, really impressive. It basically solves every issue we could find to the framework 13. Can't wait for the reviews.
Accepting the prices of the ram shortage era is still painful, but even with the 64gb option, here in France it's still a great deal compared to similarly configured premium thinkpads or macbook pros.
These are cool laptops. But, after getting a decent config (32gb ram, 1tb ssd, 7 series chip), the price is ~$2300. At that point, a MacBook Pro seems like a better choice. I'd not want to develop on anything less than that config. The selling point seems to be the Linux + Framework brand + highly customizable machine you can actually own
I've always wondered if these laptops can scale beyond the enthusiast group. If so, how?
I am sure many will jump in here to talk about the upgradability story, but for me personally I do not think of Macbooks as a serious alternative either way. Even if I could get over not being able to replace my hard drive or RAM, I would still have to be OK using a proprietary OS I can't control, designed by people who just want to keep extracting my money ultimately.
Having something called an "App Store" on my personal laptop I can't remove.. I'd deal with having 4gb of RAM before I lived that reality.
In my experience, Linux support on Framework is worse than on a typical ThinkPad, and they don't have much interest in contributing to the ecosystem like System76 does. They still make good products, I'm just very unimpressed with the Linux marketing.
For me it’s very much “it just works” with pretty much every distro I try. I had to configure zero hardware. How much better am I supposed to expect it to be?
They financially sponsor Linux/OSS projects and give them laptops to test on. What more do you want them to do?
They don’t have a zillion employees like Lenovo who is the #1 volume computer company in the world.
Finally, IMO, System76 is a much worse example because they aren’t focusing on the things Linux needs to grow. Linux doesn’t need contributions like their their silly Ubuntu reskin distro to be popular on the desktop. Instead, Linux needs a company making compatible hardware that is good, attractive hardware that will stop people from buying a MacBook instead.
The System76 lineup is a complete mess of white label Clevo systems. They have no business offering 8 different laptop models. That just tells potential customers “wow, buying a Linux laptop is a lot more complicated than buying a Mac!”
I agree with you, it would have been nice if their speakers had dedicated hardware to drive them instead of the magical dolby software.
All laptop speakers sound like shit on Linux. I'm sure people will reply with their anecdotal evidence, or pretend that it's not that bad once you have a good EQ. But we'll have to agree to disagree on that. I've spent hours trying to get multiple laptop speakers at least half as good as they sound on Windows. No success. And I'm talking thinkpads, dell xps, the usual linux go-tos, not some exotic stuff.
Maybe you have very niche needs, but for most of us speakers on laptops are never great and they're not really there for that. Reminds me of people shopping for high performance scooters. I mean, you're riding a scooter... it's not meant for that.
If you are an avid Linux user, you should know that this kind of Criticism is not on point.
Battery life? Should they share all possible config combinations? Should they share the most power-saving setting (and then be blamed for sharing numbers that almost no one gets to reproduce?)
As a Linux user on an AMD FW my battery life is good enough (7ish hours of work), and I never felt I need to tune it further from the OOB Fedora Kinoite.
They should share the battery life numbers of default shipping configuration while running Linux with whatever settings they want. Then publish the configuration and settings. Same as every other manufacturer.
Everything about this is what I've been looking for in a Linux laptop. (Also, how refreshing is it to not have to think hard about how much RAM you might need over the next few years because you know you can always upgrade it later?)
I'm amazed looking at the upgrade kit. It's everything you need to go from the old 13" to the Pro; including chassis, display, battery, keyboard etc - listed at $255. That's an instant buy from me.
Same... I bought a 13 last year, super happy with it but was kind of sad after seeing this release because this new design is just so much better and addresses all the concerns I had with the machine... until I saw this.
Fuck I do love these guys! Give me a little hope in humanity.
Will definitely buy this new chasis as soon as I can!
Nice upgrades, but no mention of ECC RAM, the single thing that I wanted from an upgrade for a decade? Why do chip makers refuse to take our money? :-P
I would be really interested in a podcast with the CEO where he goes a bit into the trade-offs of backwards and forwards compatibility. I can not imagine that their planning was so immaculate that there aren't any regressions that a clean slate design could have cleaned up. Nevertheless, amazing job for putting this together it looks like a phenomenal product!
Is Framework open to an OLED panel option in the future? I have an eye disease that makes extremely high contrast and extremely deep blacks very helpful to me, since it means I can get good contrast with less total light. I can still read LCD displays well enough, but as my eyes worsen, that may not be true.
Since Framework has a great track record with display upgradability, just an indication that there is serious interest in OLED options in the future would be enough to sell me.
So if anyone at Framework is reading this: is there any opposition inside framework to OLED? Any fundamental constraints that make OLED panels unlikely for the next several years?
Is there an option for a keyboard with dedicated PgUp/PgDn/Home/End/Insert/Delete keys? I looked at a bunch of designs and didn't find any. If this is a developer-focused laptop, how can the keyboard be so developer-unfriendly? This is why I keep getting Lenovo laptops, they don't compromise on these keys.
Part of me was hoping there would be some sort of official arm mainboard announced, I know there's the third party version but they don't seem to sell the main board only.
Oh my god, yet _another_ "developer-focused" laptop with full-sized left/right arrow keys, which are an absolutely miserable experience to actually use.
How is it that Apple is the only company these days() that consistently gets this right?
( Yes, I know they used full-sized keys for a while, I moaned and cursed them at the time as well.)
Sorry, I've never seen this perspective, why do you want the smaller ones? The small arrow keys on my MacBook are one of my least favorite parts of the keyboard.
You want the smaller ones so you can easily locate the arrow key cluster without having to look. The empty space above the left and right arrow keys is a good tactile indicator that your fingers are on the correct location.
I agree with you that having full height left-right and half-sized up-down is a pain, because of the inconsistency.
The problem I have with laptop keyboard is that the arrow key height is too small, and the cluster itself is too crowded to sit my fingers on comfortably when using arrows. I want the arrow cluster to have full sized keys.
Real developers use hjkl, which, if this keyboard uses QMK like their previous ones, you can just remap to actual arrows (with a modifier key). I am only slightly joking.
It's unfortunate that I am unable to access these new products because Framework does not ship to Japan. I have an original Framework 13 that's CPU fan has been making death noises. There is also a broken screw mount in the base.
I didn't do shipment forwarding. I just bought the product and later moved to Japan. Also, Framework supposedly blocks shipment forwarding.
It's odd, because I remember them advertising a Japanese keyboard layout in the past. They must not see a large enough market to justify the costs.
Same problem here in NZ - they only ship to AUS, despite lots of people here being keen on their laptops. I know multiple people who have made it a point to time a trip to AUS with buying a Framework so they can pick it up while they're over there.
Depending on how good that haptic trackpad is, this could be a real Macbook Pro competitor. 32GB of RAM on my M1 Pro is starting to feel a bit cramped.
Please make a standalone case with a usb port for the keyboard trackpad! I would love to have it for when I connect the laptop to an external monitor. I hate the mouse, but I love the trackpad right under the keyboard.
The expansion card system seems like something I would actually really like, especially as a hardware engineer. But the more I thought about it I couldn't really think of any compelling expansion cards that were worth the effort. So I figured I would look at what was in their store to see what other people thought up, and there isn't really any 3rd party store that I could find.
> How is ubuntu support for touchscreens these days?
GNOME supports multitouch gestures, and the GTK4 toolkit is overall very touch-native. It strikes a nice balance between overpadded and touch-accessible, IMO: https://www.gnome.org/
Come on lol. I have a couple steam decks and both are really clunky.
Most applications are not built using GTK4 nor Qt6 for that matter.
On my steam deck the keyboard never pops up by itself so I have to use a key combination and it feels like I am moving a ghost mouse around the place (rather than proper touch screen support)
I ran gnome on the deck for a while but anyway the on-screen keyboard provided by the gnome sucked so bad that I gave up (sucked as in, it groups all the keys around the center of the screen tightly together and very small)
I also have an M1 iPad Pro. No comparison because those issues simply don’t exist on iOS.
A laptop without a unified memory model is categorically incapable of being the "ultimate developer laptop". Framework already have Strix Halo machines, I don't know why they felt the need to hamstring this thing with Intel.
Hilariously, those AMD chips are way behind the Intels in terms of memory.
First off, I believe that Intel has its memory far more "unified". AMD typically has a stricter VRAM/RAM 'tradeoff' setting that does not exist on Intel in the same way to my knowledge. (See how on Strix Halo systems, there is a thing about "allocating" 96 GB to the GPU, which seems to be needed sometimes but prevents the CPU from accessing that memory.)
Secondly, the Panther Lake board has LPDDR5X LPCAMM2 memory at 7467 MT/s, while the AMD boards are stuck with DDR5 SODIMMs at a meagre 5600 MT/s. In other words, the Intel board gets a third more memory bandwidth!
Really? Because I did look through the entire spec list they provided and didnt see any non-Intel. Didnt get to the order screen since it was behind a waitlist sign up. I agree, that is better then nothing.
I will guess for linux. Most out of the box linux laptops I saw were intel based. I guess open source support of intel is best among others in the industry. Even in my current thinkpad first thing I did was to replace its wifi module from realtek to intel (realtek was always hanging/dropping connection etc).
Your FW's Keyboard breaks? Original price you paid, bonus: you can just buy the newest model.
You want to upgrade anything in your MBP? "You know, with how thin, lightweight and fast they are, it's physically impossible to make them user-serviceable"
On the FW? They gave you the one tool you needed when you purchased your laptop.
I really like what Framwork has been doing, but I have an honest question: is 20 hours of Netflix 4k streaming at 250nit and 30% volume a spec to show off? I genuinely don't know.
I thought most modern laptops have dedicated video decode hardware that is fairly easy on battery. At only 250nit though...that seems dim by today's standards. I'm happy to be wrong though!
Just wish they'd give the FW16 the same treatment, at least in terms of the build. You shouldn't choose a laptop based on looks but thats hitting exactly what I want, minus the 16" screen
I think the pro is enough of an upgrade that it would pay for itself over the course of a year or so. It'd be practical and responsible for you to switch.
(Now you have to validate the next person's justification when it comes up again.)
Is there a side by side comparison for their products anywhere? I'd like to compare this to the current 16 specs. And are they planning a "Pro" version of the 16?
I don't have plans to buy a laptop in the near future, but its nice to have this as an option. I like the idea of a bespoke Linux machine I could use.
AMD Ryzen AI 400 is built on TSMC 4nm and Panther Lake is on Intel's 18A so Intel is literally a generation ahead for this product cycle and wins hands down...
I would have liked the option of non-touch display, and although the display is variable rate (30-120Hz) it's not going to be as optimal as the 1-120Hz panel in the Dell XPS 14 getting it to 40+ hours (https://x.com/dhh/status/2040139744445673938).
Personally, I don't understand aluminum chassis. Sure, it feels more premium, but it comes with quite a bit more weight than plastic, and I much prefer less weight over "feel" when it comes to a laptop.
Plastic. Never again will I allow a laptop to be unusable after some time because of a cracked chassis that couldn't handle mechanical and thermal stress correctly. Never.
It manages heat better, with the entire chassis acting as a heatsink. Also unlike plastic, under repetetive heat/cool cycles the tolerances won't change like plastic will.
Hey let's make a very versatile laptop with tons of options for consumers, and let's not offer the other Standard Canadian French keyboard, let's just have the old one Windows forces on people.
I would love to go framework and the specs here look pretty awesome but 5g modem is a must have for me and they dont really have an option for that. I am guessing due to the antennas.
I wonder if they'll ever make a "Toughbook" type of laptop. Those things are very interesting, since you can shove drives in and out of them and it matches the spirit of what this is.
All four ports support Thunderbolt 4 - if you scroll down to "Interfaces" on the product specs page there's a graphic showing everything that's supported.
Framework is cool, but Lenovo and Dell have been selling repairable enterprise laptops with Linux support for years. Some Precision/XPS laptops even have replaceable graphics cards.* It feels like they don't get nearly as much attention.
* Some will even work with graphics cards from newer laptops using the same chassis; for example, the Precision 7530 (8th gen Intel + Pascal GPUs) can be upgraded with Precision 7540 (Turing) GPUs. This isn't officially supported, though, and may not apply to later models.
In case anyone's curious, my basis for comparison is an old Dell M6600 that's magnesium and has been awesome in terms of rigidity and durability. I still use it regularly even though it's going on 15 years old! (Mainly because I haven't found a newer laptop that's similarly maintainable that I actually like). Also wish it had an option for more RAM, even if the cost is astronomical at today's prices.
So can we finally update the firmware for the Sandisk SN7100 and 850X SSDs under Linux? Last time I've checked you couldn't even download the firmware for WD 850X using a plain browser. You had to use their "special" Windows software.
It’s a niche box within its own niche (Linux). Perhaps they’ll do a pivot to eco friendly slippers. I admire their manifesto, but can’t see them surviving. You can get a last year’s decent Thinkpad for $400-600 with parts galore. This thing, you buy it on principle only.
why is it so hard to find a simple keyboard layout diagram, the first full view of the keyboard I could find was flashing between different color options making it hard to see what the keys are, the first thing I think of for a “developer laptop” is what the keyboard is, feels like it should be more front-and-center (I might have just missed it though, on mobile)
Finally! Glad they will now offer something which doesn't have a bending frame.
... but I wish they would make something with a bit more screen estate without being heavy and bulky. Their 16" is just too big. I really like the Dell XPS 14 and MBP 14", which I think is the right trade-off between screen size and portability.
sigh. I wish I knew. I've got Framework 13 (Ryzen AI 300 series) and it's battery life is absolutely awful. Won't even survive a weekend in sleep. My old, dying Dell was better.
This is the next Framework I will buy, unless AMD's AI 400 series is better.
I await a Linux-based battery test for both active work and overnight suspend consumption. I don't think suspend battery drain is vendor-specific though; AMD and Intel both shat the bed compared to Apple due to hardware decision-making.
edit: I missed this.
>7 days Standby without charging, Wi-Fi connected on Ubuntu
As I understand it, 64 GB modules are largest LPCAMM2 modules yet released with 96 GB being announced only a couple months ago. 128 GB might be possible on the Ultra 5 325 once either sufficiently large LPCAMM2 modules have been release or if the motherboard was redesigned to support dual LPCAMM2 modules, the Ultra X7 358H and Ultra X9 388H only support 96 GB. Support for 256 GB would likely require a desktop processor, or a redesign from Intel to support a quarter terabyte of memory on a mobile processor.
This is awesome. I like my 2 year old framework and this new RAM looks really interesting, I need to learn more.
However, the 358H processor + 64GB RAM + 1TB NVMe is $2700. Wow. Even if I sold my current AMD 7840U with 64GB of RAM it would still be quite an investment.
The biggest question I have, which is probably easily searchable: How well will this run local LLMs? Seems the RAM is fast enough.
I have to agree the keyboard layout is a noticeable bummer. The only actually impactful one I can find on this laptop on my side for now. So, props to the team still!
I hope you’re being sarcastic because if not you’re delisional to expect ECC ram in a laptop. You’re going to pile up software updates that you should absolutely reboot for long before a comic ray causes a meaningful bit flip. ECC is only worthwhile in servers and is a waste of money otherwise, especially since “pro” for laptop = prosumer device.
If you don’t reboot your laptop in years where ECC matters I’m not sure how to help you.
It's so cool that every individual upgrade they did here can be hot-swapped back to the older designs. That's a huge extra lift that they didn't have to do.
To be specific: There's a new lower chassis, and a new chassis top with haptic touchpad. On my older framework I could buy just the chassis top to get the new touchpad. Crazy that they could make that work.
I also just really admire the CEO for doing these semi-scripted public presentations nerding out over the new devices and shouting out specific team members who did the designs. Really hope the company is doing well.
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSxgCEpkiKM
> That's a huge extra lift that they didn't have to do.
It's sorta essential imo if they want to make good on their one value-prop: repairability and the good will that comes with it. If they start releasing a tonne of SKUs with a million different parts, they'll inevitably have to sunset parts at a clip that'll completely make useless their repairability claims.
I am a happy Framework laptop owner, but I paid a premium b/c I expect moves like this. If this would change, it would become just an over-priced laptop... might as well by another Thinkpad or Dell XPS.
That said, I'm super happy they apparently have the good sense to see this. Not all companies make moves in their best interests.
Parts are open source. Other people can keep making them. There's franken think pads from China that use a x61 chassis made 15 years after the release. I had a soup of them before I moved to framework for my daily drivers.
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My heart sank when they said 13 pro and then to see that so much is backwards compatible was amazing. It's quite refreshing to see a company live up to their mission so well.
Yeah, really impressive to see that you can take a 13 and turn it into a 13 pro with just a few new parts.
I've just ordered my own 13 pro. I've been waiting for a laptop and this ticks all the boxes. I'd previously ordered a new dell xps laptop and ultimately returned it because the keyboard was busted. I would have kept it if I could have swapped the keyboard for a new one. The use of LPCAMM is also really nice. I've hoped to see this standard start taking flight and I'm happy to grab a product with it included.
Same, though the battery upgrade alone will be around $260 because of the new bottom cover, at that might just throw in the speaker upgrade as well for $19. Not sure if I even want a haptic touchpad at all.
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Nitpick: hot swap means without powering off. Not recommended for motherboards, batteries, RAM etc. The running electricity is the "hot" part, and without that it's just "swap".
I have a framework 13. It looks like eventually you'll be able to upgrade the chassis to the pro one, including the battery, for under 200? Am I reading this right? That's borderline unbelievable to me
>It's so cool that every individual upgrade they did here can be hot-swapped back to the older designs. That's a huge extra lift that they didn't have to do.
Unfortunately, as is usual for them (edit: and it makes sense; I'm not blaming them), the parts and upgrade kits aren't available for ordering (edit: or pre-ordering) yet, and likely won't be for some time, until the actual laptops are shipping. But yes, this is amazing, and the new pieces are not things I was expecting from them. As soon as it's available, I'll be taking my relatively recent AMD mainboard and putting it in a new chassis+battery+keyboard+speakers+touchpad, possibly skipping the display (I don't care much about a touchscreen, but I do care about display quality, so I'll wait for comparisons to the current 2.8k display). My laptop will, at that point, be almost entirely in a Ship of Theseus situation: I think that only the bezel and some of the expansion cards will be from the original, first-generation laptop I bought from them. That mainboard runs a number of services for me, along with an older display. A second, newer one is waiting for RAM to be a reasonable price (since the RAM it was using is now on my current mainboard); I had planned to use it for some of my research, but maybe I'll end up putting it into this older chassis and have a spare laptop again.
That all this is possible is wonderful, and a credit to them in staying true to their stated ideals.
> Unfortunately, as is usual for them, the parts and upgrade kits aren't available for ordering yet, and likely won't be for some time, until the actual laptops are shipping.
Why would you expect otherwise? I fully expect any OEM to place itself at the front of the queue for parts coming from its suppliers. If for some reason they sold parts before the laptops started shipping, I'd fully expect impatient customers would build complete machines from parts ahead of the shipping dates, which would wreak all kinds of havoc on logistics.
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Unfortunately, as is usual for them, the parts and upgrade kits aren't available for ordering yet, and likely won't be for some time, until the actual laptops are shipping.
It's unfortunate that they can't sell you something that hasn't been manufactured? That doesn't yet exist?
HN is really scraping the bottom of the barrel for things to complain about.
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> I also just really admire the CEO for doing these semi-scripted public presentations
+1. The less-scripted plus the lack of the pretending-reality-distortion personality is such a breeze.
Isnt that the entire value proposition of the company?
It's kind of mind boggling to me that they have a tight chassis, AND it meets their buildable/ugpradeable/repairable goals, AND their backwards compatibility is reaching back five years now.
I think a number of people would have expected these to eventually require a trade-off. Especially coming from pc-building land, where we see new non-backwards-compatible CPU and RAM sockets every 6 or so years.
There's a version of this where Frame.work said, "Design tradeoffs mean the 13 Pro is a new platform that is largely not backwards compatible, but don't worry, the 13 series will still get 5+ years of support and parts" and everyone goes "Aw, well, I guess that's reasonable."
I really want to emphasize that it's looking like Framework is creating a laptop with _better_ backwards compatibility and build-ability than a desktop PC.
All this is to say that this is very very impressive!
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Unfortunately, we live in a world where most companies pay lip service to their stated value proposition, while racing to the bottom.
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They could have done a much more minimal version and called it a day. Being able to swap individual components of the chassis into a 5 year old model is, to me, going way above and beyond.
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That doesn’t negate how impressive it is
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Yes but it's truly impressive to see it. It shows it can be done.
An 11th gen CPU/mobo that came out in 2020 can be dropped straight into this new chassis.
Or the newest display be can be dropped into your 2020 laptop/chassis.
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> shouting out specific team members who did the designs
Inside the case somewhere on mine there was a list of all the names of the people who worked on it. Was pretty cool.
I was really hoping for 6 USB-C ports, dual NVMe, a flush bezel, a better webcam, and most of all, I was hoping for a cooling design upgrade that doesn't cause the computer to self-roast if placed on top of a sofa due to ventilation blockage. Bleh.
yeah.. but.. it cost more overall. i can kust buy a brand new laptop every 3y and its cheaper if i stick to other brands.
As soon as I saw the email announcement for the 13 Pro, my face fell. My assumption was that this was a brand new, incompatible chassis, and that my current 13 would be obsolete, and if I want to go further, I'd have to buy a whole new chassis in one go. Essentially a full laptop replacement, completely betraying the entire point.
And then I click through and see the compatibility table and my jaw drops. Amazing! Yes, it's a new chassis, but all the parts that matter will fit into my old chassis. And if I want to upgrade the chassis, I can even do that piece by piece as well, not all at once.
I'm also glad to see another Intel mainboard, and one with the new, actually-powerful iGPUs. A part of me has considered over time defecting to AMD, but I'm still just more comfortable with Intel, for some reason that probably isn't rational. My one concern is that their CPU options top out at 4 performance cores; the i7-1370P I have right now has 6. But I know these days it's hard to reason about real-world performance just by core count, especially with the different flavors of cores we have now.
Another worry: the thermals of the original 13 chassis have never been great, and I'm concerned that the new mainboard will throttle a bunch under load when installed in the old chassis.
At any rate, I may not upgrade this year, given RAM prices. I have 64GB of DDR4 in my current laptop, and replacing that with the same amount of LPCAMM2 LPDDR5X is probably more expensive than the rest of the laptop itself.
But maybe over the next few years I'll ship-of-theseus myself into a new laptop.
I had the same emotional ride. I'm glad they've kept to the "brand promise" of being able to upgrade an old machine.
I'm two years into my fw 13 and think I'll start by upgrading the chassis. I also bought 64GB of DDR5 (it was on sale, if you can imagine such a thing) - The trackpad, speakers and battery are the parts of the machine that I don't really love so will be happy to upgrade those.
I think if I can I'll keep the silver top cover - A bit of a "I had a fw before they were cool" statement
I think the term “throttling” has done some poisoning of the way we discuss laptops. It’s like a derogatory word that implies instability or something like that.
I wouldn’t think of thermal performance in laptops as “throttling,” think about it in terms of “how much power is this laptop manufacturer deciding to give the chip versus its maximum possible rating and what does that mean for me?”
Performance per watt has a massive diminishing returns curve so you often do NOT want a laptop manufacturer to push the chip to its limit.
Obviously, framework has a limitation that many other similar laptops don’t have by having one fan rather than two, but for these chips in particular I wouldn’t be very concerned as they just don’t consume enough power to create a lot of heat.
I don’t think you need to be concerned with the chassis cooling in the original versus the pro because I think most of the heat dissipation design is on the mainboard. Both versions of the laptop just have a big opening on the bottom for intake then spit out the exhaust out the back. The new chassis is unchanged in that regard.
This concept of “throttling” becomes more of a “design tradeoffs” discussion especially in the world of gaming laptops, which is why I don’t like using the term “throttling.”
Is the thin and light MacBook Pro-sized Zephyrus G14 “throttling” because its RTX 5070ti is being fed less power than a big thick Lenovo Legion? I say no, it’s just being tuned to the intended use case. No, you don’t get the “full power” of the GPU but even the thickest laptops generally don’t get that compared to desktop systems.
The thermals hopefully won't be a problem, since the new Intel chips are quite efficient.
The main problem with Framework 13 thermals is that if you just put it on top of a bed or sofa, the cloth blocks the bottom ventilation holes and the PC roasts itself with zero airflow. It's fine placed on top of a table, just not on a soft surface. I wish they would fix this glaring issue. Most normies are just going to place their laptops on the couch or bed without thinking about it.
Macbooks have a better design here. They are safe to put on top of sofas and beds. No ventilation holes on the bottom.
Looking at Intel's specs, it seems my current CPU has a base of 28W, boost up to 64W. The high end part Framework is selling for the 13 Pro has a base of 25W, boost to 80W.
So seems basically the same on the low end, with the new part boosting quite a bit higher. Presumably you get more perf per watt on the new CPU, but still.
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Does anyone know whether the AMD chips are more performant? I like AMD more as a company, especially since I like healthy competition. I'd prefer an AMD chip if it's as efficient and performant as the Intel ones.
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> My one concern is that their CPU options top out at 4 performance cores; the i7-1370P I have right now has 6.
I was looking at benchmark comparisons between my i5-1240P which has 4 performance cores and 8 efficiency cores, and the Ultra 5 325 which has 4 performance cores and 4 low-cache ultra low power efficiency cores.
The 325 is still faster multicore than the 1240P.
This is my plan as well, start with the chassis and find a newer mainboard second-hand. I configured a 2TB SSD and 64 GB of LPCAMM2 RAM to see the price for the new 13 pro and it was doubled from about 1500 CAD to over 3200 CAD before tax. Upgrading the mainboard, when I have a perfectly functioning (and fast) 12th gen Intel i5, is out of the question for now.
If you ever decide to buy the whole new system, buy it without memory and storage from Framework and of course DIY instead of assembled. You can get them cheaper elsewhere. They aren’t Apple-level overpriced for memory but they are noticeably overpriced.
This advice is a bit more difficult with the current LPCAMM situation. In the US, besides Framework, I was only able to find a 32GB module from Adorama, seemingly a left over new stock Crucial module that I assume must be discontinued in Crucial-branded form, or eBay. But it is far cheaper than Framework’s price ($250) and seemingly still available.
(Interestingly, Adorama’s website says that it’s “trending.”)
You’ll save at least a little bit of pocket change buying your SSD elsewhere at the very least.
I'm really looking forward to having this as the go-to laptop to recommend to devs again. The original Framework chassis was really showing it's age next to e.g. a MacBook Pro or the new XPS 14.
Having mainline Linux on a system with 24h+ battery life in a 13" case is pretty damn impressive.
> Having mainline Linux on a system with 24h+ battery life in a 13" case is pretty damn impressive.
Does it have such battery life on Linux? The benchmarks, apart from suspend battery life, are for Windows.
Can't attest to framework, but after switching to an arch based syttem on my Quite low level HP Envy 13'' I get about 130% - 170% of time out of the system.
Yes, I am running mostly in dark mode now. Yes, I am using the terminal significantly more often now (80% of the time). But also I have always a browser, always Slack, WhatsApp, Obsidian and more often than not a few other things running on virtual screens.
Just the added battery life made this my daily driver. Yes - I so, so want to buy a framework. Still waiting for the multicolored international keyboards - and also the prices for memory just kill it for me right now. The system I would love to have is about 2k more than a few months ago. I just can't splurge that much right now.
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Don't see why it wouldn't - as long as pstate etc. works it should be the same. I'd argue it's probably better given that modern desktops use far less resources in the background compared to Windows
I bet they don't publish Linux numbers because it depends on which desktop you use etc.
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I'd be surprised. Granted, not quite apples-to-apples, but I have the original Framework 13 chassis, 13th-gen Intel mainboard, original battery, and I've never gotten more than 5 hours or so, 6, maybe, at most, on Linux. Yes, the new 13 Pro comes with a larger batter, and maybe the new mainboard is more power-efficient, but 24h+ sounds way too optimistic.
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Keep in mind the Ultra 300 chips also only have recent support in the kernel. The battery life likely isn't great for now (as with previous gen Intels right after release). It makes sense to me that for now the benchmarks would be Windows specific.
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They have a battery live stream from 100% to 0 linked on their product page which is broken. Hopefully they'll fix it and add both linux and windows version of the test.
I don't see why it wouldn't? I have a 16" MSI laptop with an 11th gen Intel processor (known for horrible battery life), I use Arch/Hyprland and it gets 5-6 hours with a battery degraded to 68%. Which is still in the ballpark of what most users said they got on Windows when this model was new.
Linux battery life is fine and on par with (or possibly better than) Windows these days if you don't do anything silly (I'm sure some distro and DE consume silly amounts of power just because, but it doesn't have to be that way).
Based on reports about Panther Lake, the new process, plus a 13" screen and large-ish battery, I believe the battery life claims.
DHH has been using omarchy with pantherlake getting 16+ hours
Yes, it was not mentionned often in the list of complaints about the fw 13 because the chassis was good enough but my main gripe was that it felt flimsy.
Strangely it was not flimsy and held its own but it felt flimsy and to be honest I never was quite able to tell why. What one want for a premium laptop is the satisfying rigidity of a Macbook and it didn't have it.
So for me this new chassis is a banger release. It's amazing that I can just drop my "old" hardware in it and it would just work.
Rigid = premium-feeling
Strong = won't break
My Framework 13 is robust but isn't the most rigid-feeling. If I one-hand hold the laptop by the front edge it presses the touchpad clicker.
The LPCAMM2 memory is both the biggest plus for me, and the biggest challenge for it given how rare it is to find in stock, and the premium price over LPDDR5 and crazy prices of it.
Featute/performance wise the latest 13s are great for anything work related (I have this small AMD one), but the battery life is pretty awful.
this looks exciting. We are allowed to choose between Windows, macOS and Linu at my job so I might consider this when we are due for an upgrade in a year or 2. Feels wrong to discard our M2 Pro machines when they are perfectly capable of my relatively minuscule workloads at the moment, it only slowed down once when I had a memory leak in Safari from a AWS tab
I’m happy to answer questions folks have around the product (later today).
This looks suspiciously like something I could buy : a lightweight well made Linux laptop, with long battery life. I currently use a MacBook and won’t get near a windows machine.
Two questions 1/ will there be a 15 inches version ? ( I’m not getting any younger I like bigger screens ) 2/ software-wise how reliable are the suspend/resume and all the laptop features ? I’ve been using Linux for about 30y and to me this is typically the bits that usually fail. To put it differently, how confident are you that things will work properly out of the box ?
Other than that , I love what you’re doing, please continue.
As other comments have noted, we have Framework Laptop 16 for folks who want bigger screens, and we had some updates for that product today too: haptic touchpad option and an entry-level Ryzen 5 version.
We've been sending pre-release hardware to developers at a bunch of distros to make sure that the core use cases like suspend/resume work as expected out of the box. You can check our general Linux support at frame.work/linux
I want to say as a fw13 owner that people don't realize that the 3:2 screen ratio gives you extra vertical space compared to your typical notebook and the screen does not feel small at all. That was an excellent decision from their design team.
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I’m not @nrp but I think I can safely answer this one:
> 1/ will there be a 15 inches version ? ( I’m not getting any younger I like bigger screens )
They make a Framework 16, so a Framework 16 Pro now suddenly seems like a possibility, but I don’t think they’re going to make a 15-inch when they have the 16.
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> will there be a 15 inches version ? ( I’m not getting any younger I like bigger screens )
Seconding this question, though I would also be very interested in learning whether they're planning a 14" version.
Hi! Congratulation on the launch, I hope the users will like these!
Please, I do have a question about Desktop: there have been numerous reports of noisy PSU fan and little feedback from FW [1], could you shed some light on the situation? Are you seeing noisy PSU yourself, are there plans for a fix or another PSU? I understand you wanted a separate, and thus reparable Flex ATX PSU, but maybe just one larger fan for the whole case would have worked better (c.f. Steam Machine)?
[1] https://community.frame.work/t/noisy-psu-fan/74751
Thanks!
For those of us that, say, just got a new battery months before this was announced... a while ago (I forget when), there was talk of possibly sharing designs to enable repurposing them as power banks. Any word about that?
Also is there a way of exposing an existing touchpad to that new control board for your external one? (Or keyboard I guess, but the use case is that I had to replace my keyboard too, and for what was available at the time ended up just going with a whole input cover. Truthfully, I was already curious about exposing it to USB-C before hearing about this, and prefer wired anyway, but am also curious about the more immediately relevant part of the question.)
Are you guys thinking about pushing to improve the linux software experience at all? To me that could almost be another selling point, if Framework 13 came with some downstream patches that improved sleep, power management, multi-display and hi-dpi monitor handling, etc.
And secondly how healthy is framework as a company, and to what extent do you make money from consumers vs sales to big companies?
Any plans to have a keyboard with a trackpoint and thumb buttons? I Don't need a trackpad.
If you add this then you'll have a new customer for life.
The trackpoint is the only thing that keeps me chained to Thinkpads.
Same here. I wonder if a third party could offer a keyboard with a trackpoint, now that the keyboard is an individually upgradeable part.
+1 to that.
I don't know how relevant is the parent argument these days, but pfu see released HHKB with trackpoint. Even despite dropping their signature topre switches, I consider this one of the best purchases. My wrists can't thank me enough.
I won't consider a laptop without one.
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same
All the battery life stats use Windows for testing. How does the equivalent Linux performance compare?
We're going to publish more Linux benchmarks as well. We have s0ix noted (7 days), and we're trying to make some more repeatable productivity-oriented workflows for Linux to use. We expect that Phoronix will publish some pretty thorough power efficiency tests too. We'll certainly be providing them with review hardware.
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Always depends on your configuration but I've not had issues with arch or fedora getting comparable battery life to Windows in a long time.
Hey Nirav, congrats on the newest release and I'm really eyeing the 13 Pro.
A couple of questions:
1. How are the thermals? I've had mixed experiences with my 11th gen FW 13 throttling under load with the fan sounding noisy. It's fine if I'm alone but if I'm at a team gathering, it's noticeably loud.
2. Does the lid open with one hand?
1. Intel Core Ultra Series 3 is super efficient for video conferencing. That's a use case that Intel has specifically been optimizing for, so as long as you're using video conferencing software that leverages hardware encode/decode, which should be most of them at this point, the fan should stay off entirely.
2. We have one hand open on the lid for each generation of 13.
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What's the sleep situation? I have an ancient Dell with S3, which is totally fine, and a Mac for work, which is fine, but the modern standby situation, as summarized by people who are mad about it, sounds bad.
First off, Framework is maybe the most exciting company I've seen over the last 5 years. My Framework 13 AMD is a wonderful machine. Thank you to your and your team for the incredible work and commitment!
Two questions:
1. Will there will be a concrete guide to upgrading a standard Framework 13 to the Pro. I watched the video and read the page a few times, and I'm a bit confused what the whole process is and if all the required upgrades need to happen together, or if they can go piece meal.
2. With all the different components and increasing SKUs, I'd be a little worried that if I didn't upgrade to a Pro in the near future, that the old hardware would no longer be supported and it'd be a headache to upgrade at some point. Can Framework guarantee that there will always be an upgrade path within a size and line?
Again, big thank you to Framework and I look forward to using my Framework 13 for a long, long time :)
This should answer most of your first question: https://frame.work/laptop13pro?tab=upgrade-to-pro
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I'm excited for the new speakers - that's been one of the biggest pain points on my 13.
- Is the Dolby Atmos configuration available for Linux as well as Windows? Or more generally, will the speakers sound as good on Linux as they do on Windows?
- Will we be able to get audio comparison samples between the old and new speakers?
Really happy to see the new chassis for the 13 Pro! I own the 16 myself, and have been really happy with it, and am excited to see the haptic touchpad + unibody modules hit the marketplace. Those address the largest build quality issues I had with the device.
You probably can't comment on this, but just to note it, I would be very excited to see the 16 get a similar Pro chassis.
Does the Dolby treatment carry into Linux with comparable performance, or does "best sound" require Windows?
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Now that you have a custom touch-screen. How long until you release a tablet (Surface-pro-like) form factor? I'm still using my 2017 Surface Pro because the form factor is amazing, but no one has come up with anything to compete with it.
I know it's not the most ideal form factor for a repairable device, but I can dream.
Not quite the same form-factor, but they've gotten pretty close to a tablet with the Framework Laptop 12.
https://frame.work/au/en/laptop12
I would love a good Linux tablet with long battery life, repairability be damned.
Has anyone tried Qwen 3.6 35B A3B on the 370 version with plenty of ram and if so what's the best tokens per second you can get, with the ideal quant, like maybe the U GGUF at 4 bit
Q4_K_S Qwen3.5 30B-A3B runs at around 29 t/s for me on the 370 version with 64 GB of RAM, running llama.cpp without any tweaking. I haven't tried Qwen3.6 yet, but could download it tomorrow; since I have a 128GB FW Desktop at home, I tend to use that remotely rather than my laptop directly, which preserves my battery.
You magnificent bastard, you know just how to suck money out of my wallet. And it's not even Christmas yet :-)
Will you produce a keyboard with full size up/down arrows?
Why is the AMD version not available in LPCAMM2, and can we expect to see an LPCAMM2 version in the near future?
Probably because it's not really a brand new AMD motherboard?
I'd expect/hope to see whatever comes after Strix Halo in a Framework motherboard. That's when you should be looking for LPCAMM2 for AMD.
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Hey, love that thing and I am considering to sell my current laptop to get one, but I wanted to first know if the laptop features pen/stylus support? I guess not, as it is not using a full glass cover like the 12 and otherwise it would have probably been advertised, and can we expect in the future an upgrade path towards that (by replacing only the panel or the whole top part maybe?)
I love it, I've been waiting for years to buy a Framework, but my current laptop has so far refused to die. I think it's now finally old enough to justify upgrading.
Will the new keyboard colour schemes come to other locales? I love the orange/black/grey but probably not enough to learn American English.
French Canadian in black with the orange/grey/black please!
What’s the display color accuracy like outside of sRGB? How much of adobe or P3 does it cover?
This is a 100% sRGB panel. We did look at expanded colorspace, but kept 100% sRGB to optimize for power consumption.
I’d prefer a non-touchscreen. Touchscreen does add about 200g of weight. Is that likely to be an option?
This is an in-cell touchscreen and we didn't add cover glass. That means there is no weight impact to having it.
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The touchscreen is backward-compatible with the old/regular FW13, so I imagine the regular FW13 screen is forward-compatible with the Pro. (Of course, I don't know if they'll sell that configuration or if you'd have to cobble it together from the marketplace.)
> Touchscreen does add about 200g of weight.
200g is weight of a smartphone, there's no way touch weighs that much.
Framework 13 Pro screen seems to have plastic surface as before, not glass-laminated (which I guess could add 200g, but it's not a requirement for laptop touchscreen)
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Exactly. Why would I touch my screen? My hands are on the keyboard, I'm not lifting them.
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Question: did the hints given at https://frame.work/nextgen include any secret messages you want the public to know about? Maybe the secret was missed during the run up to today?
Hi nrp, what's the battery life like on the more high-end CPUs (Ultra X7 358H, Ultra X9 388H)? Are you also planning to offer a non-touch display?
Ultra X7 358H is the config we've used for most of our battery life tests, and efficiency should be very similar on the X9 config. We're keeping the SKU stack simpler and just having a single display option that has touch. You can disable touch in your OS though if you don't want to use it.
Is the keyboard for the 13 pro the same?
The upgrade kits I'm seeing on the marketplace have a keyboard included.
Would it be possible to have a input cover pro, bottom cover pro, batteries pro, speakers pro and use my existing keyboard?
The keyboard is mechanically the same, but it's a new SKU because we had to move the flex tail locations to support the haptic touchpad.
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Tagging along: will they ever get QMK?
I preordered a 13 Pro with Ryzen, which I'm already very excited about. Reading between the lines of your video announcement, though, it seems like the Intel experience might be more optimal (you pointed out Intel's new low power efficiency cores and Dolby sound being tested with Intel).
If I want the best battery life and sound possible with Linux, should I switch my preorder to Intel?
I'm also curious about these.
What I am also curious is around memory management. On the Intel, I can get at most 64Gb RAM for now, 96Gb in the future. On AMD I can get 128Gb right now. Do they differ in how they can share RAM with the GPU? Do either need me to specify how much is vRAM and how much is available to the CPU, or are them both unified, similar to how Apple Silicon does it?
There's no mention of Wi-Fi. Is the network card integrated to the new intel mainboards ?
Wi-Fi is an M.2 2230 like on each of our products. We're using Intel's BE211 module for Wi-Fi 7.
Will the hinges be 360 like the laptop 12? I wonder how useful the touchscreen will be without it.
It looks like not (you'd assume they'd have called it out if it was). I really don't understand the utility of a touchscreen without a 360 degree hinge.
This is my main question as well. Either stock or with some sort of separate hinge kit, that would completely seal the deal for me.
Do these laptops, either the Intel or the AMD version, work with eGPUs on Linux?
I just realised that the credit card I used to place my preorder will expire next month. Will there be an option to update my card details when I need to pay the full amount?
Yes, you'll get notified when your batch is getting ready to ship, and you can update your payment information. You can also update the default payment method in your user account any time.
One pain point is writing at night the keyboard backlight has only one bright white color.
Will it be possible to change the backlight color to, f.ex. dark red?
How well does the haptic trackpad stack up against the ones found in macbooks?
Any word on availability for that 12-core ARM mainboard? Also for the record I’d really love a Snapdragon X2 (or later) option someday…
It's a third party mainboard right?
https://metacomputing.io/products/metacomputing-aipc?variant...
And anyway the performance of this CIX chip is really bad compared to the Snapdragon X2 or current x86 chips. Jeff Geerling has geekbench results here:
https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2026/arm-mainboard-for-fra...
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I would love to buy one and know a bunch of others. Wonder if shipping to Japan is in the works?
Yeah, waiting for that too. They should expand the regions instead of new models. Availability is really limited.
What would it take you to ship to Norway?
They do as of a few days ago!
https://frame.work/no/en
Qmk support for the keyboard, like the Laptop 16 has?
Why LPCAMM and not SOCAMM2? What is the status of SOCAMM for laptops and would it be possible to do a SOCAMM for NVMe?
Socamm is all about data centre capacity. It starts at 128GB and you can only order it in bulk(?) from data centre providers.
On the other hand I can go to a local store and buy a stick of 32GB lpcamm2.
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Thanks Nirav, always appreciated :)
P.S. The printer gag was cruel, just saying.
No silver option?
There are silver pro parts on the marketplace, although I'm not sure if they're more aimed at converting a standard 13 to a pro:
https://frame.work/gb/en/products/laptop13pro-input-cover-ki...
https://frame.work/gb/en/products/laptop13pro-bottom-cover-k...
https://frame.work/gb/en/products/top-cover-cnc?v=FRANGKHA01 (not specifically a pro part but listed as compatible)
Any blue-sky thinking like 256GB RAM support?
I have a feeling that laptops don't keep up with the today's dev workflows.
The ram is an Intel chipset limitation, I don't know that they can do anything about it. Even AMD only goes up to 128GB now.
what’s the screen like compared to the previous fw13 options? i’m considering an upgrade (screen-only, from the first gen one)
and by the way, it’s a world where it’s hard to be a fan of any company any more and the fact that you guys remain exceptional gives me hope
for the love of god when are you going to start selling in Japan?
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It's interesting what political issues people make paramount. Apple does ewaste as a service but don't have a fraction of the criticism and infighting as the open source community.
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Why is this not offered with a decent keyboard? Proper key caps and meaningful travel.
I really want to love this thing but at least in the UK, matching specs it comes out as more expensive than the MBP - even worse when you factor in potential discounts/sales which framework doesn't offer.
Framework 13 Pro: £2064 (Ultra X7 358H, 16GB, 1TB, default ports, no adapter)
Framework 13 Pro: £2264 (Ultra X7 358H, 32GB, 1TB, default ports, no adapter)
MacBook Pro 14: £1699 (M5, 16GB, 1TB, no adapter)
MacBook Pro 14: £2099 (M5, 32GB, 1TB, no adapter)
MacBook Pro 14: £2199 (M5 Pro, 24GB, 1TB, no adapter) - added as I think it’s an even better deal
I’d just keep in mind that you’re comparing a niche product from a startup breaking into a notoriously competitive market who are also doing the harder task of making these slim devices user upgradeable to a product from one of the largest companies in the world, with a CEO that is well known for being a master of supply chain, and with all of the economies of scale.
And they’re miraculously within 10-20% of each other.
Does MBP run Linux? That would be the selling point for me ... But I guess I am not in a big group.
Also MBP is not really repairable at all.
Practically, if you have AppleCare you don't need to worry about repairability.
> But I guess I am not in a big group.
Big enough that they specifically targeted that exact group with this laptop.
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M1 and M2 models run Asahi Linux, M3 and M4 don't run anything natively I think (but not entirely sure).
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Yes, see https://asahilinux.org/
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I would love a MBP that ran Linux. I am not a fan of MacOS (though it's one of my two daily drivers).
What I really want is for other hardware vendors to catch up. I like Apple hardware but hate their software.
On macbook you could emulate windows. Inside windows emulate linux. And it would still be much faster than this framework
Dumb comparison, because buying a Framework is a single transaction where I exchange money for a computer, and buying a Mac is an entrypoint to “The Ecosystem” where Apple wants to squeeze me for $<pricing_tier>/month forever.
Peep the margins on “Products” versus “Services” and you will understand what Apple's incentives are and why just selling me hardware isn't it: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/pdfs/fy2026-q1/FY26_Q1_Consol...
I've bought two Apple products in my life, both Macbook Pros, one in 2014 and one in 2021. I have a Pixel phone, zero transactions in the App Store all-time, pay $0 to Apple on any kind of subscription basis. Not disagreeing with the nature of their incentive structure, but if they're intentionally crippling their hardware division somehow to squeeze me for money, they're really bad at it.
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Buying a Mac is also a single transaction. Yes, they have lots of other services they want to sell you on but you're in no way obliged to take them up on it.
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It's really not, though. You don't even need an Apple account to set up a Mac.
I pay $3/month to Apple in exchange for full-quality backups of decades of photos, but I could easily stop doing that, or switch to another provider, if I wanted to. (I don't, because $3/month is extremely fair for what I get.) I've never paid for any other Apple service and likely never will. The OS never, ever nags me about services - compare that to Windows!
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What $/month are you forced to buy for a Mac?
You're also locked into their ecosystem for repairs, accessories etc. all of which are more expensive than anywhere else.
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Also very sad that the M5 dominates the X7 358H in singlethreaded performance, not to mention the M5 Pro that dominates it in both single- and multithreaded performance.
Everything that isn’t a MacBook will be more expensive than a MacBook, so you should choose a price you want to spend and then evaluate if you prefer a Framework or a Mac at that price point. If your available spending power is too low for a Framework, you’re not getting a Framework — and, separately, if you want a Framework for some reason specific to the Framework and can afford one, then the price of a Mac isn’t relevant unless a Mac can satisfy that same reason.
> Everything that isn’t a MacBook will be more expensive than a MacBook
Unrelated, but never thought I’d see this kind of sentiment
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> Everything that isn’t a MacBook will be more expensive than a MacBook
Imagine telling this to someone in 2010 or 2015.
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At least it's available in the UK
I've wanted to get a Framework for a long time now, but their lack of shipping to Israel (and active prevention of using Freight forwarders) has prevented me.
If they were willing to sell me the 13 Pro, I'd sell my Yoga Pro 7 in a heartbeat to replace with a 13 Pro
This is largely driven by RAM prices, which is a real shame.
I bought a Thinkpad P16s with 64 GB of LPDDR5x ram in October 2024 for just over $1100.
64 GB of LPDDR5x will add $849 to the price of a Framework 13 Pro. Thats insane. I would love a future Framework 16 Pro but that will probably run $3500 for the configuration that I would want if memory and storage prices don't come down.
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how would they compare over 10-15 years though. with one you are able to swap out the motherboard when you want an upgrade and with the other you have to buy a completely new device.
then when it comes to repairing broken parts they are on opposite ends of the scale where apple actually go out of their way to make it harder for you to do that and its probably more expensive as well since only apple certified repair shops have access to certain parts
> the other you have to buy a completely new device.
You can sell the old Macbook and recoup a lot of the original investment.
Comparing it to a MacBook misses the point. The reason to buy the framework is modularity, repairability, customisability. You can upgrade your CPU, add specific ports you want, change ram. You can't do any of that with a Mac.
In his presentation, Nirav compared it twice to a MacBook. Even saying they want to build the MacBook of the Linux world iirc. While I also agree with you, it’s still a valid comparison.
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On top of it, intel chips are not competitive with apple silicon. Why buy a laptop that's 30% slower and uses more energy for the same price?
To be able to run any OS you want.
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30% slower than a M5 is a M3/M4. I will take that, thank, and not concern myself with MacOS or the thousand cuts of leaving x86.
To avoid having to use Mac OS, and suffering the whims of Apple.
If you're even making this comparison, buy the MBP or keep looking.
Same in Germany, it ends around similar Apple and Thinkpad prices.
For reference, comparing against a budget laptop:
Leno 14.1": £300.19 (i7-8650U, 16GB, 1TB) Leno 14.1": £341.59 (i7-8650U, 32GB, 1TB)
https://aliexpress.com/item/1005010289025003.html
I'll take this opportunity to report on my Framework Laptop 13 experience. I've had it for over a year.
The case is warped in multiple places. One USB C module doesn't accept a power charge reliably. It can overheat and shutdown. If the case flexes a little the trackpad stops responding - it needs to be on a flat surface. Power brick died.
On the plus side, my partner had one and when she threw it away she gave me her parts and I was able to swap some out. That was cool.
Adding to the review thread: I bought a Framework 13 in 2021. I'm sold on the ideal, I really like the chassis and the keyboard, and I _love_ the screen ratio. I replaced several parts and own every type of connector. I really liked my 13!
I just had my mainboard die, and I was advised there currently isn't another mainboard in stock that works with my old DDR4 RAM. They don't have any newer DDR5 RAM in stock apparently either, so I was out of luck and ended up buying a Lemur Pro last week.
In my experience, the Framework hardware is great but very flakey and frequently needs replacing.
Support is awful; they'll repeatedly ask you to do things you've already done (and shown proof of), they can take days to get back to you, and are generally unhelpful. They also didn't think to mention to me when I said I needed to buy a new laptop and their parts were all out of stock that they had a new machine coming out in the next week, which is insane to me. I would've been an easy convert. Sometimes I think it's bots doing the support, but if that was the case, they'd reply back faster.
Time will tell whether I'll return back to the ecosystem, but the support experience (and the hardware being poor enough that I frequently need support) is putting me off for now.
To compare anecdotes, I’ve had mine for 3 years, and it’s still working great. Haven’t had any issues with it.
Depending on how warped the case is, it might or might not help, but i was having the same issues with the trackpad and it was an easy fix for me. Steps here: https://guides.frame.work/Guide/Touchpad+Rubbing+Fix+Guide/1...
In general, coming from a MacBook, I’ve had more quality issues with the framework, but fixing them has always been possible with a little digging. I’ve enjoyed the experience of learning how to take apart and fix my gear, but I’m also the sort of person who darns holes in his socks, so ymmv.
That's rough. Did you contact their support about it? I measure a lot of companies by how they handle recovering from stuff like this.
I contacted their support because my charging cable frayed and I thought I was still in warranty. Turns out I'd miscalculated and I was a year out but they replaced it for free anyway.
Their support has been very responsive and helpful every time I've contacted them so I'd be surprised if they wouldn't have helped the GP.
Hopeful that's no longer an issue with the Pro version, being made of a machined single-piece aluminum block.
I was just at an event.
The vibe I got was the quality is really bad, BUT the people who like Framework and believe in it gladly just buy another one.
Not for me though. Within 6 months we’ll see similar specs from other oems at 50 to 70% of the price
I'll be excited to buy one of these (or the newer iteration) if component prices ever return to pre-2025 levels. AUD$800 for 32GB RAM is insanity (which is of course not within their control, but my purchasing impulses are - at least for now).
Finally a haptic trackpad. Unfortunately not having one was a dealbreaker when purchasing my laptop last year, but next upgrade I'll be able to consider them again.
You can get a new Asus P16 ProArt with 5070 for exact same price (AI 370, 2TB drive, 64GB RAM)
16" inch laptop with a tkl keyboard and an AMD chip - why don't we have more of them on the market?
My main gripes:
- There's zero mention of the display technology, just "2.8K Touchscreen Display"
- The optional HDMI ("3rd Gen") adapter is only 4K 60hz, when the host chip has integrated Thunderbolt 4 which can output 4K 240Hz
In the announcement video, he says the display is "LTPS LCD" (I don't actually know if that's good or not)
They would have definitely advertised if it was something special like mini-LED but it seems to be a pretty standard display.
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Has anyone made the jump from a Mac to Framework as a daily driver? This is the first model to get my attention as a possible candidate for a full switch to Linux.
I did last year after deciding that Apple's software just isn't for me anymore. I've always had a Linux desktop around (and used to daily drive Linux on a laptop years ago) so I was happy to consolidate on my preferred platform.
Biggest gripes I had are:
A) battery life (both during use and standby just kinda sucking on Linux in general compared to os x, not exactly framework specific but I did get used to how amazing my m1 pro for longevity)
B) the case looking nice but feeling a little flimsy
C) the speakers are pretty bad (though I did get turned on to easyeffects and there is a profile for the 13 which helped a bit)
D) macs completely spoiled me trackpad wise
It seems like they are taking a stab at all of these in some way and I'm excited to see how it goes, especially with so much being backwards compatible.
All the same gripes from me. None enough to be a deal breaker, but every once in a while I'll do something on my GFs macbook pro and be blown away by how solid it feels.
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I use a MacBook Pro at work and a Framework 13 for personal use. The biggest downside to my Framework 13 is the low battery life; I’ve been getting only about 5 hours on Windows 11. Other than that, I like my Framework 13.
I am very excited about the Framework 13 Pro and it’s dramatically improved battery life. It’s unfortunate regarding RAM prices, though; I only paid $96 for 32GB of DDR5 RAM back in December 2023 when I ordered my Framework 13 (I bought my RAM on Newegg). It’s much more expensive today. I’d like to upgrade, but I can’t afford it at today’s RAM prices. With that said, because the RAM is still modular in the Framework 13 Pro, I could settle for a lower configuration and wait until a later date to upgrade the RAM.
If you live near a Microcenter, you can get 64GB for "only" $560 vs the $850 price on Framework's website.
You could do what I'm considering doing, which is sell my old Framework at market price. The 64GB of RAM that I bought for $200 at the same time you did is now worth almost $800 on Amazon new.
I was a Mac guy for 12+ years and switched to Linux on desktop + Framework about 2 years ago.
It takes time. On many dimensions, the Framework running Linux is laughably worse. I never thought about battery life while the lid is closed until my Framework.
That being said, running Linux is very fun and can be productive if you choose a well-supported distribution and desktop environment. I landed on KDE Plasma and Fedora/Kununtu. It has been my daily driver and I see no reason to go back.
My gateway to Linux was buying an old Thinkpad T580 and messing around Arch Linux. If you’re on the fence, this may be a good place to start.
> I never thought about battery life while the lid is closed until my Framework.
In the days of S3, I never thought about it either. Ironically it's on my Mac that I have to remember to hibernate if I won't use my laptop for a week or whatever, because it'll die if I don't. It just happens to be that it was on a Mac on which I first tried "modern standby" features.
Anyway I feel you. This big battery life improvement is what has convinced me my next laptop can be a Framework.
I’ve been on Fedora Gnome but wonder if I’d like Plasma. I know that I can try it on a USB stick and I’ve also read that other people have made sure to install their operating system and their files on different partitions to make distro switching easier.
Yeah, last June. I switched from an M1 Air to a 13”, 7640U.
I’m running Fedora. Other than some h265 and heic codec/file format issues, (I’ve had to convert videos and photos to more open codec/format), it’s been a great machine.
I miss the battery life of the M1 but I enjoy the comfort of knowing I can upgrade storage or fix anything I want when needed.
Other than personal web browsing, I do web development and tinkering with music creation (Bitwig).
I don’t think I’ll ever buy another Apple machine. I want to use devices that are repairable, support those companies, and use software that is open source or multi-platform without continuing subscriptions.
Now that I’m personally invested in Linux, I’d like to contribute to desktop app projects that are open source since now, I am also a user.
I have gradually been moving my digital life away from Google and Apple/iCloud.
I never used a Mac for my personal machine, but I've always used them as my work machines. I purchased the first generation of the Framework 13 AMD laptops And it's been my personal machine ever since. It's a damn fine machine and I love having full control over the components in my machine without some OEM nonsense for repairs that manufacturers like Dell try to pull (wouldn't accept non-OEM batteries for me in the past).
The battery life is the biggest negative compared to a MacBook, but that seems to be better now (though I doubt it, or anyone, can compete with the power/performance that Apple is putting out now).
The issue with my advice to you though is that I prefer Linux. And I would be running Linux at work if I could. Mac OS is fine, but I do prefer Linux as my main operating system.
If I didn't specifically want to run Linux, though, I would probably be using a MacBook, despite their lack of repairability.
All that said, I really love my framework and I don't intend on buying another machine any time soon, especially because I can upgrade my Framework 5 years from now (hopefully).
I did. Linux obliterates Mac in agentic workflows.
In which way? Also, out of curiosity, are you running local LLMs? How's the general experience?
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I have a MacBook Air M2. I bought a framework 13 last year right before the RAM shortage. I really wanted to love it but ended up returning it due to really bad battery life performance (NixOS). Still on the MacBook today, but heavily considering the new framework
I'm on the same Mac as you. Have you tried Asahi Linux? I am running Asahi Remix with Gnome and couldn't be happier.
Tried once, not very fond of my FW 13" Intel 13th Gen 2. Mac superior in both hardware & software.
I was on a Macbook Pro (multiple models for many years) and jumped to the 12th gen intel framework. It is fantastic laptop, just showing its age a bit (mostly battery life as I still have the smaller battery and 12th gen intel wasn't that great for battery).
I upgraded the screen and speakers, nothing else really needed changing throughout the years.
I was so tired of the bad docker performance on macOS that I went to a framework with Linux. Linux on a laptop (Fedora/Gnome specifically) worked so much better than I expected too.
I'm hopeful I can pre-order this new model as well.
Did you try OrbStack on macOS before switching? Wondering if it would still bother you
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DHH spoke about precisely that move at length in his Lex Fridman interview. Which incidentally is the only full episode i have ever watched.
No Ryzen options? Also no 1600nits display for working outside. Battery and display brightness are the only reasons I'm sticking with Macbook Pro.Sad it's not a priority for any other manufacturer. Because that's all you need, quality display, battery and remote access.
Intel got a lot of attention during the keynote, but the Ryzen AI 300 series mainboards are available if you want them. It's one of the first few choices in the configuration flow.
Man, I want to get a Framework, but I'm held back by the lack of trackpoint. Yes, I know it's not going to happen officially, but I just can't see myself using a laptop without one. So, until someone figures out some mod or 3rd-party part I'm sticking with Thinkpads.
Dell Precision used to have track points. Now the only holdout is Thinkpad. I sometimes wonder how much the track point itself keeps that product line successful.
That being said, thinkpads are almost as upgradeable as frameworks. The latest t14 received a better score from ifixit than framework for repairability (first ever to get a 10).
I wonder if Lenovo has telemetry of some kind that tells them how many people use the trackpad and how often compared to the trackpad / mouse.
> The latest t14 received a better score from ifixit than framework for repairability (first ever to get a 10).
Hm, I wish they had scores for the X230 and older; I'd like to see how they compare. IMO they're better, if nothing else because you can replace RAM, SSD and battery without unscrewing the entire bottom.
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same
I’ve been a MacBook guy for almost a decade now, but I’ve been watching Framework since their first announcement. This is the most appealing Framework device I’ve seen.
The new display, battery life, the new Intel chips, and LPCAM2 memory all look great. I love my M1 MBP but Apple’s software quality has been rough the past year especially. I think this is also the first time the Framework 13 has officially supported Thunderbolt? Depending on how macOS 27 turns out I may seriously consider the 13 Pro as my next laptop. I’d slap Fedora Workstation on it and call it a day.
I was lucky enough to be at the event and I can say the 13 Pro feels great in the hand. Overall chassis stiffness, typing (I guess due to the increased chassis stiffness), and the new touchpad all feel premium. Between that and the battery life, I think this really has a chance to win over a lot more current MBP users.
FYI, the existing Framework 13 Intel motherboards do support Thunderbolt 4: https://knowledgebase.frame.work/usb-port-definition-matrix-... There's an additional, optional retimer update that's officially Thunderbolt certified, but I haven't bothered with that because my Thunderbolt dock was already working: https://knowledgebase.frame.work/en_us/framework-laptop-bios...
Out of sheer curiosity, why do apple devices have astronomically longer battery life when sleeping? (How is the sleep so efficient?)
I was busy with work and didn't touch my personal laptop for a few weeks and it still had well over half the battery.
They write their own software. And firmware. Other OEMs can just beg their tier 1/2 suppliers to get their shit together and put components to sleep properly by making windows, drivers, and firmware work well together.
Also things like lpddr5x, ssd controller built into the SoC with cache in unified ram (instead of running a whole ass separate computer with its own ram on an m2 stick) etc
This is it.
Sleep is such a finicky thing which requires all parts of the system to do it right.
My desktop lost the ability to sleep because I guess the nvidia drivers have decided that you are wrong to want to put things to sleep.
Exactly. This is precisely why I stopped buying Windows computers and started buying System76. Well that and the support.
Looks like Framework has started heading this direction too, which is nice to see.
Great point about the storage. That is another place where the repairability meme is really not helping. Moving the storage controller up into the host SoC is a good idea and the PC world should adopt it.
Apple's storage controller is not even a PCIe peripheral internally, so it's saving power and latency cutting out that interface, even when it's active.
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Mainly because Microsoft wants to have "connected standby": the CPU is running in a low power mode (not powered off like "old" S3 sleep), can be turned on periodically and can turn on other devices even when the computer is "sleeping".
My Zen2 based Lenovo laptop has 6-7 hours of battery when doing basic tasks in both Windows and Linux, but sleep on Linux lasts a week while on Windows it's empty in 24 hours.
> Mainly because Microsoft wants to have "connected standby"...
And that is OK, as long as they provide a way for you to disable it. I do not want my laptop to be doing things when I put it in sleep mode. Nothing at all. Save battery life above all else when sleeping. But Microsoft does not appear to provide a way to do that. At least none that I can see.
Macs have that too, just implemented well. In addition, CPUs with connected standby don’t have the normal sleep so even on linux they run in connected standby. Maybe its less buggy in your case? Consider yourself lucky, lots of people encounter problems with sleep on linux
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And the funny thing is that with Windows 10 they completely abandoned all the software that could take advantage of connected standby
Trying to reduce idle power use of a simple esp32 based project I did a while back... Yeah it is indeed tricky. Apple having full control of their hardware supply chain, firmware and software helps a ton. And PC standardization issues do no good either.
On the other hand framework is actually in a good position to do something about it. Similar to valve. I think they do have more control than a regular PC vendor when also using Linux ad they have a very limited portfolio of devices and can actually upstream software fixes.
I think it's just a vertical integration thing. They know what's in the machine and they can make sure that their suspend path puts every peripheral to sleep. Linux has no idea what's in your machine and there may be some device in there somewhere that freaks out if the machine goes to sleep without saying goodnight. Even a 50mW draw will destroy the suspend power budget. Chromebooks have similar vertical integration with respect to ChromeOS and they also enjoy long sleep life. Hypothetically an integrator like Framework can also guarantee this but I can't vouch for it being true, and they would not have any control over Ubuntu updates after the laptop is delivered to the customer.
Just to beat my favorite dead horse, this is why the insistence on SO-DIMMs "BEcAuse it's rEpAIrAble" has wrecked the reputation of a lot of laptops. DDR on a stick is fundamentally hostile to sleep power draw. Soldered-down LPDDR memory has always been massively superior for energy savings, and LP-CAMM finally solves the issue.
How does soldering memory help reduce sleep power consumption vs. using a socket? What is different other than how they are physically connected to the board?
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TIL LPCAMM2 exists. What an awesome solution to allow memory replacements while meeting all of the other requirements for laptops.
Well to be fair they only kind of quasi-exist for consumers right now. As far as I can tell Crucial was providing the only consumer accessible lpcamm2 modules on the market right now.
Crucial is certainly the only option that comes up looking on amazon or newegg right now. Lenovo has some OEM modules but they are obviously marketed as replacement parts to just their laptops, not sure how the warranty and support for them would be outside a lenovo product.
But the Crucial brand was unceremoniously sacrificed by Micron to the AI gods at the beginning of this year. So will these lpcamm2 modules even be available once current stock runs out? The 64gb module is already sitting at $1000 on newegg.
Samsung is making lpcamm2 modules but no telling when those will actually hit the market and be accessible.
It doesn't meet all of them. AMD considered it for Strix Halo but said it didn't meet their latency requirements.
LPCAMM2 latency should be the same as soldered. The problem is that Strix Halo wants a L-shaped memory layout and LPCAMMs are straight.
I really wish this had a 4K display option. As someone who dislikes fractional scaling.
I'm clinging on to my older Thinkpad X1 because the 4K display is so good.
Doesn't it work perfectly with a 2880px-wide display with 2x scaling?
It just, just not enough real estate!
As a heavy fractional scaling user, as long as the display has enough DPI, it's a non-issue. At my last job I was happily running 1.35 scaling, and I run my TV at 1.5 scaling. Make sure you're using a sane compositor, which excludes DWM; most Wayland compositors should run just fine.
Forget fractional scaling, just keep scale at 100% and increase font and icon sizes.
Which is something like 2/3rds successful in my experience (I use this daily), and requires tons of fiddling to get things looking even mostly reasonable (lots of misalignments and funky padding otherwise). And lots of applications don't respect it and you're stuck with too-small controls when it fails. Which makes it a noticeably-worse success rate than fractional scaling, afaict.
I still use it because the end result on some of my most-used applications is nicer, and it seems to be slightly-noticeably better performing (on a high framerate screen). So it's good enough for my tastes. But it really isn't anything I'd call "successful".
on omarchy ill switch with super + / and use 1x, 1.6x and 2x when needed.
1.6x works surprisingly well now, that wasnt the case a couple years ago
Man, this looks really, really impressive. It basically solves every issue we could find to the framework 13. Can't wait for the reviews.
Accepting the prices of the ram shortage era is still painful, but even with the 64gb option, here in France it's still a great deal compared to similarly configured premium thinkpads or macbook pros.
These are cool laptops. But, after getting a decent config (32gb ram, 1tb ssd, 7 series chip), the price is ~$2300. At that point, a MacBook Pro seems like a better choice. I'd not want to develop on anything less than that config. The selling point seems to be the Linux + Framework brand + highly customizable machine you can actually own
I've always wondered if these laptops can scale beyond the enthusiast group. If so, how?
14" macbook pro with those specs is ~2100. 200 dollar delta for repair-ability seems acceptable to me.
I'd pay $200 to run Linux. The repairability is a bonus.
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This is a tough one because a macbook pro hooks you into the apple ecosystem and makes apple money. Let alone the macbook neo.
This is like the really cheap televisions that harvest your data for profit.
How can you compete/compare against vizio if it makes more on your data than on the television?
But you can upgrade it later by swapping parts and not buying a new machine, so it should be cheaper in the long run.
I am sure many will jump in here to talk about the upgradability story, but for me personally I do not think of Macbooks as a serious alternative either way. Even if I could get over not being able to replace my hard drive or RAM, I would still have to be OK using a proprietary OS I can't control, designed by people who just want to keep extracting my money ultimately.
Having something called an "App Store" on my personal laptop I can't remove.. I'd deal with having 4gb of RAM before I lived that reality.
The whole page advertises how well this runs Linux, but then…
> The side-firing speakers are tuned with Dolby Atmos® to deliver clear, balanced audio on Windows
Don't forget literally all the battery values are specified as Windows 11.
Not literally all; they say
> 7 days
> Standby without charging
> Wi-Fi connected on Ubuntu
(I'm unimpressed with listing all the "active" battery life listings with Windows, mind; I just want us to be precise in our criticisms.)
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Can you really blame them for that?
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In my experience, Linux support on Framework is worse than on a typical ThinkPad, and they don't have much interest in contributing to the ecosystem like System76 does. They still make good products, I'm just very unimpressed with the Linux marketing.
For me it’s very much “it just works” with pretty much every distro I try. I had to configure zero hardware. How much better am I supposed to expect it to be?
They financially sponsor Linux/OSS projects and give them laptops to test on. What more do you want them to do?
They don’t have a zillion employees like Lenovo who is the #1 volume computer company in the world.
Finally, IMO, System76 is a much worse example because they aren’t focusing on the things Linux needs to grow. Linux doesn’t need contributions like their their silly Ubuntu reskin distro to be popular on the desktop. Instead, Linux needs a company making compatible hardware that is good, attractive hardware that will stop people from buying a MacBook instead.
The System76 lineup is a complete mess of white label Clevo systems. They have no business offering 8 different laptop models. That just tells potential customers “wow, buying a Linux laptop is a lot more complicated than buying a Mac!”
I agree with you, it would have been nice if their speakers had dedicated hardware to drive them instead of the magical dolby software.
All laptop speakers sound like shit on Linux. I'm sure people will reply with their anecdotal evidence, or pretend that it's not that bad once you have a good EQ. But we'll have to agree to disagree on that. I've spent hours trying to get multiple laptop speakers at least half as good as they sound on Windows. No success. And I'm talking thinkpads, dell xps, the usual linux go-tos, not some exotic stuff.
Maybe you have very niche needs, but for most of us speakers on laptops are never great and they're not really there for that. Reminds me of people shopping for high performance scooters. I mean, you're riding a scooter... it's not meant for that.
If you are an avid Linux user, you should know that this kind of Criticism is not on point.
Battery life? Should they share all possible config combinations? Should they share the most power-saving setting (and then be blamed for sharing numbers that almost no one gets to reproduce?)
As a Linux user on an AMD FW my battery life is good enough (7ish hours of work), and I never felt I need to tune it further from the OOB Fedora Kinoite.
They should share the battery life numbers of default shipping configuration while running Linux with whatever settings they want. Then publish the configuration and settings. Same as every other manufacturer.
i.e. https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/specs/#footnote-5
Well you know how it is on linux, one wrong move and pulseaudio needs restarting lol.
Who does still run pulseaudio when pipewire exists?
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At least pulseaudio is pretty much dead now and we have pipewire.
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For me, this was an immediate buy.
Everything about this is what I've been looking for in a Linux laptop. (Also, how refreshing is it to not have to think hard about how much RAM you might need over the next few years because you know you can always upgrade it later?)
Or, another way to think about this: "buy more ram when it becomes more affordable"
I'm amazed looking at the upgrade kit. It's everything you need to go from the old 13" to the Pro; including chassis, display, battery, keyboard etc - listed at $255. That's an instant buy from me.
https://frame.work/sg/en/products/framework-laptop-13-pro-ch...
Same... I bought a 13 last year, super happy with it but was kind of sad after seeing this release because this new design is just so much better and addresses all the concerns I had with the machine... until I saw this.
Fuck I do love these guys! Give me a little hope in humanity.
Will definitely buy this new chasis as soon as I can!
Nice upgrades, but no mention of ECC RAM, the single thing that I wanted from an upgrade for a decade? Why do chip makers refuse to take our money? :-P
A few years ago we were told only "Pro" parts have ECC: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37828168
to be fair, your money isn't as good as VC money for RAM at the moment
Are Nvidia using ecc ram? If not this should mean it is less supply constrained than regular ram.
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Do mobile CPU's and northbridges support ECC?
Handheld mobile no. Laptops could, but rarely/never do due to policy not technical requirements.
From what I can ascertain, the new bigger battery is incompatible with the old chassis: https://frame.work/products/pro-battery-74wh
"This product can only be used with both the Framework Laptop 13 Pro Bottom Cover and Framework Laptop 13 Pro Input Cover."
I applaud that the mainboard and keyboard are backwards compatible, but I don't think the pro is quite as backwards compatible as some are thinking
They actually call out this specific incompatibility in the video here (at 2m44s): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSxgCEpkiKM&t=2m44s
Mainly just a trade-off because of because of the bigger battery (but it sounds like they'll sell you the bottom chassis pieces as well).
Yup. Sounds right. Interestingly though, you can use the new input cover with the older frames.
I would be really interested in a podcast with the CEO where he goes a bit into the trade-offs of backwards and forwards compatibility. I can not imagine that their planning was so immaculate that there aren't any regressions that a clean slate design could have cleaned up. Nevertheless, amazing job for putting this together it looks like a phenomenal product!
Is Framework open to an OLED panel option in the future? I have an eye disease that makes extremely high contrast and extremely deep blacks very helpful to me, since it means I can get good contrast with less total light. I can still read LCD displays well enough, but as my eyes worsen, that may not be true.
Since Framework has a great track record with display upgradability, just an indication that there is serious interest in OLED options in the future would be enough to sell me.
So if anyone at Framework is reading this: is there any opposition inside framework to OLED? Any fundamental constraints that make OLED panels unlikely for the next several years?
Is there an option for a keyboard with dedicated PgUp/PgDn/Home/End/Insert/Delete keys? I looked at a bunch of designs and didn't find any. If this is a developer-focused laptop, how can the keyboard be so developer-unfriendly? This is why I keep getting Lenovo laptops, they don't compromise on these keys.
There are enough keys there, just configure some to your liking. That’s a software problem.
Here is a more explanatory video what's new and how it looks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnOpIQJnYWU
I have to buy it. This company deserve a support.
Part of me was hoping there would be some sort of official arm mainboard announced, I know there's the third party version but they don't seem to sell the main board only.
Oh my god, yet _another_ "developer-focused" laptop with full-sized left/right arrow keys, which are an absolutely miserable experience to actually use.
How is it that Apple is the only company these days() that consistently gets this right?
( Yes, I know they used full-sized keys for a while, I moaned and cursed them at the time as well.)
?
Sorry, I've never seen this perspective, why do you want the smaller ones? The small arrow keys on my MacBook are one of my least favorite parts of the keyboard.
You want the smaller ones so you can easily locate the arrow key cluster without having to look. The empty space above the left and right arrow keys is a good tactile indicator that your fingers are on the correct location.
I agree with you that having full height left-right and half-sized up-down is a pain, because of the inconsistency.
The problem I have with laptop keyboard is that the arrow key height is too small, and the cluster itself is too crowded to sit my fingers on comfortably when using arrows. I want the arrow cluster to have full sized keys.
Real developers use hjkl, which, if this keyboard uses QMK like their previous ones, you can just remap to actual arrows (with a modifier key). I am only slightly joking.
The modern Thinkpad arrow cluster spoils me; most other laptops leave me reaching for a convenient pgup/pgdn key that doesn't exist.
I'd much rather see something like that, going back to Fn+up/dn makes me feel like a caveman.
This reminds me of the legit coal smoke black PowerBooks of yesteryear. If they make a 16 inch model I’ll def consider it.
The unevenly sized arrow keys still prevent me from buying any of it.
I am more hung up on not having ctrl/alt/super on the right side
Hear, hear!
It's unfortunate that I am unable to access these new products because Framework does not ship to Japan. I have an original Framework 13 that's CPU fan has been making death noises. There is also a broken screw mount in the base.
I didn't do shipment forwarding. I just bought the product and later moved to Japan. Also, Framework supposedly blocks shipment forwarding.
It's odd, because I remember them advertising a Japanese keyboard layout in the past. They must not see a large enough market to justify the costs.
Same problem here in NZ - they only ship to AUS, despite lots of people here being keen on their laptops. I know multiple people who have made it a point to time a trip to AUS with buying a Framework so they can pick it up while they're over there.
I hope they ship to your region soon!
Depending on how good that haptic trackpad is, this could be a real Macbook Pro competitor. 32GB of RAM on my M1 Pro is starting to feel a bit cramped.
Wish it supported coreboot. It seems hard to find modern hardware that does.
Some System76 SKUs have Coreboot now, e.g. https://system76.com/laptops/darter-pro
Please make a standalone case with a usb port for the keyboard trackpad! I would love to have it for when I connect the laptop to an external monitor. I hate the mouse, but I love the trackpad right under the keyboard.
There is no such product in the market.
I've been super happy with my Framework desktop. And since getting that I've been craving replacing my MacBook... This looks super attractive
Glad they got a touchscreen but would really like to see a convertible/2-in-1
The expansion card system seems like something I would actually really like, especially as a hardware engineer. But the more I thought about it I couldn't really think of any compelling expansion cards that were worth the effort. So I figured I would look at what was in their store to see what other people thought up, and there isn't really any 3rd party store that I could find.
I did find this list: https://community.frame.work/t/list-of-company-or-individual...
According to it there are more 3rd party main boards than expansion cards. I kinda get it, but wow. End of an era I guess.
How is ubuntu support for touchscreens these days?
How does it compare to an ipad in terms of fidelity / responsiveness, and for native-feeling integration with ubuntu?
I am, naturally, a bit skeptical that touchscreen UI would be any good in linux.
It supports them via libinput.
Everything around actually a Linux device with a touchscreen sucks.
Like on-screen keyboard will be inconsistent depending on the framework of the app.
comparing to iOS which was built from the ground up around that input method is simply not fair lol.
> How is ubuntu support for touchscreens these days?
GNOME supports multitouch gestures, and the GTK4 toolkit is overall very touch-native. It strikes a nice balance between overpadded and touch-accessible, IMO: https://www.gnome.org/
(some of the newer Libadwaita widgets that GNOME is using: https://gnome.pages.gitlab.gnome.org/libadwaita/doc/main/wid... )
> How does it compare to an ipad in terms of fidelity / responsiveness
With Wayland, it's borderline identical.
> GNOME supports
I've heard that there's *support* -but is the experience of having a touchscreen on an ubuntu device actually usable and good?
For example some random GUI app you're likely to use on ubuntu is the experience not broken?
I guess Chrome is the first thing that comes to mind.
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>With Wayland, it's borderline identical.
Come on lol. I have a couple steam decks and both are really clunky.
Most applications are not built using GTK4 nor Qt6 for that matter.
On my steam deck the keyboard never pops up by itself so I have to use a key combination and it feels like I am moving a ghost mouse around the place (rather than proper touch screen support)
I ran gnome on the deck for a while but anyway the on-screen keyboard provided by the gnome sucked so bad that I gave up (sucked as in, it groups all the keys around the center of the screen tightly together and very small)
I also have an M1 iPad Pro. No comparison because those issues simply don’t exist on iOS.
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Don’t think I have ever came across a queue to buy a laptop before but congrats to the framework team.
A laptop without a unified memory model is categorically incapable of being the "ultimate developer laptop". Framework already have Strix Halo machines, I don't know why they felt the need to hamstring this thing with Intel.
Where are you getting that this doesn't have a unified memory model? This laptop uses an iGPU with shared memory.
FWIW, the ordering page lets you also choose AMD Ryzen 350 / HX 370. It's not the Strix Halo chips you're hoping for, but it is something.
Hilariously, those AMD chips are way behind the Intels in terms of memory.
First off, I believe that Intel has its memory far more "unified". AMD typically has a stricter VRAM/RAM 'tradeoff' setting that does not exist on Intel in the same way to my knowledge. (See how on Strix Halo systems, there is a thing about "allocating" 96 GB to the GPU, which seems to be needed sometimes but prevents the CPU from accessing that memory.)
Secondly, the Panther Lake board has LPDDR5X LPCAMM2 memory at 7467 MT/s, while the AMD boards are stuck with DDR5 SODIMMs at a meagre 5600 MT/s. In other words, the Intel board gets a third more memory bandwidth!
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Really? Because I did look through the entire spec list they provided and didnt see any non-Intel. Didnt get to the order screen since it was behind a waitlist sign up. I agree, that is better then nothing.
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I will guess for linux. Most out of the box linux laptops I saw were intel based. I guess open source support of intel is best among others in the industry. Even in my current thinkpad first thing I did was to replace its wifi module from realtek to intel (realtek was always hanging/dropping connection etc).
Why?
Running local AI requires unified memory.
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Quick search shows LPCAMM2 at 7500MT/s is about 120GB/s, which seems about on par with M4 base and a bit better than DDR5.
BTW as an AMD fanboy and stockholder, Intel's latest generation of CPUs is quality.
> hamstring this thing with Intel.
Have you missed all the recent Intel news or something?
What are the news recently?
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Gotta be honest, I have. I'm still living in a world where AMD is superior, but that may not be the case today?
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Macbook Pro 14" with M5, 32GB RAM, 1TB HDD = $2,099.00
Framework Pro 13" DIY AMD Ryzen 7 350, 32GB RAM, 1TB HDD = $2,049.00
Framework Pro 13" Pre-Built AMD Ryzen 7 350, 32GB RAM, 1TB HDD = $2,059.00
Your MBP's keyboard breaks? €730[1]
Your FW's Keyboard breaks? Original price you paid, bonus: you can just buy the newest model.
You want to upgrade anything in your MBP? "You know, with how thin, lightweight and fast they are, it's physically impossible to make them user-serviceable"
On the FW? They gave you the one tool you needed when you purchased your laptop.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47822483
CTRL+F keyboard on your link. Not found.
Why are you lying? That price is to replace the main board.
Give us the price of the Framework's mainboard if you want to compare that.
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I really like what Framwork has been doing, but I have an honest question: is 20 hours of Netflix 4k streaming at 250nit and 30% volume a spec to show off? I genuinely don't know.
I thought most modern laptops have dedicated video decode hardware that is fairly easy on battery. At only 250nit though...that seems dim by today's standards. I'm happy to be wrong though!
Just wish they'd give the FW16 the same treatment, at least in terms of the build. You shouldn't choose a laptop based on looks but thats hitting exactly what I want, minus the 16" screen
It's beautiful. Just got a Framework 13 a few months ago, so I can't justify buying a pro just to get it in black... right?
I think the pro is enough of an upgrade that it would pay for itself over the course of a year or so. It'd be practical and responsible for you to switch.
(Now you have to validate the next person's justification when it comes up again.)
This fixes a lot of things that had made me hesitant to buy Framework before.
Congratulations! Incredible!
I continue to admire Framework from afar. If I were to switch from MacOS to Linux, they'd be at the top of my list when shopping.
I love their intro video: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GnOpIQJnYWU
Intel has really crushed it lately.
This is great - a Macbook Pro for Linux users, made of CNC milled aluminum, haptic trackpad, and 20+ hours of 4k video playback under Linux
The 20h figure is specifically for streaming 4k Netflix in the app on Windows. Netflix doesn’t even support 4K streaming on Linux as far as I know.
Good call out - but seeing 2.5W consumption at idle from people with it already on Linux so these numbers will hold (like Dell XPS 14)
When my hard plastic chassis T470 from 2016 dies and cannot be repaired, I will for sure buy a Framework.
Is there a side by side comparison for their products anywhere? I'd like to compare this to the current 16 specs. And are they planning a "Pro" version of the 16?
I don't have plans to buy a laptop in the near future, but its nice to have this as an option. I like the idea of a bespoke Linux machine I could use.
Anyone know much about the new top of the line Intel vs AMD CPU options? Which is more power efficient? Powerful?
Intel Core Ultra 3xx is mostly better than AMD Ryzen 3xx/4xx. This year you're better off with Intel.
AMD Ryzen AI 400 is built on TSMC 4nm and Panther Lake is on Intel's 18A so Intel is literally a generation ahead for this product cycle and wins hands down...
Are the mainboards and upgrade kits available for purchase now or just the whole laptop?
edit: I think I found it: https://frame.work/products/laptop13pro-mainboard-intel-ultr...
I would have liked the option of non-touch display, and although the display is variable rate (30-120Hz) it's not going to be as optimal as the 1-120Hz panel in the Dell XPS 14 getting it to 40+ hours (https://x.com/dhh/status/2040139744445673938).
Strix Halo version available for pre-order!
Personally, I don't understand aluminum chassis. Sure, it feels more premium, but it comes with quite a bit more weight than plastic, and I much prefer less weight over "feel" when it comes to a laptop.
Plastic. Never again will I allow a laptop to be unusable after some time because of a cracked chassis that couldn't handle mechanical and thermal stress correctly. Never.
It manages heat better, with the entire chassis acting as a heatsink. Also unlike plastic, under repetetive heat/cool cycles the tolerances won't change like plastic will.
Beautiful laptop and then they stick a tiny 13" screen on there, I don't get it. 14" is the perfect size. Guess it just isn't the one for me.
It's a 13.5" screen with a 3:2 aspect ratio. It's very comparable to many consumer-style 14" 16:10 screens.
Trackpoint/nipple?
Hey let's make a very versatile laptop with tons of options for consumers, and let's not offer the other Standard Canadian French keyboard, let's just have the old one Windows forces on people.
You could get a blank keyboard, and nice transparent stickers.
Assuming the Qualcomm ARM lawsuits are what’s preventing the AArch64 debut…
I would love to go framework and the specs here look pretty awesome but 5g modem is a must have for me and they dont really have an option for that. I am guessing due to the antennas.
I wish it was easy to port Asahi Linux to macbook neo. That would be insane!
I wonder if they'll ever make a "Toughbook" type of laptop. Those things are very interesting, since you can shove drives in and out of them and it matches the spirit of what this is.
I said it before, I'll say it again: I won't consider Framework until they ditch they're crippled cursor block or offer trackpoint.
I'll buy one on the day of release if they offer both options (my most recent¹ Lenovo is long overdue for replacement)
¹ I don't think I'll ever sell my X220, any I regret selling my X270. Everything after that was a disappointment.
I'm struggling to understand if this supports usb-c based thunderbolt
All four ports support Thunderbolt 4 - if you scroll down to "Interfaces" on the product specs page there's a graphic showing everything that's supported.
nice! Thanks! I had no idea USB4 and Thunderbolt were equivalent.
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Without a mockup of what all the customizable parts will look like... it's hard to commit to a build.
Looks awesome, but any developer laptop should have an inverted-T layout for arrows.
Those might look cool, but they're a huge pain to use.
It doesn't come with any RAM? You have to add $140 for 8GB or "bring your own"...so the list price does not represent a working computer?
Framework is cool, but Lenovo and Dell have been selling repairable enterprise laptops with Linux support for years. Some Precision/XPS laptops even have replaceable graphics cards.* It feels like they don't get nearly as much attention.
* Some will even work with graphics cards from newer laptops using the same chassis; for example, the Precision 7530 (8th gen Intel + Pascal GPUs) can be upgraded with Precision 7540 (Turing) GPUs. This isn't officially supported, though, and may not apply to later models.
Can this drive a Studio Display XDR at 120 Hz? I wonder if anyone else is thinking about this and how to figure out compatibility.
Thoughts on the chassis being all aluminum, vs. a magnesium alloy?
In case anyone's curious, my basis for comparison is an old Dell M6600 that's magnesium and has been awesome in terms of rigidity and durability. I still use it regularly even though it's going on 15 years old! (Mainly because I haven't found a newer laptop that's similarly maintainable that I actually like). Also wish it had an option for more RAM, even if the cost is astronomical at today's prices.
> with excellent Linux support
So can we finally update the firmware for the Sandisk SN7100 and 850X SSDs under Linux? Last time I've checked you couldn't even download the firmware for WD 850X using a plain browser. You had to use their "special" Windows software.
There's a github project that helps with this https://github.com/not-a-feature/wd_fw_update , or you can manually browse https://sddashboarddownloads.sandisk.com/wdDashboard/config/... to find and download your firmware, and install it with nvme-cli. I've done it quite a few times.
Too bad there's no second m2 slot for extra disk and no 5G WWAN support.
You can add extra disk via the removable slots, frame.work shop has various disk sizes.
The highest tier of this laptop comes with four performance cores and twelve efficiency cores? What kind of Linux-kernel-compiler wants four cores?
I'm happy to see they finally added a touchscreen. This will probably be my next laptop.
It’s a niche box within its own niche (Linux). Perhaps they’ll do a pivot to eco friendly slippers. I admire their manifesto, but can’t see them surviving. You can get a last year’s decent Thinkpad for $400-600 with parts galore. This thing, you buy it on principle only.
I wish they offered a Dvorak keyboard. Of all laptops, this is the most obvious one to do it.
They do offer blank keycaps, no labels, as an option…
Blah why do they insist on those full height arrow keys.
Full?! I'm seeing half up/down keys.
Well, this looks excellent.
Very cool upgraded version. How noisy or hot does it get?
64GB of RAM is £850? Insane timeline.
Let's all thank the AI industry for this.
I am getting this one for sure. The waiting is over.
Pre-ordered a Ultra X7 358H with 32GB as an upgrade from an M2 Air. I hope that I do not regret this.
> Your country might not be supported yet.
:(
I might be in love...
LPCAMM2 looks interesting. How much is that RAM though :'(
I went on the configurator page briefly, like 400$ for 32GB IIRC.
They don't ship to where I am so I didn't stay long
Only 2.8k non OLED display?
why is it so hard to find a simple keyboard layout diagram, the first full view of the keyboard I could find was flashing between different color options making it hard to see what the keys are, the first thing I think of for a “developer laptop” is what the keyboard is, feels like it should be more front-and-center (I might have just missed it though, on mobile)
Who watches Netflix at 30% brightness? Another useless marketing blurb, really puts me off from reading the rest.
I do. Why not?
I'm a "Linux I. 2nd hand ThinkPad" type of person, but have recently admired my [first] MacBook Air.
Does a Framework Laptop bridge the gap somewhat?
The 20 hour battery rating is for Windows 11. How long does Linux last?
What linux needs is a better logo, it's come so far ahead
Blog post: https://frame.work/blog/introducing-framework-laptop-13-pro
Why are they advertising only Linux OSes but the battery life numbers are for Windows 11? Why not show the Linux numbers?
This looks like it would fit my next purchase, but how does VRAM work in this scenario (I can’t find anything in the docs)?
I was sure they’d deliver Panther Lake but didn’t think it would have LPCAMM.
I thought they’d either solder the memory or skip out on delivering the good integrated graphics from the X SKUs.
I’m stunned in a good way. This is a MacBook Pro killer for the nerdier end of Apple’s market.
The fact that you mostly can pick and choose your upgrades to Pro is really cool, too.
The mid-tier X7 board sold alone seems like a great value and it would be a pretty solid uplift to the old system.
Do people actually like touch screens?
That's a huge negative for me.
Finally! Glad they will now offer something which doesn't have a bending frame.
... but I wish they would make something with a bit more screen estate without being heavy and bulky. Their 16" is just too big. I really like the Dell XPS 14 and MBP 14", which I think is the right trade-off between screen size and portability.
I often see people talking about how MacBooks are better for local LLM usage. How would this compare?
Very nitpicky, but video files for ASCII animation while advertising developer laptop. Cmon man.
75% keyboard?
No numpad
sigh. I wish I knew. I've got Framework 13 (Ryzen AI 300 series) and it's battery life is absolutely awful. Won't even survive a weekend in sleep. My old, dying Dell was better.
This is the next Framework I will buy, unless AMD's AI 400 series is better.
I await a Linux-based battery test for both active work and overnight suspend consumption. I don't think suspend battery drain is vendor-specific though; AMD and Intel both shat the bed compared to Apple due to hardware decision-making.
edit: I missed this.
>7 days Standby without charging, Wi-Fi connected on Ubuntu
Now that RAM is unobtainium anyway, it seems like the case for very energy efficient laptops is more compelling vs inference-capable ones.
Those transparent bezel look incredibly good.
> up to 64GB of LPCAMM2 LPDDR5X
That's a non-starter. Why not 128GB or push boundary for 256GB?
> Why not 128GB or push boundary for 256GB?
As I understand it, 64 GB modules are largest LPCAMM2 modules yet released with 96 GB being announced only a couple months ago. 128 GB might be possible on the Ultra 5 325 once either sufficiently large LPCAMM2 modules have been release or if the motherboard was redesigned to support dual LPCAMM2 modules, the Ultra X7 358H and Ultra X9 388H only support 96 GB. Support for 256 GB would likely require a desktop processor, or a redesign from Intel to support a quarter terabyte of memory on a mobile processor.
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/245720/...
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/245527/...
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/245526/...
Because no one makes larger LPCAMM2 modules. But Framework's CEO says he expects higher density modules in the future: https://youtu.be/GnOpIQJnYWU?si=UBMfW7SsiNjwJ1fo&t=292
Last I checked, one kidney might not even suffice to pay for 256GB anymore.
Maybe because 64 GB is $849.
Please say that the new keyboard has QMK support?
It's the one thing I'm jealous of the Laptop 16 together with their key module that should let you design arbitrary layouts.
This is awesome. I like my 2 year old framework and this new RAM looks really interesting, I need to learn more.
However, the 358H processor + 64GB RAM + 1TB NVMe is $2700. Wow. Even if I sold my current AMD 7840U with 64GB of RAM it would still be quite an investment.
The biggest question I have, which is probably easily searchable: How well will this run local LLMs? Seems the RAM is fast enough.
I get to choose 4 ports in a $2,000+ "developer" laptop? Is this a joke?
Most of the port options are decoys because it means 1 or 0 USB ports.
And no I'm not carrying around a satchel of modules like an old British lord.
I was hoping for a monitor update for the 16" laptop. But:
> 16" 16:1- Anti-glare matte display (2560x1600), 500 nits, no HDR
Sorry. That's just not going to cut it. These are 5-year-old specs.
[dead]
No dedicated Home/End/PgUp/PgDn/Ins/Del? Meh.
No T-shape cursor keys?!? Lame. No love. No want. Go home.
Thinkpad FTW. Sorry.
I have to agree the keyboard layout is a noticeable bummer. The only actually impactful one I can find on this laptop on my side for now. So, props to the team still!
"pro" in the name, without ECC ram is a travesty
Does the LPCAMM2 standard allow for a full-blown ECC interface, as opposed being limited to the on-die ECC that's part of the DDR5 spec?
I hope you’re being sarcastic because if not you’re delisional to expect ECC ram in a laptop. You’re going to pile up software updates that you should absolutely reboot for long before a comic ray causes a meaningful bit flip. ECC is only worthwhile in servers and is a waste of money otherwise, especially since “pro” for laptop = prosumer device.
If you don’t reboot your laptop in years where ECC matters I’m not sure how to help you.
- Intel CPU -> No thanks
- Touchscreen -> mmkay, but i don't really care
- Haptic touchpad -> I absolutely hate those. I want to click buttons. Buttons. Buttons.
Well, this is not for me i guess :(