I am considering a purchase as a student although it is really expensive.
What are your major criticisms of the framework laptop?
E.g.
- I have heard that it discharges battery even while powered off (a very serious issue IMO).
Also, I will be using win10/11 and fedora most likely. So any Linux-related issues (e.g. hardware support) I would really like to know.
Thanks for any ideas.
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a little bit too expensive
Consider a laptop out of the outlet store, if price is your issue
Consider it an investment, you’ll save money in the long run if you upgrade the hardware, and it doesn’t cost an arm and a leg to repair. Fedora support isn’t that good according to their graph, but windows support is nice from what I’ve experienced so far with it. Maybe one criticism I have for it would be the lack of a touchscreen/stylus option? I used to own a surface and aside from the maddening hardware issues I had with it, I did enjoy stylus and touch support
- Battery life is below average, seems to be around 6-7 hours on my 7840U w/ Fedora on 25% brightness (Still quite bright)
- Speakers are tinny at high volume
- Seems there is no hibernate mode, so I lose about 8-10% battery overnight if not plugged inThe pros outweigh the cons though
I have an 11th gen intel, but I had to do some manual legwork to make hibernate mode work. Once I followed the online guides, my 11th gen hibernates just fine. I would guess you need to do the same.
Keyboard leaves a mark on the screen after a while. Can’t think of anything other than that. On Linux, if you’re mindful of your power usage you won’t run into any issues with battery.
I always carry a piece of recyclable packing material that I place on the keyboard before I close the lid, to prevent any key marks from being imprinted on the screen.
I’m on day 8 of AMD R5 onwership and it’s my first framework. I run Windows 11 and Linux Mint on it. Mint is only used as a clean os, so if I’m at a client’s site and need to double check a clear setup i use Mint.
My biggest issues are…
Battery life - today with Windows 11 in power saver mode I got 6 hours with 25% left. I often will work from places with no steady power or just moving about. So battery life is important to me.
Lack of ports - I love the concept of the expansion cards. There just aren’t that many slots.
Fans - When plugged in, with the case open. They ramp up really quickly.
To give a balanced opinion things I love…
Build quality - Is excellent. Keyboard - Brilliant. Best I’ve used in quite some time. Screen - Couldn’t ask for better Performance - For the R5 I have. I can play all the games I want (Left for dead 2, GTAV) at better than my previous desktop that admittedly only had a RX470 in.
My previous was a R5 5500u Dell Inspiron 14. The battery on that was better than the Framework and it was 1/3 the cost. I could be on the train from 7am until 4pm without plugging in.
I love my AMD Ryzen, had it for a month or so now. I do pretty well with the battery, but yes, I used to have a Dell Lattitude which had an extreme battery!
It woul dbe nice to see if Framework could make a double USBC expansion card.
Assuming you are talking about the new AMD 13 I would avoid windows 10. My biggest downfall was drivers install and weak wifi 6e reception. I am running windows 11 but now that everything is installed right it has been great and the wifi 6e picks up most of of the time over the 5ghz band.
So I don’t have any concerns and I am a Framework AMD Ryzen 7 user. Was in batch 2 and been happy since delivery. My observations:
Is it loud under full load? No louder than any other laptop.
Does it discharge when powered off? Not any more than any other laptop does, and the battery life I get is great. Lasts a day for general use (word processing etc). All batteries discharge when not being used.
Display brightness is very good, aspect ratio is the reason I purchased it.
Hinges - don’t really understand the issue, they are good and secure (think people talking about hinge issues are referring to previous/older versions. On the AMD version this is not an issue at all).
Speakers, sound ok, no worse than my HP 840G which itself is an expensive laptop (work) and they on my HP are B&O speakers.
Is it an investment? No laptop is, but its upgradeable fixable and when you’re really done with it, its environmental recyclable credentials are very good. I like that.
Is it expensive? No, I don’t think so compared with my HP laptop, which is very poor in relation to being upgradeable/fixable. I broke the USBC port on my HP 840G and it cost £250 to fix. With my Framework laptop, I can just buy another port for around £10.
Is it a great laptop? Yes, I think so.
Are there better laptops on the market? Probably, it depends what is important to you. For me its important primarily that its not a Mac, their “ecosystem” is boring and their treatment of customers is shockingly bad. Apple’s supply chain has very questionable human rights issues and their right to repair is too little too late for me. Being flexible and repairable is a win win for me.
My thoughts :) let us know what you decide to do.
Battery and you really need to consider every portion of the laptop. Updating drivers, ensuring the ssd chosen is low powered, enough ram at the right timing etc.
I only got it built two days ago, and I haven’t got any major criticisms against the FW13 AMD. The biggest problem I had with it was the wifi card / network adapter tempermentally not connecting to 5G networks, but it turned out that I just needed to reseat an improperly connected cable, which I figured out quickly thanks to the swath of documentation that Framework has built up over the years.
Fw13 could use a design brushup in the coming year or two(don’t get me wrong was good at launch) and fw16 needs a better gpu
speakers are mediocre
the 13.5 could be a tad lighter, like 50-80g - or a lighter version
Chassis is aluminum, it will easily get dents - it looks really nice though - the ThinkPads I had were more resistent to dents due to it (magnesium case?)
Missing OLED option…
Screen is bright don’t know what ppl complain ,400nit in an 2140*1800 screen is really good!
the fan is noisy AF with the highly pitched noise while the speakers are anemic. 10% battery drain over night when not connected to a power cable and in suspend mode under Ubuntu 22.04, which works really well otherwise.
I got my AMD 13 two days ago. Using Fedora 39. The most disappointing things for me so far are the touchpad (it’s nowhere near the macbook ones) and the battery life. I would absolutely pay for a higher capacity battery. On the other hand, FW is light and maybe it’s time for me to invest in a powerbank.
Weak hinges, even the default on the 12th but that’s tolerable. Apart from that ? None