Tldr: It's worse than a Mac in every way except that you get a piece of mind that you can repair it yourself by buying overpriced replacement parts from Framework if it breaks.
You can buy 2x M4 Macbook Airs for the same price, get significantly better performance, portability, screen, trackpad. Keep one in the draw in case one of them breaks. But Macs are tanks and will easily last 10+ years.
I think Framework is one of those things that sound cool to geeks, but basic math says it makes no sense.
I'd have loved to buy a MacBook instead, but the price gouging on RAM and SSD at the time was insane (less so six months later) - massively cheaper to buy a DIY framework and put your own RAM and SSD in.
I have a Framework 13 2nd gen (I think), Intel. I forget the specs now and haven't opened it up for the last 2 years now.
The battery life when I first got it, was at best 4-5 hours of moderate usage, and then slumped to 3-4 hours; running Linux of course.
My one also had hinge issues where the screen would fall flat 180 degrees from a 90 degree position when picking it up which was just really annoying. There is a new hinge kit that costs $40, but they want $35 shipping for it.
The keyboard is mostly good, but it still annoys me that there isn't an half-sized inverted-T arrow keys like the Macbooks; I was mostly banking on a 3rd party creating this type of replaceable keyboard but it just never happened.
I think the display panel is of very average quality as well, maybe the newer generations are better.
The other annoying thing was the fan noise. It's just so loud, but it only does turn on when heavy compute is happening, and not randomly like a lot of the PC laptops out there.
Despite all these deficiencies, I think I mostly just miss using a Mac and being fully in the ecosystem. Linux just doesn't really do it for me, and I don't think I can ever really use Windows again even though it has WSL2. I just find Apple products so much better to use, despite the software quality degrading. Plus the accessibility tools which I lean heavily on outclass the competition by a large margin.
This more or less tracks my experience having a Framework 13 for 2 years years now. It's not a perfect laptop, but it's quite nice and I'm happy with the tradeoffs it makes.
I am not so happy, it is really a surprise to me the battery life. I mean you mention all day work? men, my framework laptop with Intel Ultra 5 just work for 2 hours maximum from I bought it, I also have problems with touchpad (support send me a new one) and the heat is a real problem. I mean, I just have to manage the laptop in battery save mode, otherwise the cpu temp easy get 100 degrees or more doing normal work.
Still, I am really surprised about your battery duration.
Does it run the fans hard even when not chewing CPU? Sounds like perhaps a thermal issue - there are guides on repasting/padding heatsinks online; you might want to try that.
Not a fan of my framework (gen2). I am almost certain I would have been happier going with a ThinkPad again. The framework is fine overall but everything has little annoyances that are just hard to overlook the longer you use it. The cpu power profiles they ship are borderline unusable and make me question them as a manufacturer.
I only had problems upon problems with the USB-C ports: some stopped charging, some stopped supporting 4k external monitors, it's all a mess and I spent uncountable hours reading forums and trying things. All for naught.
I should have known better, as before the current AMD F13 7840 I owned one of the first Intel gen11 (another family member suffering it for the last year).
I just wanted it hard to work and thought that the community-based investigation and feedback was just what I am accustomed to in general using Linux. Except the broken functionality is so basic, I was every day aggravated by the unexpected failure of a peripheral to work, or the hard switch off when I had not noticed port 3 had stopped charging.
I lost the will to fight when the whole train wreck with Omarchy[2] and supporting the Valley most toxic bro culture was left to fester in seeming contempt for the kind of users who had sacrificed money and time to support what we then believed to be "the right way".
Fortunately this allowed me to see the weaknesses, besides the malfunctioning ports: the miserable battery life and the trackpad that did not click anymore in the gen 11.
It also allowed me to not want yet one more US product, which makes me very happy as there doesn't seem to be any other way to stop the lunatics in charge than to sink its economy with persistent consumer-side boycott.
For a close person I bought a TongFang X4SP4NAL through a Dutch reseller [1] and it was cheaper, more powerful, with better customer support and so far, way more robust.
12 comments
[ 1.1 ms ] story [ 34.7 ms ] threadYou can buy 2x M4 Macbook Airs for the same price, get significantly better performance, portability, screen, trackpad. Keep one in the draw in case one of them breaks. But Macs are tanks and will easily last 10+ years.
I think Framework is one of those things that sound cool to geeks, but basic math says it makes no sense.
The battery life when I first got it, was at best 4-5 hours of moderate usage, and then slumped to 3-4 hours; running Linux of course.
My one also had hinge issues where the screen would fall flat 180 degrees from a 90 degree position when picking it up which was just really annoying. There is a new hinge kit that costs $40, but they want $35 shipping for it.
The keyboard is mostly good, but it still annoys me that there isn't an half-sized inverted-T arrow keys like the Macbooks; I was mostly banking on a 3rd party creating this type of replaceable keyboard but it just never happened.
I think the display panel is of very average quality as well, maybe the newer generations are better.
The other annoying thing was the fan noise. It's just so loud, but it only does turn on when heavy compute is happening, and not randomly like a lot of the PC laptops out there.
Despite all these deficiencies, I think I mostly just miss using a Mac and being fully in the ecosystem. Linux just doesn't really do it for me, and I don't think I can ever really use Windows again even though it has WSL2. I just find Apple products so much better to use, despite the software quality degrading. Plus the accessibility tools which I lean heavily on outclass the competition by a large margin.
Still, I am really surprised about your battery duration.
I should have known better, as before the current AMD F13 7840 I owned one of the first Intel gen11 (another family member suffering it for the last year).
I just wanted it hard to work and thought that the community-based investigation and feedback was just what I am accustomed to in general using Linux. Except the broken functionality is so basic, I was every day aggravated by the unexpected failure of a peripheral to work, or the hard switch off when I had not noticed port 3 had stopped charging.
I lost the will to fight when the whole train wreck with Omarchy[2] and supporting the Valley most toxic bro culture was left to fester in seeming contempt for the kind of users who had sacrificed money and time to support what we then believed to be "the right way".
Fortunately this allowed me to see the weaknesses, besides the malfunctioning ports: the miserable battery life and the trackpad that did not click anymore in the gen 11.
It also allowed me to not want yet one more US product, which makes me very happy as there doesn't seem to be any other way to stop the lunatics in charge than to sink its economy with persistent consumer-side boycott.
For a close person I bought a TongFang X4SP4NAL through a Dutch reseller [1] and it was cheaper, more powerful, with better customer support and so far, way more robust.
[1] https://laptopparts4less.frl
[2] https://crimier.github.io/posts/Framework-Omarchy/