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.
It's a matter of preferences. Actually I like trackpads that don't mind and have physical buttons. The separation between the surface that moves the pointer on screen and the surfaces that generate the clicks means that there are no misclicks and no involuntary pointer movements while clicking.
Haptic schmaptic, I just want my Framework's enormous trackpad to respect deadzones and stop detecting my palms. I had to entirely disable tap-to-click, because nothing else would work.
I might have to try their preinstalled Ubuntu images or something and see if there's some secret sauce in the input configs.
There is no accounting for taste.
For instance, I still prefer discrete buttons over tap-clicks or multi-finger-taps, but I would accept the mild annoyance of tap clicks over the pressing down the pad itself.
Not a huge fan of the "force touch" trackpads on newer macs, the old man yells at the clouds.
In all seriousness though I have used a pre force touch MacBook not too long ago and I prefer that experience a lot over the new one I have from work.
Though the larger size of these trackpads is something I really like and where neither the older MacBook nor the the current non-pro Framework 13 come close.
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.
Yes, I really should have clarified: it makes sense, and I'm not blaming them. It's more just that, given their business model, and that they do intend to sell upgrade kits, I imagine that along with the people pre-ordering full laptops, there are quite a few of us who would be eager to pre-order upgrade kits or the parts to upgrade our current laptops.
Yes, black upgrade kit please. I have it linked and will be checking daily. For me with a 12th gen Intel, it will be worth it to have a new screen, battery, chassis and haptic touchpad. Hardware is just too expensive to upgrade, but the chassis would provide nice quality of life improvements.
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.
I had meant they aren't available even for pre-ordering, and likely won't be until the laptops are either regularly shipping rather than shipping in numbered batches, or are on a high-numbered batch. This could be months after the actual laptops start shipping. This is a process I've been through a few times at this point. It also wasn't really meant as a substantial complaint about Framework, and more just a mention of an understandable annoyance: it makes sense that they'd prioritize getting full laptops shipped.
On the other hand, nrp, since you're likely to be in this thread: if you had pre-orders and/or batched shipments of parts/upgrade kits, I would likely be paying a deposit or even the full price today, rather than ordering in a few months. Even if that meant ordering a full upgrade kit with a new display, but getting the upgrade sooner, I'd probably still go for it.
But they are available for pre-order though? At least here in NZ. I just ordered the AMD version, but the Intel one is available too (except the Ultra X9 which is already sold out).
The opposite upgrade kit: people with a mainboard they'd like to keep, but who want all the other upgrades. The kit is listed, but isn't available yet.
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!
Even more impressive than going back 5 years is going back all the way to the first version. While I'm a software engineer, I've worked in teams where we shipped hardware, and for a consumer product with lots of constraints including implicit expectations, going against the entire trend of the past 15 years and targeting a hard-to satisfy market segment, they far exceeded what I expected when they announced their first product.
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.
Back in 2002 I took the HDD from one PC, put it in a different PC, worked just fine. The worst thing that could happen is that the other one already had another disk so I had to change /etc/fstab to say "hdb" instead of "hda" and vice versa. Didn't take long for that to get fixed by specifying UUIDs and having initramfs sort it out.
IDK why it's not working for you but this should all just work without bothering with any configuration, drivers, or whatever.
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".
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
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.
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.
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.
Looking awful has not prevented local dimming from becoming quite common on laptops. Apple has been doing an okay job of it in the MacBook Pro for several years. Lots of Windows laptops have been very hit-or-miss about it, but at least with those you often have an OLED option. I've seen multiple Windows laptops from more than one OEM where opening a terminal window with light text on a dark background means you can easily spot a single line of text getting much dimmer toward the center of the dark window, and lighter near the perimeter where it's close to other light content. And that's for static content; as you mentioned motion can bring more problems as the backlight lags behind the LCD.
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.
Panther lake is substantially more efficient than your 13th gen and they increased the battery capacity by 35%. They claim 20h, not 24h, and that 20h is for video watching, not general use.
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.
A lot of office workers these days spend a lot of time in video calls.
So to get the best battery life you need, for example, your browser to use GPU-accelerated video encoding and decoding.
Linux is something of a second-class citizen for both GPU vendors and browser vendors. So for example if you're using Firefox and an nvidia GPU on Linux? No video encode/decode acceleration for you. The browser will silently switch to CPU decoding.
HW video decoding is now available and by default on in Chrome on at least Ubuntu with my Intel iGPU. I was also surprised when they turned it on under the radar. I saw this the other day debugging a problem and saw others see it too: https://www.reddit.com/r/Ubuntu/comments/1ojydv9/comment/nm8...
Call me crazy, but most people working typically leave their laptops wired in to either a charger or a hub so they can have more monitors. I know some people will go through the effort of charging and pulling the cord, and charging later, but most people don't want to micromanage something they can forget about while working. If you're living on battery life for a work call, it would not matter if you're on Windows, changes are high your batterly life will self-terminate quicker than you realize.
Among Linux users, long battery life is for in-office workers (who leave their desk to attend meetings) in hybrid companies (where no meetings are laptop-free) in roles that sometimes involve back-to-back meetings.
There have been fairly recent changes to the linux kernel to better support panther lake in terms of power performance. I'd suspect a major reason for holding back is because ubuntu 26.04 has not been released yet and it is using kernel 7.0 which includes these power improvements. 24.04 does not.
By the time these laptops start shipping, 26.04 should be released and testing should be easy. I suspect no major differences from it vs windows.
7.1 includes even more performance improvements for panther lake. [1]
If I was releasing a laptop with Linux support as a key selling point, and the battery life was bad on Ubuntu 24.04 but good on the pre-release 26.04, then I'd advertise the good figures and write "tested on Ubuntu 26.04 beta, requires Linux 7.0 or later" in the footnotes.
I definitely /wouldn't/ rely on just Windows figures for a machine that's otherwise advertised as "Linux first". If the battery life was the same on both, I'd prominently mention that.
I'm a long-time Linux user who might actually be in the market for a just-works upgradeable laptop[1] that comes with Ubuntu.
I already know that combinations of hardware and software can be stretched and tweaked to do really interesting things in really excellent ways. I don't need them to tell me that computer systems are flexible. That's just noise.
And I don't want them to tell me how their (unreleased) hardware might work in the future with some unreleased/beta software. That tends to be interpreted as speculation, or as lies and deceit.
I'd prefer to see benchmarks of how it works if it shipped today.
If those benchmarks are unsavory (as they may presently be) and thus omitted, then that's not ideal but it's okay.
I definitely don't want to feel as if I'm being lied to, in place of an omission.
[1]: I just want a 15" version. I'm not a fan of little screens. My eyes aren't getting any better.
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.
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 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.
Agreed. I have a work MBP 14" and a Framework 13, and I didn't realize until just now that they weren't the same screen size. The Framework 13 is very comfortable to use.
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.
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?
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?)
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.
Thank you Nirav for everything you are doing for right-to-repair and better hardware. And, thank you for directly engaging with the community. I can't wait to update my 12th gen i5 FW 13 with a new chassis!
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.
1. That's awesome! I assume RDP or VNC would be the same then, I use that for work primarily.
2. Huh. Well, I feel like an idiot! I always use two hands when opening the lid, muscle memory, I guess.
ps. one question you don't have to answer: for the wireless keyboard, did you guys consider something like a fingerprint sensor? I like the idea of having something like that akin to Mac's Wireless Keyboard but I don't know how much integration something like that would need.
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.
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.
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 :)
That's actually the part that I was getting confused by. Does everything with a yellow caution sign have to be upgraded together, or can that happen over time?
Reading it again, I'm assuming they're overtime and individual upgrades that can take place? If someone could confirm or deny that for me, I would appreciate it. I may just be overthinking this table.
Edit: yeah that's what I'm taking away after rereading this a few more times. Very impressed by the modularity on each of those parts.
There's no reason they couldn't use smaller capacity modules. SOCAMM has better area efficiency and z height, both highly relevant for thin and light laptops.
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)
I have two Dell xps 13, two generations apart, the newer one is touchscreen the other (older) isn’t. Guess which one weighs 1.3kg and which weighs 1.1kg.
You're blaming the touchscreen for a lot here, when the explanation is likely a lot more pedestrian. Change in case molding, change in PCB size, slight change in battery size...
If they're two generations apart, then 200g difference could be hiding anywhere, but touchscreen (I really doubt it adds even 20g).
e.g. 30g in larger heatsinks, 80g in glass-laminated screen, 20g in larger battery, 40g in more stiffer chassis. 30g in aluminium top case instead of carbon fiber :)
Touchscreen is one of those things that sound nice, but in my experience are not so useful. At least not for my typical use (programming, writing, even CAD design). Before having a framework 13 I had a dell xps 13 with touchscreen for about ten years. I never really had a use for it. But hey, the rest of the specs of the screen alone make it still a nice upgrade possibility for the future :)
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.
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?
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?
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.
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.
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:
I didn’t realize they were selling it on another site, thanks for the link! (Framework has the RISC-V board on their shop, so I was expecting to see the MetaComputing one there too.)
And yeah… what I really want is some Oryon cores in a Framework 13 motherboard.
The only thing I'm looking for is a simple acknowledgement that perhaps maybe funding DHH may not have been the best idea or that your company doesn't align with all of his views.
---
I'd love to go with framework to replace my half-functional MSI laptop, but if I can't see a comment or link to any acknowledgement at all, I'll be getting my next laptop from https://novacustom.com/ instead.
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'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.
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.
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.
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 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.
Ah ofc I forgot. But iirc not everything works and battery life will probably suck, no? So not really a consideration in this case of price comparison. It is an option though :)
Personally I also can't stand the exterior design, albeit overall hardware of MBP is good. Guess if I land an old MBP this is what I'd do with it.
AFAIK Asahi development needs some hypervisor features for reverse engineering macOS drivers that only exist on M1-M3 and were removed on M4+. So yeah, it may be several years until they get support (or never, if nobody steps up to do it).
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.
They were accused of that by people who didn't understand that batteries degrade over time, and the resulting legal suits were entirely about disclosing the throttling, not the throttling itself. Newer iPhone models still do the exact same thing, they just provide more information about it, and let you toggle it off.
The idea that they were doing this maliciously never made sense anyway, customers who haven't upgraded in a while might be the least lucrative audience to target.
This has never happened. Batterygate was about stopping individual handsets from rebooting by triggering throttling after a brownout. If you are trying to drive up sales you would just let these out of warranty devices reboot. Literally doing nothing would have been easier for Apple.
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!
Whilst you don't "need" an Apple account to setup a Mac, using a Macbook without an account may not be viable for a lot of people.
First and foremost, you cannot install any applications through the primary method of app installation, which is the App Store.
You also cannot use certain applications like iMovie (which is pre-installed) without an Apple Account.
MacOS will always prompt you in the Settings to sign in with iCloud. Opt into Betas, including Public and Developer Betas are not possible without an iCloud account.
The Apple land is miles better than the Microsoft land, which you aptly point out though.
Can you though? Its been a few years since I've been on apple, but being able to get anything but icloud native support in other apps was basically non-existent. Compared to android where it gives you a plethora of choice out of the box.
Yes - they're already on my computer, so any full-disk backup service will back them up by default. There's an option to purge them from disk and download from iCloud on demand, but you don't need to use it: https://support.apple.com/en-us/111762
It's different on mobile (iOS/Android) where individual apps need special support for cloud providers. On a mac everything is just a file for most apps, so all the cloud providers work by default.
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.
Sorry, but you're wrong. Music-dot-app is a great example. Check out all the ways it tries to upsell you even if you just want to play local files: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anrB6fP1WeQ&t=65s
- opens to a full-page Apple Music subscription service ad on first run.
- search functionality defaults to “Apple Music” instead of “Local Library” (or “iTunes Store”) even when the user has no active subscription.
- Apple Music subscription upsell banner ad along the bottom of the search results screen, that stays on screen as you scroll the results pane.
Check out at the end when he demos Music-dot-app's Settings pane changing to include CD-ripping settings when and only when a CD drive is available, something they could also do and chose not to for Apple Music subscription service when the user isn't subscribed.
macOS seriously never nags you about services. Service nags aren't classy. You can credibly accuse Apple of plenty of things, but having a lack of class isn't one.
My last (and first, and only) iPhone was even worse. At one point the Settings app had no fewer than three paid-service nags at the top that I had to scroll through to even get to the first actual setting.
Image Playground isn’t a service, it’s a free local image generation model. But I’ll grant you that the News+ thing is kind of annoying. I wouldn’t call it a nag, though - it shows in the Settings anpp after you buy a new device that includes free months, while they’re still valid, then it goes away forever.
What kind of accessories? You can use cheap generic USB-C docks/hubs, depending on your needs. (macOS doesn't support DP MST so depending on # of screens you want to attach, you may need a more expensive dock, though it still doesn't have to be Apple-specific).
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.
It's specifically aimed at Framework, though, not PCs in general.
Framework is very much a premium brand (where the premium experience is centred on repairability/upgradeability), and don't have the economies of scale Apple do. It's natural that they'd end up being more expensive.
Yeah, I’m assuming just the one of the various tiers here that’s in the same bucket as MacBooks, and that we’re generally talking devices that are specialty-capable; such as media production or Linux development or gaming or what have you. If you lump the entire “portable screen bigger than nine? inches and with an in-box physical keyboard and pointer controller” market together, you’ll disregard ‘glorified word processors’ that cost a couple hundred bucks (before the RAM underproduction grift) in their own specialty niche. Framework isn’t competing there, right? (I could have missed something..)
It was 2012 when I realized a midrange Macbook (not Pro or Air) was actually cost competitive with my PC laptop, and switched. There have been some configurations since then!
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.
Yeah, it is a valid comparison, and assuming the quality is close to par with a macbook, I think it would be worth the extra cost.
I'm someone who doesn't want to go through a new laptop every other year. I've got an M1 mac right now. I've owned it for 5 years and could easily see myself getting another 5 years of use out of it. Only problem is, the hard drive is small, I can't upgrade it. It only has 16 GB RAM, which is fine for now, but I can't upgrade it. One of the 2 USB C ports gave out on me. I can't repair it.
If I had a laptop that I could repair and upgrade that also ran Linux? I would absolutely pay $2k for it - as long as the quality is good - because I think I would save money in the long term by making a laptop like that last a long time.
I use thinkpad (T14s now, X1 Carbon and X220 in the past). The hard drive is just m.sata and very easy to upgrade. You really can't upgrade the disk on a Mac?
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.
Judging by the graphics used in the launch event, it may actually be miniLED. Perhaps they aren't mentioning this so people don't compare their max 700 nits full screen brightness to other vendors' >1000 nits full screen brightness.
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.)
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.
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.
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?
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.
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 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 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.
1) Reliable sandbox
2) Nixos makes it easy for agents to research, debug and patch every aspect of the system, even applying kernel patches for the sake of debugging
3) CLI-oriented toolchains. Claude spent around 17 hours trying to set up xcode publishing and in the end just told me to press the button once Organizer pops up.
4) Containers
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.
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.
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".
Yes. Easily. If you proclaim up front that a device is "Linux first", it seems reasonable to suggest that maybe you should tell us about its performance on Linux.
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.
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.
Are you sure? On every device I could quickly reach (Gentoo, NixOS, Pop OS, all with vanilla/default pipewire configs), `ps aux |grep -i pulse` only turns up pipewire-pulse.
That is a problem that Linux has, but this is actually one time that it really isn't. Pipewire is flat-out better than pulse, while including sufficient compatibility that it really does just supersede the thing.
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.
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.
I'm having a tough time wrapping my head around how this could work for PCs today.
I'm guessing Intel/AMD could integrate a single SSD controller that OEMs could use for a specially socketed SSD?
I'm not familiar enough with SSD controllers - but what limits would this introduce. I'm thinking they can't be totally generic - with any NAND chips, any layout, 1-4 chips and TLC or QLC NAND - any capacity etc. It strikes me it would be limiting - you would become restricted to a a small subset of SSDs, maybe not forwards compatible with newer NAND chips etc.
I'd think only the minority of PC Laptops would make sense to have this - ones with soldered SSDs - and I don't know many of these. So Intel/AMD would need a big push to integrate any controller. Maybe Windows ARM laptops, if the controller makes a big enough difference, will do this. I'm curious now if any Snapdragon devices are doing this already.
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.
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
> 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.
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?
It's not the form factor itself that is the problem. LPDDR is more efficient for various reasons and cannot be on a DIMM. It physically will not work with a socket. That is the problem that LP-CAMM solves: LPDDR but still removable.
Did I not? I'm trying my best here. The question is sort of off-target, though. What I am trying to say is: 1) DDR uses more power than LPDDR; 2) LPDDR cannot work on a DIMM socket, because of its lower voltage signals, and other reasons; 3) SO-DIMMs always contain the higher power DDR; QED) if you insist on SO-DIMMs, then you have to spend more energy.
Rohansi was basically asking 'why', you keep on reiterating that DDR uses more power than LPDDR, but fail to answer why this is the case. Is it clock speed? Is it voltage? Is it a protocol/specification difference? 'various reasons' is not an answer.
There is no physics based reason why it couldn't work. If the industry really wanted to do it they could. But they don't. The primary reason is LPDDR just has too many pins. A DDR5 SODIMM has 262 pins and is an unwieldy beast. LPDDR5 has 644 pins.
LPCAMM2 really shows the trade-offs. It adds a lot of bulk and cost, and repairability hasn't been valued high enough by the market to cover that overhead for most consumers. That's why Micron exited the market they played a big part in founding.
LPDDR is very different from DDR so I don't really feel like diving into it in this tiny box. It has its own oscillators so the CPU doesn't have to clock it while asleep; it adaptively refreshes less often according to temperature; during self-refresh the cells are charged to a lower voltage that wouldn't really work for high-speed I/O but works fine for retention.
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?)
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.
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.
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'm open to being wrong, but so far as I understand it ECC mostly lives at the controller level and shares the same DRAM chips across all forms of server memory (including non-ecc), which is why we see price increases across all sectors including consumer.
Those DRAM chips being the bottleneck that would require hard to build new silicon fabs to increase supply.
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.
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!
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.)
> 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/
My only issue with Chrome on touchscreen was the lack of 1:1 scroll/zoom gestures. As a Firefox user it was something that I got used to, but I just updated Chromium and apparently that's been fixed now too.
Besides that, it all works about as well as you'd expect it to. You can drag the window around by the tab bar and tap-and-hold to pull up a context menu.
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.
I don't know what to tell you. I'm running it on the desktop with a drawing tablet, Magic Trackpad and oodles of apps, and it's not noticeably different from the stability of iPadOS.
My touchscreen laptop is closing in on being a decade old (i7 6600u) and the worst thing I can say about the experience is that it VSyncs down to 30fps during more taxing animations (just like my iPad does).
> Any gesture functionality is dependent on the software you are running. This includes both, the application (e.g. Firefox) and the desktop environment (e.g. GNOME). The driver can only provide a set of input coordinates to the applications. By default, the system will behave as if you've clicked at the point of a single touch, or mouse-button dragged when you single-finger drag.
I love Linux but no need to embellish the current state imo
I am glad that it is working really well for you though
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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 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.
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
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!
I’ve got the Framework desktop with strix halo. You can reserve memory for the GPU, but it’s straightforward at least on Linux to have the GPU dynamically grab memory as needed. I’ve got my VRAM set to 512MB and regularly use 120GB+for AI stuff.
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.
It's now new, it's the motherboard they already ship with the regular FW13. Because the bits are mostly interchangeable, they just let you order the FW13 Pro with the AMD motherboard.
Awesome, thats good news. I have a FW Desktop with the 395+ in it and have generally been impressed with it. Hoping that will eventually make its way into these machines.
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).
Assuming you're referring to Apple Silicon's memory bandwidth, that is not necessarily because the memory is on-die. The bandwidth comes from having more channels to access memory. This gives the SoC a wider bus to increase throughput vs. your typical x86 system with two channels. For whatever reasons Intel/AMD decided that two channels is all the typical consumer chips can support now so it's on them.
You mentioned Strix Halo, which also has off-die memory. Strix Halo does have a real advantage from its wider memory bus (four channels for 256 bit instead of 128 bit), but Strix Point is equivalent-ish to Intel's platforms like Panther Lake or Arrow Lake in terms of memory setup.
In fact, Intel also had Lunar Lake, which had on-package memory. However, it was still limited to 128-bit dual-channel, so there weren't really many performance benefits; it did however help with power efficiency.
Well, Intel was kind of in the dumps because their process fell behind. They didn't bet on EUV and got leapfrogged by TSMC and Samsung who did use ASML's EUV technology.
They eventually got on the EUV train and were the first customer to receive ASML's current state of the art machine which they call high-NA EUV. Intel's 18A process is the first to use this machine as part of the manufacturing process, Panther Lake uses this process so now they're right back to being SOTA.
All the news about them (stock price movements, theories about them going bankrupt, Panther Lake, etc...) for the last 2 years has essentially been people betting on whether or not they can successfully incorporate SOTA ASML machines into their manufacturing.
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.
They aren't equivalent. The "shape" of the port is the same, it's (USB) Type-C. Though as far as I know most of the time you can use USB4 peripherals with TB4 ports.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
I might have to try their preinstalled Ubuntu images or something and see if there's some secret sauce in the input configs.
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.
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.
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.
On the other hand, nrp, since you're likely to be in this thread: if you had pre-orders and/or batched shipments of parts/upgrade kits, I would likely be paying a deposit or even the full price today, rather than ordering in a few months. Even if that meant ordering a full upgrade kit with a new display, but getting the upgrade sooner, I'd probably still go for it.
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!
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.
IDK why it's not working for you but this should all just work without bothering with any configuration, drivers, or whatever.
Inside the case somewhere on mine there was a list of all the names of the people who worked on it. Was pretty cool.
+1. The less-scripted plus the lack of the pretending-reality-distortion personality is such a breeze.
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'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
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.
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.
I bet they don't publish Linux numbers because it depends on which desktop you use etc.
So to get the best battery life you need, for example, your browser to use GPU-accelerated video encoding and decoding.
Linux is something of a second-class citizen for both GPU vendors and browser vendors. So for example if you're using Firefox and an nvidia GPU on Linux? No video encode/decode acceleration for you. The browser will silently switch to CPU decoding.
This translates into worse battery life.
They ship with Ubuntu on it, which would be quite natural choice for such benchmark. Also they do do the standby test on Ubuntu for some reason.
Can't help but suspect there's a reason why Linux numbers are not given. :(
By the time these laptops start shipping, 26.04 should be released and testing should be easy. I suspect no major differences from it vs windows.
7.1 includes even more performance improvements for panther lake. [1]
[1] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-7.1-Enabled-Intel-FRED
I definitely /wouldn't/ rely on just Windows figures for a machine that's otherwise advertised as "Linux first". If the battery life was the same on both, I'd prominently mention that.
I already know that combinations of hardware and software can be stretched and tweaked to do really interesting things in really excellent ways. I don't need them to tell me that computer systems are flexible. That's just noise.
And I don't want them to tell me how their (unreleased) hardware might work in the future with some unreleased/beta software. That tends to be interpreted as speculation, or as lies and deceit.
I'd prefer to see benchmarks of how it works if it shipped today.
If those benchmarks are unsavory (as they may presently be) and thus omitted, then that's not ideal but it's okay.
I definitely don't want to feel as if I'm being lied to, in place of an omission.
[1]: I just want a 15" version. I'm not a fan of little screens. My eyes aren't getting any better.
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.
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.
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.
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
> 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.
Thinkpad P1: W 361.8mm x D 245.7mm x H 18.4mm
Framework 16: W 356.58mm x D 270.00mm x H 17.95mm
The Framework 13 roughly matches 14" laptops from other manufacturers. It's really a 13.5", and has a taller aspect ratio than typical.
Seconding this question, though I would also be very interested in learning whether they're planning a 14" version.
And secondly how healthy is framework as a company, and to what extent do you make money from consumers vs sales to big companies?
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.
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?
2. We have one hand open on the lid for each generation of 13.
2. Huh. Well, I feel like an idiot! I always use two hands when opening the lid, muscle memory, I guess.
ps. one question you don't have to answer: for the wireless keyboard, did you guys consider something like a fingerprint sensor? I like the idea of having something like that akin to Mac's Wireless Keyboard but I don't know how much integration something like that would need.
I know it's not the most ideal form factor for a repairable device, but I can dream.
- 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?
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.
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 :)
Reading it again, I'm assuming they're overtime and individual upgrades that can take place? If someone could confirm or deny that for me, I would appreciate it. I may just be overthinking this table.
Edit: yeah that's what I'm taking away after rereading this a few more times. Very impressed by the modularity on each of those parts.
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.
On the other hand I can go to a local store and buy a stick of 32GB lpcamm2.
Will the new keyboard colour schemes come to other locales? I love the orange/black/grey but probably not enough to learn American English.
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)
I’ve literally never used the touchscreen.
You're blaming the touchscreen for a lot here, when the explanation is likely a lot more pedestrian. Change in case molding, change in PCB size, slight change in battery size...
e.g. 30g in larger heatsinks, 80g in glass-laminated screen, 20g in larger battery, 40g in more stiffer chassis. 30g in aluminium top case instead of carbon fiber :)
Maybe that's the reason, not the touchscreen?
I don’t buy it.
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?
Will it be possible to change the backlight color to, f.ex. dark red?
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?
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...
And yeah… what I really want is some Oryon cores in a Framework 13 motherboard.
---
I'd love to go with framework to replace my half-functional MSI laptop, but if I can't see a comment or link to any acknowledgement at all, I'll be getting my next laptop from https://novacustom.com/ instead.
https://frame.work/no/en
P.S. The printer gag was cruel, just saying.
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)
I have a feeling that laptops don't keep up with the today's dev workflows.
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
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.
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 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.
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.
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
And they’re miraculously within 10-20% of each other.
Also MBP is not really repairable at all.
Big enough that they specifically targeted that exact group with this laptop.
Personally I also can't stand the exterior design, albeit overall hardware of MBP is good. Guess if I land an old MBP this is what I'd do with it.
I will attempt to use Asahi as my daily driver once this is officially released.
What I really want is for other hardware vendors to catch up. I like Apple hardware but hate their software.
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...
The idea that they were doing this maliciously never made sense anyway, customers who haven't upgraded in a while might be the least lucrative audience to target.
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!
First and foremost, you cannot install any applications through the primary method of app installation, which is the App Store.
You also cannot use certain applications like iMovie (which is pre-installed) without an Apple Account.
MacOS will always prompt you in the Settings to sign in with iCloud. Opt into Betas, including Public and Developer Betas are not possible without an iCloud account.
The Apple land is miles better than the Microsoft land, which you aptly point out though.
Can you though? Its been a few years since I've been on apple, but being able to get anything but icloud native support in other apps was basically non-existent. Compared to android where it gives you a plethora of choice out of the box.
- opens to a full-page Apple Music subscription service ad on first run.
- search functionality defaults to “Apple Music” instead of “Local Library” (or “iTunes Store”) even when the user has no active subscription.
- Apple Music subscription upsell banner ad along the bottom of the search results screen, that stays on screen as you scroll the results pane.
Check out at the end when he demos Music-dot-app's Settings pane changing to include CD-ripping settings when and only when a CD drive is available, something they could also do and chose not to for Apple Music subscription service when the user isn't subscribed.
My last (and first, and only) iPhone was even worse. At one point the Settings app had no fewer than three paid-service nags at the top that I had to scroll through to even get to the first actual setting.
Storage almost full: enable iCloud Backup!
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Unrelated, but never thought I’d see this kind of sentiment
Framework is very much a premium brand (where the premium experience is centred on repairability/upgradeability), and don't have the economies of scale Apple do. It's natural that they'd end up being more expensive.
Yeah, I’m assuming just the one of the various tiers here that’s in the same bucket as MacBooks, and that we’re generally talking devices that are specialty-capable; such as media production or Linux development or gaming or what have you. If you lump the entire “portable screen bigger than nine? inches and with an in-box physical keyboard and pointer controller” market together, you’ll disregard ‘glorified word processors’ that cost a couple hundred bucks (before the RAM underproduction grift) in their own specialty niche. Framework isn’t competing there, right? (I could have missed something..)
Imagine telling this to someone in 2010 or 2015.
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
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.
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
You can sell the old Macbook and recoup a lot of the original investment.
I'm someone who doesn't want to go through a new laptop every other year. I've got an M1 mac right now. I've owned it for 5 years and could easily see myself getting another 5 years of use out of it. Only problem is, the hard drive is small, I can't upgrade it. It only has 16 GB RAM, which is fine for now, but I can't upgrade it. One of the 2 USB C ports gave out on me. I can't repair it.
If I had a laptop that I could repair and upgrade that also ran Linux? I would absolutely pay $2k for it - as long as the quality is good - because I think I would save money in the long term by making a laptop like that last a long time.
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 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.
- 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
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.)
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.
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.
I'd much rather see something like that, going back to Fn+up/dn makes me feel like a caveman.
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?
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.
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.
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).
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 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.
I've always wondered if these laptops can scale beyond the enthusiast group. If so, how?
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?
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.
I'm clinging on to my older Thinkpad X1 because the 4K display is so good.
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".
1.6x works surprisingly well now, that wasnt the case a couple years ago
> The side-firing speakers are tuned with Dolby Atmos® to deliver clear, balanced audio on Windows
> 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.)
They should probably give the Linux numbers after the Windows ones at least tbf, even if they are bad.
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.
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.
i.e. https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/specs/#footnote-5
My distro's compile farm compiles kernels for me (thanks guys!), and switched to pipewire years ago.
Pulseaudio still does the device juggling etc on most systems even when there's a pipewire backend.
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.
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.
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
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.
Looks like Framework has started heading this direction too, which is nice to see.
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.
I'm guessing Intel/AMD could integrate a single SSD controller that OEMs could use for a specially socketed SSD?
I'm not familiar enough with SSD controllers - but what limits would this introduce. I'm thinking they can't be totally generic - with any NAND chips, any layout, 1-4 chips and TLC or QLC NAND - any capacity etc. It strikes me it would be limiting - you would become restricted to a a small subset of SSDs, maybe not forwards compatible with newer NAND chips etc.
I'd think only the minority of PC Laptops would make sense to have this - ones with soldered SSDs - and I don't know many of these. So Intel/AMD would need a big push to integrate any controller. Maybe Windows ARM laptops, if the controller makes a big enough difference, will do this. I'm curious now if any Snapdragon devices are doing this already.
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.
Yeah, because they buy a Windows laptop, slap Linux on it, and expect it to work.
OSX sucks even more by this metric; it won't even install!
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.
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.
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.
LPCAMM2 really shows the trade-offs. It adds a lot of bulk and cost, and repairability hasn't been valued high enough by the market to cover that overhead for most consumers. That's why Micron exited the market they played a big part in founding.
https://www.ifixit.com/News/95078/lpcamm2-memory-is-finally-...
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?)
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.
"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
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).
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).
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.
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.
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...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnOpIQJnYWU
A few years ago we were told only "Pro" parts have ECC: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37828168
Those DRAM chips being the bottleneck that would require hard to build new silicon fabs to increase supply.
Intel has really crushed it lately.
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!
(Now you have to validate the next person's justification when it comes up again.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
Besides that, it all works about as well as you'd expect it to. You can drag the window around by the tab bar and tap-and-hold to pull up a context menu.
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.
My touchscreen laptop is closing in on being a decade old (i7 6600u) and the worst thing I can say about the experience is that it VSyncs down to 30fps during more taxing animations (just like my iPad does).
> Any gesture functionality is dependent on the software you are running. This includes both, the application (e.g. Firefox) and the desktop environment (e.g. GNOME). The driver can only provide a set of input coordinates to the applications. By default, the system will behave as if you've clicked at the point of a single touch, or mouse-button dragged when you single-finger drag.
I love Linux but no need to embellish the current state imo
I am glad that it is working really well for you though
Taking a quick look, all of the things they list are basically reiterating what I've already said vis-a-vis Wayland:
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.
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 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
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.
They aren't lying. Apple's OEM keyboard repair will charge you for the entire topcase assembly, which can easily crest $500.
Contrast this with Framework or Thinkpad where a keyboard replacement is $20 and 5 minutes of screw work: https://www.ebay.com/itm/286053777254
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.
:(
That's a huge negative for me.
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.
edit: I think I found it: https://frame.work/products/laptop13pro-mainboard-intel-ultr...
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!
In fact, Intel also had Lunar Lake, which had on-package memory. However, it was still limited to 128-bit dual-channel, so there weren't really many performance benefits; it did however help with power efficiency.
(Except for the caches, which everybody has)
BTW as an AMD fanboy and stockholder, Intel's latest generation of CPUs is quality.
Have you missed all the recent Intel news or something?
They eventually got on the EUV train and were the first customer to receive ASML's current state of the art machine which they call high-NA EUV. Intel's 18A process is the first to use this machine as part of the manufacturing process, Panther Lake uses this process so now they're right back to being SOTA.
All the news about them (stock price movements, theories about them going bankrupt, Panther Lake, etc...) for the last 2 years has essentially been people betting on whether or not they can successfully incorporate SOTA ASML machines into their manufacturing.
Those might look cool, but they're a huge pain to use.
* 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.
They don't ship to where I am so I didn't stay long
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.
... 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 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
That's a non-starter. 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/...
It's the one thing I'm jealous of the Laptop 16 together with their key module that should let you design arbitrary layouts.
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.
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.
> 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.
No T-shape cursor keys?!? Lame. No love. No want. Go home.
Thinkpad FTW. Sorry.
- 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 :(
If you don’t reboot your laptop in years where ECC matters I’m not sure how to help you.