Good article, but dear god, either hire an editor, or put it through a spelling and grammar checker. Preferably both.
I dont need a laptop right now but damn this thing is sexy. Its been a long time since hardware gave me that “do want” itch even though i dont need it. Ryzen would have been great but even with an Intel SOC this thing is a compelling package.
I still prefer a used Thinkpad, better on the environment.
But isn’t this an American company?
Yes. This is the technology community, not the buy European one.
Framework is pushing laptops in the right direction.
Yes, but the products are manufactured and assembled in Taiwan, using a dedicated team for framework, and shipped to local warehouses across the world to sell and ship locally. They can easily decide to make, ship and sell the product across the globe but in the us. The ceo explained that they forsaw things like this when they started in 2019/2020 and therefore decided, back then, that they would take on this model to not fuck themselves incase trump would go haywire back then.
That has now saved their arses tbh
Personally I‘d give these guys a pass tbh.
O yes I don’t mean anything by it, just that it makes it extra weird you can pre-order anywhere but their home country
That’s what happens when you make it expensive to import anything and don’t have any domestic manufacturing for computer components.
The laptops are manufactured in Taiwan. There’s so much unpredictability in the tariffs so they’re delaying until it settles down. Tariffs are going to impact US companies and US residents.
Huh, only has one memory slot. Single channel is certainly a choice and is unfortunately enough to make me write this off…
Maybe there’s a USB C to memory module?
a USB4 CXL module would be exceptionally cursed and I am here for it
Thanks Trump!
We don’t get nice things anymore, only “American things”.
These look great… But no backlit keyboard option :(
You need to learn to touch type.
I just think they’re neat
OK dad
This looks nice but the prices are insane. €2,787.00 for a good FL 16 build? You have to even pay extra from USB ports. I can buy more or less as good Slimbook for half that price. Is the serviceability really worth it if my laptop will last 5-10 years anyway? I mean I can buy another entire Slimbook in 5 years and not spend that much more. What’s the justification for that?
FYI, their RAM and SSD prices are often almost double what you can find elsewhere – at least that’s the case in the US. Getting a DIY edition and buying these components separately will likely make the price a tiny bit easier to swallow. Still, spec wise alone it will never be a great value.
Why consider these guys when Tuxedo and Slimbook exist??
Are either of those brands designed with the same level of user serviceability in mind?
The main drive for framework is how easy they are to repair or mod along with their varying degrees of modularity (such as their swappable ports).
I just noticed this is the technology community and not the BuyEuropean community. So my comment doesn’t make sense.
On the subject of those two anyway, I think Slimbook is just a Clevo reseller?
Not sure about Tuxedo
I see a lot of people bashing this laptop but i still think it came out be a really nice machine. I still dont agree with the framework philosophy(i say this while daily driving a framework 13) because i think devices should be pro-repair and not pro-i-can-dissasemble-it-for-fun or whatever you would call it. But the laptops they make are still really nice but they overdo the whole repair thing. A laptop should be repairable enough that tech savvy people can fix it and not so non-tech people can. Too much unnecessary overhead for very little gain.
I think you have been lulled into submission by the decades-long “Let’s make it really complicated to repair for no reason other than profits” narrative. This is exactly how devices should look. This is exactly how your TV, radio looked 30 years ago. Easy to disassemble, diagrams on the bloody box, extra fuses, relays if one blows.
Hell, this is exactly how your desktop looked and still looks. Lots of extra screws, replaceable parts. Easy to disassemble (not even using screws for the panels).
I literally just dont think so. The diagrams shouldnt be IN the freaking device it should be in the box on the manual. Also from my ubderstanding framework doesnt provide a bunch of low level documentation which i also think should be included. Old devices, old tvs, etc could have complicated assemblies and you had to be tech savvy to take it apart, the difference was they made it possible to take it apart. In the same space framework provides 4 io ports you could put all the io that could be possible and still make it repairable. You can use daughter boards instead of whole physical assemblies and save a bunch of space and reduce on mechanical assemblies you need to keep all the parts together. For example on a desktop device where you had more space old devices would use a fuse panel but on a handheld radio you would need to take out a few screws and only then could you replace the fuse. And the manual and wiring diagram was on a piece of paper you got in the box. It was to save space. I think its a completely worthile investment. The problem most people face when designing something like this is its hard and they either cheap out and make it hard to repair or waste resources on complicated mechanisms that could be achieved in an easier way. While this isnt such a big problem on a laptop, when you get to phones it is a hard balance. Of course if you legally force companies to comply with RTR then suddenly they come up with really good ideas to balance cost, complexity and repairability which is what we should do.
Sorry for the rant btw this is just a space im very invested in and have a lot of opinions about so i wanted to share what i think.
Not bad for a laptop with unreliable USB support. But that’s ok, USB is pretty niche, nobody really uses that…
/s
(speaking from personal experience with a fw16, multiple USB A and C expansion modules, after a mainboard replacement and firmware update and testing under several different Linux distros. but also, framework’s own community forums show plenty of reports of USB problems, and even more on reddit)
I have not had problems with usb so far on my fw16 but the integrated graphics 780M… My god the amd gpu drivers are a mess.
Crashes and artifacts daily. At least it is somewhat possible to contact amd and work on a fix together with them.
Keep in mind that the 569,-€ is for the DIY edition and does not include RAM, SSD (2230 form factor) or expansion cards. So assuming you’re starting with nothing the cheapest price would be about this:
- Framework Laptop 12 569,-€
- 8 GB DDR5-5600 22,-€
- 256 GB M.2 2230 SSD 34,-€
- 4 expansion cards, ex. 2 USB-C, 2 USB-A 40,-€ (other cards are more expensive)
So about 665,-€ at current pricing from Germany, not including individual shipping costs of the RAM and SSD. If you require/want Windows then that would need to be factored in as well.
Obviously quite a bit cheaper compared to the 13, but I doubt this will impact the education market that this is supposed to target (unless edu gets steep discounts).
The point of the DIY edition is that you could just reuse some old RAM or SSDs. Maybe another $50 for a good set. Then they sell refurbished expansion cards (that are currently out of stock) for $34.
The point of the DIY edition is that you could just reuse some old RAM or SSDs.
In theory, yes. I don’t think it is very likely that people have DDR5 SO-DIMM modules lying around, let alone 2230 SSDs. I don’t understand why they weren’t able to go for the way more common 2280 form factor for the SSD at least.
Some people have dead laptops with fried motherboards or dead batteries, or cracked screens, that are absolutely unrepairable but have memory and alive ssds. I know I do.
Sure, I’m not saying this never happens, but I’d argue this is the exception not the rule. Especially when it comes to DDR5 which is still quite new, so there should not be that many laptops with dead batteries with such memory around yet. It would be a different story with DDR4, not that I would suggest that they use DDR4. And the SSD form factor they used isn’t very common, so it is probably even less likely that people have such SSDs lying around. I still appreciate that they allow me to buy the machine without memory/storage.
I can forgive the ram decision, they’re producing laptops that can be upgraded in the future to keep them from becoming waste, not upgraded using old equipment now.
I actually do have 2230 ssds laying around. I bought a few used computers on eBay to use as servers that had 128gb versions of these little shits in them that I had assumed were 2.5" not m.2. Wouldn’t use them in a new laptop for me, but it’s plenty enough for a school laptop or device that isn’t storing data on that particular drive.
I’m not going to rag on them for going with this form factor, because they are very conscious about their designs, but it isn’t like it’s hard to accommodate a range of m.2 sizes. You just need a little hole you can screw the mounting…screw into. Like, maybe you can’t fit a 2280 in there, but from what I’ve seen 2242 is more common than 2230.
