Framework Laptop 13 review: a DIY dream come true | Hacker News Reader

Framework Laptop 13 review: a DIY dream come true

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I'm happy to answer questions that folks have around this product.

Kinda related - any plans to expand the list of countries you ship to this year? Though, I am waiting for the 16"

We shared during our event in March that we'll be adding Spain, Italy, Belgium, and Taiwan this summer. We're building infrastructure to scale beyond that too, but we don't have a timeline or specific set of countries we can share yet.

When you expand to a country do you partner with local companies to provide support?

I have been hoping New Zealand gets added to the list soon :)

Will you ever stop iterating on the chassis and focus purely on the replaceable components? Seems to me that a reparable/upgradable laptop doesn't matter if you keep changing the chassis such that in order to enjoy new features you need an entirely new laptop every iteration. It also feels to me, as an 11th gen owner, that I've been left behind with my power and sound issues. Which is basically the same boat as any laptop user.

I'm in the same boat. Though, I think about it differently; the fact that I can print a case and use the mobo as a headless server is a differentiator for me. I also don't know if it's possible to design an attractive functional chassis that doesn't need iterating.

That being said I'd like to see a recycling program, or some way to reduce the environmental impact from upgrades.

eBay: The failed motherboards for instance will probably find new life from people selling their broken boards for $75, then component level repair shops can use the schematics to fix and then resell for $300+.

People do this with macbooks "logic boards" without access to schematics and now with framework, the barrier of entry is even lower.

Framework is doing something that goes back a long time, people like the parts swap capability (Long term car platforms for instance, created fanatics that became brand ambassadors and love to use this medium as an outlet to show off their ingenuity).

What's changed about the chassis?

From reading the Ars review, it certainly looks to me like you get the massive battery improvements without upgrading the chassis ( https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/05/review-framework-lap... ).

Is that not your understanding?

Edit: The marketplace also has replacement speaker parts, like https://frame.work/products/speaker-kit?v=FRANBXFG03 ) - I'm now even more confused about how your older chassis is holding you back.

Just a reminder: I may not have read every resource on the internet about this subject, and you can share information without attacking the person for not already having it. And it's not clear to me that I can fix these problems, and I stand by my question and look forward to getting an answer free of blame.

My understanding is that a first-gen chassis precludes none of the possible updates.

Whoh, I don't interpret anything in my response as blaming or attacking you, just asking why you thought what you did.

My apologies for coming across aggressively.

I interpreted your question as blaming Framework for limiting fixes to the new chassis, and wanted to know your source for thinking they were limited, as everything I saw indicated that they were not.

Does the Ars review I linked not indicate that you could fix your battery problems by upgrading the mainboard? (It also mentions that using the larger battery will be possible with a BIOS upgrade, which should further improve things).

Thanks for that, there's a lot I don't know. I still don't quite understand what they are talking about with "Laptop 13". Is that just a new motherboard in the same chassis? that's not clear from the marketing.

As far as I understood it, yes, it is the same chassis. I have last year's 13 and my understanding is that I can just buy the new components and upgrade my laptop.

Gotcha, no worries! The new naming scheme is confusing, because they're retroactively calling their 13 inch laptop "Laptop 13" (meaning, 13 inch screen chassis, as opposed to the new 16 inch screen chassis) at the same time as they're coming out with the mainboard for the 13th generation Intel processors.

The new 13th generation Intel processors, with a mainboard that should fit in your Laptop 13 (11th gen) chassis, should give better battery life, and I do think the chassis is about the same, though I think its got the stiffer back and hinges than your 11th gen (though you can order these replacement parts too!). I believe the new Ryzen version (coming out soon, I've pre-ordered) should also be quite good, but we don't have the benchmarks for it yet.

The article, or maybe some other one, says it's a retronym. They started calling the existing ones 13 now that there is a 16.

The parts that aren't obviously for the totally different 16 are all actually compatible with the few exceptions indicated on each special part.

Like the AMD motherboard will need a new wifi card and ram I think, and this is indicated on the page for that motherboard. But it fits in the existing cases. Same for the new speakers, battery, hinges, screens.

There are some special chromebook versions of some parts and even they fit physically but I think just aren't supported in the bios except with the chromebook mother board.

So far until the 16 there have been many small updates but all compatible and no breaking changes.

The 16 is one new different platform. I think one new platform after 3 years is not a "constant iterating new chassis..." or however that was worded (phone won't show me that post until after I hit reply)

Basically it's not a problem.

(I have one from 2 years ago and have already replaced the motherboard from 11th to 12th intel, and the keyboard because of a spill. And am eying the speakers and the battery and the matte screen, and will probably update my hdmi & displayport modules myself.)

Just from a quick browse through Framework's replacement parts, almost none of them specify which version they're designed for. So either they're all interchangeable with any chassis version, or the website has an enormous usability problem and can expect a lot of unhappy customers. (I don't own a Framework and I have no idea which of these is the case.)

The newly announced but not yet released 16" model has some also not yet released GPU modules that require a 16" chassis, but all iterations of the 13" chassis are interchangable and compatible and I believe the 13" parts work in the 16" too

My understanding is that every upgraded component which ships with the new framework can be purchased separately and installed in the 1st generation model. Indeed, this is the primary selling point of the framework. What source have you seen which says differently?

The chassis is fully compatible with all previous framework laptops.

All of the modules are cross-compatible across 11th Gen, 12th Gen, and 13th Gen Framework Laptops. In the Marketplace, you can also use the compatibility filters in the nav on the left if you’re unsure.

I have a gen12 i5. The thing I am dissappointed with is battery life. Will a motherboard swap to AMD significantly improve on this?

I really hope so too, I bought the same laptop as you a few months ago, and battery life hasn't been great (not to mention it gets hot a lot). I love the laptop otherwise, so I'm hoping the switch to AMD will fix this.

Based on the reviews, a motherboard swap to Intel 13th gen will significantly improve it.

Any plans on FOSS stuff? Option to ship with some linux distro, dedicated linux support, maybe even libreboot or coreboot?

Coreboot, please!

Currently we offer the DIY Edition without an OS installed and have setup guides and community support for popular distros, along with technical support for Ubuntu LTS and Fedora. Our embedded controller firmware is open source, and we’ve opened sourced CAD and documentation for many of the hardware modules.

Any chance you can dispense with the logo?

Better control over the power LED would be good -- its blinding in certain environments

You can adjust the brightness in the bios

Yeah, I want to disable it.

Any efforts going into OLED/AMOLED/MiniLED displays? It's my biggest hesitation point.

Or just one with a faster response time?

The current panel has quite long rise times.

I'd definitely want to try an eink display when/if it's available.

I feel you. I won't buy a laptop without an OLED panel. If you're going for a budget device, I totally understand not including a panel like this. But this doesn't seem to be a budget laptop. It's meant to last and be upgraded.

Why, oh why have you gone with the terrible "bar-style" arrow keys instead of t-shaped? Apple similarly made this mistake, and thankfully recanted. It was so miserable to use bar-style arrow keys that I've officially sworn off of any keyboard (or any machine with a keyboard) that has them.

Can't you convert them into t-shaped keys by simply cutting the left/right arrows in half?

Part of the problem with the bar arrow keys is that the up/down are so small. I wouldn't want to "fix" the problem by making the left/right equally small.

They describe Apple as recanting though, but Apple's arrow keys are still half height.

That seems mechanically unlikely; they're probably attached in the middle.

it's a mathematical argument

very good point ... I'd question the entire design process based only on this flaw

Any plans for more official FreeBSD or OpenBSD support?

Hi. I have an m1 mac but always missed linux since I got it. Here are my questions if you can take a minute:

How stable is the Linux laptop and what distros are officially supported? What would be the best possible battery life I can get out of that 13 inch Ryzen version that was recently released?

Have you looked into Asahi Linux?

Yes, but it's still miles away from being complete and I'm not sure if it will land in the next year

I also have an m1 under linux and I regret choosing it.

I'm also curious about this for the 13th gen one. My hope is that it shares the 12th gen's excellent Linux compatibility (the only thing that doesn't work with that one is that you need to turn off the light sensor for the brightness keys to function properly), and that the Windows battery life improvements carry over to Linux.

(The Ryzen one isn't out yet, so nobody will have battery life answers on that.)

They're using Intel radios, which is good. Intel and AMD are both good on CPU and GPU, the screen resolution is icky if you want to run X11, so you'll want wayland, and that is a can of worms. I'd say my KDE experience is great, but others complain more.

They officially support these Linux https://frame.work/linux and I've been using it for 1.5 years - it's super stable.

I get pretty great battery life on my 11th gen Intel Framework under Fedora, and it's apparently way better on the 13th gen. Also stoked for the Ryzen version later this year.

Thanks, how well does it handle an external 4k display with the intel graphics btw?

As others noted, we provide support for Ubuntu LTS and Fedora, and we have setup guides published for those along with Mint and Fedora. At this point, there is mature support for the hardware we are shipping, including the new 13th Gen Intel Core processors.

Hi, thank you for founding Framework.

Love my 12th gen framework laptop except for an issue with the headphone jack. Waiting on a replacement for that.

I do wish the keyboard was better. See the Thinkpad. Using the function key for terminal paste + home and end forces me to spend a second to think to shift between this and my Thinkpad keyboards. I know you are coming out with magnetic ones-really looking forward to that and hope they match the thinkpad.

Also, the thinkpad keyboards have arrow keys can actually be pressed.

I'd say the up and down keys are the two most used keys on my keyboard.

My 11 year old mechanical keyboard just had its first switch failure a month ago, unsurprisingly on the up arrow key.

If someone releases a proper keyboard module for the framework 16 by mid-december, then I'll be getting a 16', otherwise I'll probably going with a thinkpad.

I have a framework and never even noticed the arrow keys, because I've barely ever pressed them. Reading these comments gives me another reason to be thankful for vim keybindings.

Can you please elaborate on why the new mobo is so much more power efficient? If anything is due to software (e.g. BIOS), will you be able to backport these changes to previous version?

Also agree with reviewer's comments about privacy shutters being hard to see. My family members have complained about "laptop['s webcam] doesn't work" when the shutters were closed. This caused unnecessary bad experiences with using the laptop.

As a counterpoint, I love that they're subtle. I don't want big things glaring out at me. (But when they're disabled, there is an orange section. If you don't know that it's possible, as your family probably doesn't, you won't think anything of it, but it's easy to see at a glance the status.)

Orange for "warning, you're safe" instead of "warning, you're on camera"?

I've had mine for over 2 years and 2 mbs and never really noticed. I never use the webcam.

I agree though, I would rather it be invisible unless I look specifically. Just the meaning when I DO look should be obvious, and orange for inactive is not obvious or natural to me except in maybe parachutes.

I think consistency is important between vendors. It would be annoying if one vendor chose orange to mean that you're on camera, and another vendor would show orange to mean that you are off camera.

11th gen owner here. Yeah I found this confusing as well, but probably the least annoying thing that has bothered me on a laptop.

> If you don't know that it's possible, as your family probably doesn't, you won't think anything of it

Unfortunately, they just thought the laptop is buggy, since it was not obvious that this feature existed. This person is also a lead on a consumer hardware product at the big company, and is aware of general privacy shutter features etc. In this case, the issue was just that it was not obvious that there was a privacy shutter on the laptop.

Part of the improvement comes from the 13th Gen processors, and part comes from improved firmware control of the retimers. We have firmware updates for 11th Gen (stable release) and 12th Gen (beta release currently) that enable the latter.

I have been wanting to design a framework case for my own use. Unfortunately the way I need to mount the motherboard means that the air in take is on the other side then it is in the Framework laptop. Would it be possible to either flip the fan or run it in reverse mode?

How does performance compare between your Intel and AMD flagships?

I'm having the worst time hunting down a Cooler Master Mainboard Case ... seems like y'all have not had these in stock the numerous times I've checked, today even, https://frame.work/products/cooler-master-mainboard-case. Any inside info for us from Cooler Master on supply or ETA on stock from your sales page?

I've tried direct with Cooler Master. The online store has 3 pages of cases, https://store.coolermaster.com/us/cases-2?pagenumber=3 none included Framework's. Next I checked CM's 'find a store' which dead ends at suggesting Micro Center or Game Stop, which neither I find carry them.

I don't have a 3d printer on-hand and don't think this warrants 100-200$ printer purchase. Should I go hunt around for some folks to help at a local college or hobby shop instead?

I certainly can see up-cycling my 11th gen mainboard into a homelab asset with proxmox this year though. Without a mainboard case for this 11th gen on-hand though, I'll also not consider a mainboard upgrade.

Any insight or guidance?

Cooler Master is currently in production on the first set of cases. We’ll send out an email notification to those who entered the waitlist on the product page once we have them in stock, which should be within the next few weeks.

What has somewhere like Shapeways.com quoted you to print it?

Had some trouble with that route ... https://www.printables.com/model/176903-framework-pc-mainboa... doesn't mention mm / cm scale so guessing mm? How many pins per build?

Attempting quotes; I skipped shapeways, requiring an account to see a quote was it.

Hubs.com was around 159$ before shipping and has errors on the connector pin integrity. I suspect they are upsizing me to a higher end material, with HP PA 12... difficult to toggle choices and get the price down.

Craftcloud3d.com quoted me $28.58 and just about 17$ in shipping for PLA type, looks like their cheapest options before I consider how many pins I need to add. I can't tell if I need a minimum temp for these case materials, any guidance or is PLA fine? Seems about 5-10$ more expensive than CM mainboard case is expected to be.

Have you considered the option of allowing purchase without some components, e.g. storage? Plenty of people buying a new laptop already have an SSD.

Their "DIY Edition" (vs "Pre-built") allows this: the laptop comes without memory and storage installed, and you either install your own or install separately packaged parts that you ordered at the same time during the configuration process.

Are we going to see improvements to the pricing overtime (and not just for last gen mobos)? Even the OP mentions that a roughly identical (spec wise) Dell laptop is $350 cheaper. It's rather hard for me (and even harder to convince someone else) to swallow that much of a premium.

I'm definitely thinking about getting a Framework, I could use a decent Windows / Linux laptop for random hacking (and some light gaming). Might wait until the next model comes out though since I don't have any immediate need.

Being able to replace components in my 2012-era Macbook Pro has saved me a number of times and a laptop that's built around that ideal sounds great to me.

Are Frameworks generally in pretty high demand and hard to get? Like when the next model comes out, can I basically expect that it will be impossible to get for a while?

They're a small company, so at launch they meter them out through pre-orders. If you order now, you have to wait for later "waves."

Once they're out for a while, though, they're just normal "pick one up and buy it" things.

The bad (addendum): poor display panel options. No upgrades to DCI-P3 coverage, OLED, etc.

It would be nice if Framework can share a roadmap for availability outside U.S (I'm from Belgium) for all their products.

We shared during our event in March that we'll be adding Spain, Italy, Belgium, ... | Hacker News https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35967906

I like my 2022 framework, but the Linux support has been disappointing.

I've had off and on display issues: both the built-in display, which used to constantly freeze (now less so), and external displays which sometimes will stop working until I switch kernels. Battery life is awful -- it'll last maybe 8 hours with the screen off (doing basically nothing, but not sleeping). A few hours of actual use. Sometimes the replaceable ports stop working until I re-insert them after boot. The manual screen brightness doesn't work until you disable the auto adjustment and reboot (not sure if this was fixed).

It's about the level of support I'd expect form a laptop not specifically advertised as Linux friendly, except Linux was part of the marketing for Framework.

Just want to put this out there since this review didn't test Linux.

I wonder if it is possible for a DIYer with a 3D printer to put a mainboard in a thinkpad X220. Or transplant the thinkpad keyboard to the Framework. All electrical connections are probably going to kill this idea stone dead, but a man can dream;-)

I hope the review is indeed correct, my Framework Laptop 12 has horrible battery duration: Normal usage 3 hours, high CPU usage 2 hours, measured multiple times. Also the fan is constantly spinning, it's very loud and it's overheating.

Are there any plans to enhance the sound quality in future iterations? The 80dB speaker upgrade makes it louder, but the sound quality is still lacking compared to other traditional machines.

whats a traditional machine? it sounds a lot better than the system76 i had prior to it

Macbooks have great speakers, wondering if that's what he meant

Possibly, but literally no other laptops sound anywhere near as good as Macbooks.[0] Apple has done some real magic in the laptop speaker space, and they've kept their secrets to themselves. Shame I always wear headphones.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkYB931iUjc

Doesn't matter to me if Apple did laptop speaker magic, I want my next laptop to be comparable. ThinkPad X1 Carbon 7th gen (and newer), ThinkPad Z16 have good speakers for example so this is definitely doable, just enough people have to want it to happen.

Apple is way out ahead of the pack on this point. No (?) trad PC laptop is on the same level so it seems like kinda a high bar to clear.

Dude.. macbooks are famously outlier way better than anyone else for sound. Framework is the same as 99% everyone else on that item.

I was comparing the sound quality to Lenovo's, Thinkpads, and MacBooks. I find my framework sounds muddier and more distorted than all of them. I acknowledge that the Mac might be unfair since it's in a different price and quality range, the Lenovo quality seems doable though.

I loved my initial kickstarter version of this laptop and am even happier with my 2022 model. Really looking forward to the larger model. Highly recommend these to everyone.

excitedly waiting for my ryzen model myself. Its such a relief to be able to order less ram and ssd knowing I can upgrade that later.

Are you willing to buy it once its released?

The Verge has to have some of the worst reviews on the entire internet. All they ever talk about is subjective stuff like how the product "Looks" and "Feels" and are seemingly incapable of doing any actual work to provide things like benchmarks, comparisons, charts, graphs, etc. Just more of the same low effort, low quality garbage reporting as usual from the Verge. Like how do you do an entire review and not have a single benchmark or even a remotely qualitative battery life test let alone meaningful comparisons to competitive products?

I like knowing how something feels, there's a reason people buy more expensive laptops without better performance. There are other reviewers who can provide this information. Since it's subjective I'm happy to hear as many voices as possible.

Honestly from my experience laptop benchmarks are easily gamed and often useless. I'm way more interested in this kind of subjective review.

I think this is pretty unfair, they do a recap of stats and include battery life and speaker loudness measurements. Like a sibling comment says, feel and experience matter also.

That said, it sounds like you'd be happier with Notebookcheck's review [0].

[0]: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Core-i7-1370P-performance-debu...

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