I'm happy to answer any questions folks have on this product.
With the greatest respect it's 2024, a laptop should be capable of 8 hours at the very minimum for a mid range model but I'm seeing a lot of people getting sub 2 hours.
The 16 ticks all the boxes for me but I've held off for now as having the possibility of worse battery life than my old 2015 mac isn't as you can imagine making for a compelling upgrade.
For Linux, when following our installation guides for power optimization, power consumption with integrated graphics should be similar.
Edit: Tom's Hardware similarly reports 9 hours on Windows (with Graphics Module installed): https://www.tomshardware.com/laptops/framework-laptop-16-rev....
I'm in the same boat, looking for as light as possible with a much battery as possible, was banking on the 16 yet we get 9 hours instead of (an assumed) ~10-11, and 2.1/2.4kg.
Somehow the Thinkpad Extreme X1 and the new Zephyrus G16 have similar CPUs, dGPUs, a >90Whr battery and they weigh less than 2kg.
Where's most the weight going? Will I be able to buy a FW 16 and eliminate weight to achieve similar specs? Literally asking about using a "stripped down version".
If you want the lightest laptop with the longest battery life, you'd get a Mac. If you want the best bang for your buck go with a basic Ultrabook. If your willing to have a bit more weight, size and a bit less battery in exchange for repairability/customization, that's the niche framework fits well.
As a result, its beginning to resemble a paperweight.
Edit: I'm running linux. I don't recall doing any battery optimization but maybe I installed or configured something a few years ago? I don't change things often.
Another edit: I just checked and I do have TLP installed!
It's also a trade off against competence, because you can kill the battery right quick if drivers don't idle things properly, but even after you address that you still have the other thing.
Which makes 16+ hour battery life an odd choice for most people. Who uses their laptop for 16 contiguous hours with no opportunity to charge? It could have been lighter or faster.
Naturally Framework has the potential to make it flexible: Have a dual-use bay where one of the options is a second battery, and then if you want it you take the weight/battery life trade off in favor of battery life, and if not the machine can be lighter.
Also generally speaking more efficient laptops are cooler which is generally a quality welcome in a device sometimes used in a person’s lap.
Sure, it's the bulk of a Macbook Air, but I often leave that open, with the screen on, running VMs for work all day without it being plugged in. I expect that any time I open it, I'll have at least 30-60 minutes of use before I need to plug it in. My Framework, more often than not, tells me it's about to emergency shut down as soon as I log in.
Did you report this issue to Framework? Do other users have similar issues?
This is just the same trade off. For a given level of efficiency you could have put in a smaller battery and offset the weight of a second battery / charging brick that you would then only need when you need many hours of battery life.
> Also generally speaking more efficient laptops are cooler which is generally a quality welcome in a device sometimes used in a person’s lap.
That isn't really part of the trade off either. The faster ones generally don't have worse performance per watt -- they're often better because they have more cores with lower clock speeds. You get 100% more cores with 75% more performance for 50% more power consumption. For the same load they generate less heat. See also "race to idle".
They only generate more heat in absolute terms if you put more load on them than the slower alternative would have been able to handle.
The weight isnt the problem. It's the poor optimisation of hardware and software.
Given LTT's review of the laptop, it may be best to wait for the 2nd revision of this which hopefully will deal with the deck flex and screen consistency issues.
Macbooks are the only device I would trust to not light a bag on fire…
It’s excellent in that I can suspend any software and have it come back to life exactly the way I expect (no small feat!) and it’s excellent that it never cooks itself when unattended in a case or bag, but it is total trash that it eats 20-30% battery a day while “off”. That’s not a bug, but expected behavior. It’s just not what I have come to expect from a modern computer, and portable Macs haven’t behaved that way since about 2005.
However, my (5+ yrs old?) T480s running linuxmint never does it (i5-8250u). YMMV
discussion: https://community.frame.work/t/simple-extra-battery-for-the-...
Previous generation Macbook running the same workload last for 6+ hours.
That said, for someone who isn't going to be running every core at 100% all the time, I'd still recommend it.
Edit: Oh, and under arch with the latest kernel, I find many monitors that cannot display video output over usb-c, like the Dell U4919DW.
If you have processes pegging CPUs at 100% and you don't want them to, then use a cgroup to limit their CPU time.
You do understand that different machines can do the same calculations with different amounts of energy, right?
Still, if your dev environment is using CPU constantly you're likely doing something inefficiently. Redis and postgres don't do much unless you ask them to, for example.
I now make sure to save my work and shut the laptop off completely at the end of a session.
I followed the prompt on the website and signed up for the newsletter, but I got so much marketing spam that was totally irrelevant to my one and only question that I had to unsubscribe.
I’ve got the money here, had it for at least two years. I just don’t have a way to give it to Framework
> All warranty service will require a shipping address within one of the EU countries we ship to.
So if I need to warranty something, I need to figure out how to have a shipping address in, say, Germany? Easy!
Oh and if the 2.5k€ laptop gets damaged by a 3rd party shipping company, I'm on the hook for it.
Yea, I'll wait. I can't figure out why it's so hard to ship stuff within the EU. The whole purpose of the European Union is to make moving products easy inside its borders.
it's not, at least not in my experience.
Tangentially, as they are doing it already, selling _to consumers_ is quite hard. Each country has different regulation placing a lot of obligations on the seller.
Such as? Just curious
That's the whole damn point of the EU.
I think there might be some regulation on having the instructions written in the native language, but that's like 100€ to a translator for an one-time job. No laptop comes with an extensive manual.
Warranty terms are EU-wide too mostly, there are some country-specific exceptions, but nothing that would require a huge legal team to handle.
From Germany: specific requirements for "impressum" on each website. Definition of all quantities in SI units.
Things get more funny if you touch any food: labelling regulations have a common EU base, but definition of what detail level is required for each element is per country, and they do differ significantly.
For everywhere: obligation to collect and report VAT for each destination country.
IIRC they are fairly consistent across the EU (simplifying cross border commerce is one of main reasons it exists)
> but I got so much marketing spam that was totally irrelevant to my one and only question that I had to unsubscribe
Make sure you don't tick the "Stay up to date with Framework newsletters" checkbox, I didn't and haven't received any marketing
Edit: Looks like I found what I am looking for: https://www.electronjs.org/docs/latest/api/environment-varia....
Electron apps are still blurry though. Hmm... Also, seems like I need to expose something to Electron apps that are packaged in Flatpak. Needs more research.
The only way forward is bug the maintainers of the apps to do the right thing and support wayland properly. Electron itself does.
This is an area of active development that will continue to see improvement.
At these pixel sizes (except 125%), it is irrelevant. MacOS and iPhone do exactly the same for years, and nobody was ever bothered.
> along with the performance overhead.
By the increased resolution of the framebuffer; the scaling itself is done by hardware (and here I do not mean GPU; I mean output encoder).
Oh, it does. The framebuffer is integer scaled, but the physical display has different (lower) resolution. As I wrote above, this mismatch is handled by the output encoder.
> Macs are all designed to run at 200%, though you can set it to 175% or 150%.
Macs since around 2016 ship with ~175% default.
Again, the framebuffer is integer scaled (make a screenshot and see for yourself), and then fit to the display with lower resolution.
They do not support 150% or 175% though; these numbers are never shown in UI, just some description like "more space". This is not just Apple-esque hiding of everything that might sound technical; they really do not support 150% or 175%. In reality, it is more like 177,78% or 152,38%; they get something out of it, but that is a different topic.
It is exactly the same approach that Gnome / Mutter uses for fractional scaling. Except that Mutter did the mistake with exact scales.
https://community.frame.work/t/request-review-of-korean-belg...
(am not even Japanese, just have bad habit of using thumb clusters a lot, and this is the only layout with small space bar)
Same, the 106/109 keys JP layout is wonderful!
I use the Ro key as a quick desktop toggle (right next to PageUp on my Thinkpad keyboard) and the Yen key as a full-word erase (like Ctrl-W on bash)
The extra left and right thumbs are also extrely helpful to have Home and End in an easy-to reach position.
Another example I can think about: remap the Ro key to toggle between international layout while it's pressed, so you can switch between layouts with a key right next to the shift key.
For example, on a US/RU settting, press Ro while pressing the 6 keys to the right of Tab in a sequence and you would get ЙЦУКЕН, don't press Ro and do the same: you would get QWERTY. Mixing and matching in both upper and lowercase would be very easy.
This still leaves you with the Yen and the Ro key to map for other things!
How does the trackpad feel compared to what people are used to with Apple devices on MacOS, is it at all comparable? I remember that being my least favorite part of using Linux laptops like what System 76 would put out.
How's the device build? Plasticky? Flexing? Once again, I dreaded that about the System76 machines, which IIRC are just rebranded Clevos/Compals.
From the LTT review (note that Linus has personally invested in the company, but says he did not review the team's script) at timestamp[0]:
> The keyboard on the Framework 16 is unacceptable at this price [...] wasn't able to get up to my full typing speed in particular while doing really quick double presses due to the chassis flex, a huge disappointment compared to the keyboard on the Framework 13
> The problem is the midplate [..] with the keyboard off, you can just see how not supportive this super thin piece of metal is. Fortunately, this being a framework, disassembling only takes about a minute and we were able to chuck some thermal pads in the areas where it was squishiest, and.. holy crap, that is so much better.
> The amount that the chassis flex influences the feel of the keyboard is huge and the difference that this mod has made is night and day. With the thermal pads in there, this keyboard isn't quite on the same level of Asus or Alienware but comfortably beats MSI and Razor and bring it much more in-line with the price.
You got an AMD option now, this is the last hurdle.
(An ergonomic and programmable keyboard ia a dream. Maybe I could mod it myself.)
I'd say "good" rather than "interesting" and yes, it is, particularly for anyone who likes dark mode.
I’m holding out for an NVIDIA GPU, or at least some hardware to accelerate running local AI models. Do you have any expansion bay plans for that?
Do you think that you will move from batches to continuous production the next few years (I understand this is difficult logistics)? If Frameworks were available with 3 day shipping, then I would be able to recommend them to people more successfully.
Also out of interest, do you mind sharing your stance (and estimates for current and future demand) for touchscreens? Presumably you're estimating low demand for this at moment since it's not a priority. Would be great to see stats on this (since at the moment it's mostly just informal discussion / passing comments in the community/forums)
Thanks in advance. Appreciate everything you've all done.
And appreciate that any expectations for <1week delivery would ignore your JIT/ondemand style assembly
Image: https://static.frame.work/6jh6n0jcad25finrrmx9kmv48eex
This keyboard config uses the super key.
I want sturdiness, correct performance, good repairability, great linux support. Tout le reste n'est que littérature.
EDIT: Oh I missed the smiley at the end. So I think you were not too serious about this being a dealbreaker
Is it possible to remove the trackpad?
I didn't keep track of Framework 13s at all so I'm not sure what their shipping cadence was for pre-orders (just for comparison's sake)
13" is a great size for a truly portable use case.
I find a 'standard' 13" (as on an older Macbook Air, for example, which I think is technically 13.3" and 16:10?) a bit too claustrophobic for anything creative - either due to apps needing toolbars, or my workflow needing multiple windows accessible (e.g. coding, with VSCode, a shell or two, and a browser for docs and StackOverflow).
A 15" (which I have now) is nice to work with, but then the laptop becomes a touch too heavy for travelling comfort (unless this is something you specifically optimise for when buying e.g. [0] - but then there are other tradeoffs).
Thus I wonder if a 14-14.5" with minimal bezels, set in a lightweight chassis similar to a traditional 13" (see how big the bezels are on an older Macbook Air, for example - lots of space for a larger screen without unduly enlarging the chassis) might not be a sweet spot?
When can we expect Framework to start accepting orders from India?
15" sits nicely between your 13" and 16" models, and provides a good balance between screen real estate, number of ports and portability.
Personally I find a 13" to be slightly on the smaller side, whilst the 16" is too large for me.
I am quite sure many people are looking forward to a FW 15" with AMD Ryzen.
Thank you for considering this.
(I'm curious to know but I think I'll be getting the AMD 13 anyway, upgrading from a dualcore skylake laptop should still be nice :)
But speakers should be an area of focus.
Q: the pictures of this case on the CoolerMaster site looks like there's a USB-C trigger to a Coaxial power connector, then another connector to the mainboard itself. Would this case work with a 20v coaxial power supply?
Q: What voltage/wattage does the Framework SFF computer need to power up?
A lot of the USB-PD power supplies only give watts, not the voltage provided. Your 60w power supply is probably either 12v/5A or 20v/3A, but the page itself doesn't say: https://frame.work/products/power-adapter
I have some 15w USB-C 5v/3A power supplies (that won't charge my Sony camera), a USB-PD battery that supposedly puts out 12v on the one USB-C port, and an Apple 30w USB-C ac adapter. My 2016 macbook charges on 5v, which is convenient. Framework forum posts indicate the laptops will charge on 5v 12v and 20v, but there was a problem with 15v.
In a normal workday, I don't hear it.