I've got myself a Framework 13 at launch and it has lasted well so far. Repairability isn't as big of a deal though. Chips have been good enough for a long time such that an upgrade will only ever be necessary once in maybe 10 years

I have a 12th Gen Intel Framework from work. I cannot recommend Framework as a brand.

Yes, they are repairable. That is where the list of Pros ends for me. Perhaps the only unique selling point is being able to upgrade the motherboard later, but...

The screen, keyboard, touchpad, and IO are all inferior to a ThinkPad.

You can only ever have 4 ports, which is considerably less than your average PC laptop of similar dimensions and weight will have.

ThinkPads and other corporate-tier machines are dirt cheap used after 3-4 years, and finding spare parts for them is usually a non-issue as long as you don't mind eBay. Lenovo will happily sell you parts for a few years after the laptop is released, although availability and pricing are not great.

Framework had a partnership to only sell Western Digital SSDs when I ordered mine, and it later came to light that WD had serious firmware issues with these models resulting in sudden data loss. [1]

Additionally, the 12th Gen model has received ONE firmware update in over a year since release. [2] While Framework have committed to delivering more frequent firmware updates, they don't have a good track record there. No LVFS support either, so you have to burn a USB stick to update.

Prior to the firmware update, I've had the laptop completely discharge the battery while powered off, refuse to power up until being connected to a charger for ~15 minutes, and then display a large error saying the screen and battery were not connected (they were).

Even after the firmware update, I still have issues with phantom battery drain when the laptop is completely powered off.

[1] https://community.frame.work/t/tracking-wd-black-sn850-sudde...

[2] https://knowledgebase.frame.work/en_us/framework-laptop-bios...

I moved from an older ThinkPad to the first generation Framework. While the idea of the repairability, expansion cards etc sounded great, it simply just ran far too hot and the battery life sucked. I ended up going 180 to the other end and buying a reduced 14 inch MacBook Pro (base model) which has been the best computer I've ever owned, macOS being awful aside. It's what a laptop should be like, not worrying about chargers, it not cooking your lap, just overall a very enjoyable machine

I use a Framework. I would advise looking up the parts you select prior to ordering. I didn't, and I accidentally selected an SSD that has known firmware issues (it unmounts itself randomly while in use). No fixes for this issue in 2 years has me skeptical of buying again, but I'm otherwise pretty happy with the device.

I mostly loved mine... While it lasted. I owned a 12th gen, and it ran really well. The stories about running hot, draining battery while sleeping and the lack of firmware updates are all true. I could live with that. I live in Argentina, and had to travel to SF for work. I ordered the tougher hinges in advance (the ones that came were very flimsy, but they fixed that in newer models). I changed the hinges, and it was a breeze, so they delivered there. The thing is.. the laptop never booted up again! I called support, and they instructed me several things to try bring it back to life. Nothing worked. Last message was: you're out of warranty, sorry. Which I'm ok with. But then it got me thinking about repairability. I'm by no means a hardware expert. For sure I messed up when changing the hinges. But still, the whole situation just fell awful, and the promise if repairability just stopped selling for me. I still want framework to exist. I love their mission. But I needed to work, so I ran to an apple store and bought a MBP. After 20 years of using Linux, it breaks my heart a little bit, but the hardware is unbeatable. I'm kind of hating macos tbh, but I can live with it. And who knows, Asahi might get good enough at some point...

I have a Framework 13 with an i7-1260p from work. Overall it is a solid laptop, I did not run into any major problems with it. My personal choice is still likely a ThinkPad due to my long, good history with them. I won't give a strong recommendation for either as I am not current on the state of the art.

My major complaint is the heat and noise it creates when in a Google Meet (in Firefox though) and that I can not rely on the standby mode not draining the battery when I need the laptop. I also have problems with docked operation (TB4 dock), but I think these are likely Linux problems, so I won't hold it against the hardware.

I like the idea and philosophy of Frameworks being easy to service/disassemble and can attest to that fact. The exchangeable ports are great for in-office work (keep an HDMI for the meeting room, an USB-A port for your colleague's thumb drive in there), but for my work from home they are essentially useless. I just keep 2x USB-C and 2x USB-A, usually only one USB-C is used for the dock connector. Build quality and overall look and feel are decent as well, but of course this is personal preference.

I have a long history with ThinkPads and never ran into problems with them. I know that some of the laptops from the same batch as my most recent one have swollen batteries by now, but they could be swapped out, acceptable after about 5 years of daily use. If I had to chose a personal laptop now, I would very likely check in on Thinkpads again, I liked the T440p and T480 series. I also have a Legion model that is holding up fine. The Framework 16 looks interesting, so I would need to check that out as well.

P.S. I know there are tweaks and fixes for most of the problems above, some I have applied, some I haven't. I am ok with the current state.

I like it overall but I have an issue where the battery drains crazy fast while sleeping. So I have it set to deep sleep, but that means it takes more than 15 seconds to wake up.

This seemed like the perfect opportunity to get a new mainboard, but the new mainboards don't support my RAM... Which I went all out getting 64GB of. Don't want to throw that out, and don't want to buy another 64GB.. So now upgrading what should be just one component means almost buying an entirely new machine.

We use about 50 frameworks in our company. They are solid, and I would recommend them, assuming you dont want a MacBook. IMO they are the best laptops for engineers who want to use Windows or Linux. In fact, I find them to be the least repulsive Windows laptop. The keyboard in particular is very satisfying to use.

The AMD ones are fast and have good battery efficiency, but unfortunately we've measured higher failure rates on AMD mainboards and matte displays compared to the Intel frameworks. That said, I'd still recommend the AMD frameworks. Haven't tried the latest Intel Core Ultra Series yet. Another downside on the AMD laptops is the 4 USB ports aren't equal - 2 are USB4 and 3 can drive a display, and some use up higher power. On Intel, all 4 ports are TB4/USB4 and function the same.

Main advantage of framework is we end up doing more frequent upgrades that cost us less, since we just need to replace mainboard or RAM - most engineers in our company get upgraded yearly, and we recycle the older mainboards into desktops (by putting them into a 3D-printed chassis) for non-tech shift workers. Also if parts break out of warranty - displays, keyboards, etc, cheap enough to fix that it doesnt bother us.

Main complaint I have is with warranty replacements - they really make you jump through a lot of hoops (they ask for a lot of photos/videos multiple times which involves opening up the chassis multiple times) before they accept fault and ship a replacement. Basically they're getting you to do the debugging for them so they can send a replacement for just the affected part, instead of you needing to ship out the entire laptop to get it repaired. On the plus side, you dont need to ship the entire laptop to them if something small is busted.

Yes. Unequivocally.

Had my 13 for a couple of years now, Debian/XFCE.

I've owned and only owned a 13 laptop for about ten years now.

I can't imagine buying a laptop from a major vendor (Samsung, Sony, Asus, etc). There are some smaller vendors, but they don't sell what I want in terms of a spec, and what FW offers, both in terms of kit (the spec I want) and repairability / honesty / lack of stuff being pushed on you / etc, I can't think of anyone else I could buy from.

Note that being able to self-repair is a very good thing. One of the keys died, early last year. I ordered a new keyboard, it arrived, I spent an afternoon swapping them over. Took a couple of hours. Compare that to posting the laptop off for a warranty repair - and that's if the vendor gets the repair right. I remember once having Sony make a repair, and the messed it up, broke the Windows install (which I had at the time), and it only went down-hill from there.

(In the end Sony support wanted to bill me 250 EUR to fit a new spinning-disk HD, to replace the 700 EUR Intel X-25 SSD I had bought and fitted, so they could have in place on the laptop a vanilla install of Windows, to "fix" how they had broken my fully-installed and configured for development Windows, where they had in fact swapped out the motherboard (underneath an installed Windows!) to replace a fan.)

Being able to buy parts and install yourself, if you can do it, is a billion light years better than relying on large company customer support.

One or two other notes;

1. Being able to swap the ports around, and change what's in each port, is something once you've had it, you can't go back.

2. The lappy runs hot out of the box; you have to configure thermal management yourself, in Linux. Mine runs at about 70C tops now (instead of going to 100C and staying there).

3. Sleep mode doesn't work properly, in that there's plenty of power drain. I've not updated the BIOS since I purchased - I have a vague thought this might have been fixed.

4. Battery life out of the box is not comparable to big-brand laptops, but I sat down, sorted out power management, and on Linux, I get more than 10 hours out of a battery at 80% (the max charge I have configured on mine, to extend battery life).

I've been loving my framework 16 so far. I am using it for linux and all the hardware works and in general they've been great to deal with. I went with the DIY option and had some teething problems[1] and both the community on the framework forums and framework's support were really helpful.

[1] When they sent the original to me one of the ram slots was broken so if you put any ram in there the device wouldn't boot. After a bit of diagnosis-by-email they replaced the main board.

I really like mine. My keyboard's keys have started to stick a bit, after two years, but I like that I can get a new keyboard for cheap (or I can just open it up and fix it). If I need more RAM or disk, I can just install some. I'll probably upgrade my mainboard soon, and I love how I can just upgrade that and keep all the other components that are working great (screen, chassis, mouse, camera, etc etc).

Overall, I'd buy one again, though this time with an AMD CPU, not Intel.

My suggestion: get a used thinkpad that fits your budget. You'll be amazed.

I've a Framework 13, which I got at launch (11th Gen), and have upgraded that to 12th Gen motherboard as well as swapped the hinges and backplate for a better less wobbly display. Probably the best laptop I've ever had, but it is pricey. I'm not sure theres much cost savings with upgrading vs buying whole new laptops every 18 months, but at least I'm not throwing out material. I have the old 11th Gen motherboard in a coolermaster case with spare RAM/SSD waiting for me to get time to make it into a media server.

I then got the Framework 16 with GPU module. Upgraded the camera but no CPU/GPU upgrades thus far. Use Keyboard and Numpad for the input panel options, but I've the LED panels to swap out when showing it off. The GPU is beefy enough that I can avoid also having to pack my steam deck, but you do need the better power supply, it drains battery even when plugged in otherwise. 165Hz display is great, but I do miss the 3:2 ratio screen. My only real issue is battery life in general. You do need to get it plugged in often.

I think in hindsight I prefer the FW13, it's just so much easier to travel with and the AMD APU probably has enough GPU power to play the limited games I do so I may move back, get the new 2.8k display and AMD motherboard. I much prefer the 3:2 display.

In both cases I got the DIY edition and found cheaper sources for RAM and SSD. I have had no issues with compatibility.

I intend to stick with framework longer term though. For me the benefits outweigh the cons, and its a more fun and personal ownership experience. Experience with support was reasonable, I did have an issue with the 12th Gen board where it wouldn't power on, but a few days of back and forth with email support got it revived and I avoided having to do an RMA.

The swappable ports are a very handy feature - as well as configuring it to what I think I'll need I can carry a bunch of spares easily. One trouble is that they also work on other laptops, so I find myself loaning e.g. the HDMI port to Macbook Air users. And I sometimes don't get them back. Oh well.

I also 3D printed out the cupholder attachement, which gets a few laughs. Not sure I'd use it for real though....

I wouldn't recommend it to everyone, if you want an utterly premium experience with the best OLED displays and battery life etc theres better, but I've had a lot of value from my two, and I seem to have convinced at least one local biz to swap to them because of the ability to fix them quickly when parts break.

I have a 13" one for 2 years and a 16" for close to 6 months. I love them both and I will likely only upgrade these and never by a complete new laptop. The 13 is amazing for the go, lightweight and comfortable. The 16 is great for me for general use, because I don't work at a table, so the larger screen makes a big difference. I recommend the AMD one, that performs better for me(my 13 is Intel). I have 2 articles about them on my blog if you are curious:

https://greg.molnar.io/blog/framework-laptop/

https://greg.molnar.io/blog/framework-16-first-impression/

And if you have any specific questions, I am happy to answer.

Imo, it depends on the OS.

I know someone is going to say otherwise but I tried (iirc) Debian, Ubuntu, and variants of Fedora (vanilla and Silverblue). None performed as well as Windows. But I only cared about power/heat/noise/thermals. I ended up swapping for MBP because I didn't like WSL but it was very good as a Windows machine.

And ofc, you are getting upgrade path, can replace things when it breaks, etc. Support on their forums is also very good, if you are able to try to fix things then a forum is better than regular support which will just tell you to send it in and wait weeks/months.

At slightly above price of FW, you can consider MBP (MBA didn't work for me either, same issue with thermals).

In my experience, the main things that let FW down are the things it can't control: OS and CPU. And I expect both to improve over time.

I can’t speak for framework… but for some wider context:

I have a work supplied M1 Mac book pro. An outstanding machine.

I have an older intel Mac that’s still running well, but starting to struggle.

I bought a dirt cheap Thinkpad t495 about 6 months ago, it’s dual booted W11 and Ubuntu and while it’s not a superstar performance wise it’s a very good machine and well worth the ~£200 I’ve spent on it. I did replace the trackpad with an X1 carbon one and also replaced the keyboard for a backlit one, I also increased the NVME storage and maxed out the ram (about an extra £150 in total). There are not many machines you can do these types of upgrades to so I’m quite please with it.

I would suggest a thinkpad if you can find the right model you can upgrade.

Used a framework for the last years of my PhD and would very much recommend it! Now got a macbook from work and I have to say that I do prefer it but it also comes with a higher cost.. As I was no longer using my framework I turned it into my homeserver using this server kit: https://frame.work/be/en/products/framework-laptop-13-mainbo.... Any other laptop would have started gathering dust but my framework keeps being useful thanks to its modular design.

ThinkPad for a machine that will reasonably get things done.

MacBook if you want/need the Apple ecosystem and have the money.

Anything else if you have other constraints you care about (e.g. price), or are enthusiastic about something (e.g. modularity).

They still have big issues with keeping on top of firmware updates. They still haven't managed to ship a stable EFI update for the 12th Gen for example. This is even after main stream tech press getting on their case.

After some searching I decided to opt for a Thinkpad. I can get a refurbished model (7530U + 16Gb ram + 256Gb SSD) for 425 euro, which is more than reasonable until I decide to switch to Framework.

Thanks for all your input, and I hope me and Framework cross paths again in the future! Keeping an on you.

I've been using mine (13-inch) for a couple years now. Like others, I would've got the AMD mainboard but it wasn't out yet, so I settled for the Intel 12th gen.

When I first got it, the touchpad didn't click properly. There was a bit of back and forth with support (they wanted to see video of the issue) but all in all, they shipped the replacement part within 3 days of the report. That's acceptable, in my book.

Then there was a very strange issue where the machine would randomly shut down while sleeping, seemingly related to using Windows 11 with the 12th gen CPU. Turns out you need to disable 'connectivity in modern standby' if this is the case:

    POWERCFG -SETDCVALUEINDEX SCHEME_CURRENT SUB_NONE CONNECTIVITYINSTANDBY no 0
    POWERCFG -SETACVALUEINDEX SCHEME_CURRENT SUB_NONE CONNECTIVITYINSTANDBY 0

The main benefit in my view is that you don't need to worry about 'timing', in terms of generational improvements in the hardware. In my case, I didn't get the AMD CPU I wanted, but when I decide to upgrade, I can do so for a pretty reasonable price: https://frame.work/gb/en/products/mainboard-kit-amd-ryzen-70... . Likewise, if any component breaks, I can be confident it's not going to cost me the whole machine, and I can do all the servicing myself.

This would be inconceivable in any other laptop, especially one of this form factor.

Yes, I would recommend it. I have a DIY edition framework 13 with the AMD 640U) and new 2.8K display. It has been working perfectly for me with archlinux installed (even though it's not one of the recommended distros). Battery life has been decent when using power profiles daemon, but nowhere near as good as an ARM macbook. I would definitely suggest the upgraded display, as this also lands you the larger battery. The keyboard is great, trackpad is pretty good and no issues with wifi, nor bluetooth. A brighter display with wide colour gamut and higher accuracy would have been nice, but the 2.8k display is not bad at all.

That being said, it's definitely more expensive than much of the competition is for similar specs. I don't mind paying a little extra to vote with my wallet and the build quality has exceeded my expectations. I'm gambling on them supporting this chassis design for a few more generations, so I can buy the very last motherboard upgrade that they release and extend the life of this machine a little further.

Im loving my FW16, the screen is surprisingly good, I have 2TB and 1TB M.2 drives that were originally planned for dual boot. Tried out Bluefin-dx distro and now thats all I run and are very happy with it.

Super happy with my purchase. Convinced a co-worker to get one as well and he's happy. You aren't getting the build quality of a Macbook, but the benefits far outweigh the downsides in my opinion. Battery life depends on which CPU you get, but the best part is once the ARM-variants mature a bit more, you can swap in a new mainboard and reap the benefits of a more efficient system.

I daily drive an AMD Framework 13 with Fedora. I do light software dev, writing, some gaming, and run a variety of local LLMs without pain. I'm happy with the machine and Framework's support, and I do like their vision of repairability/upgradability and I've taken advantage of that already. On the downside, it just clearly isn't as good of a machine for the cost compared to what you could get -- several aspects are just middle-of-the-road: the webcam, speakers and the battery life stand out for me as not great. The AMD chip is also new enough that I still run into glitches with kernel updates on occasion, and power efficiency was initially much worse but has been improving.

In the past, my jam has always been to buy used Thinkpads and run them into the ground. If my Framework got stolen today, I don't think buying another Framework would be a slam-dunk decision for me but I'd still consider it.

tl;dr: happy enough with the laptop and Framework support; hopeful that the dream of repairability/upgradeability pays off; but it does feel like a bit of a compromise on quality.

p.s. I'm quite sensitive to noise and really did not want a machine that ran its fan all the time; the AMD Framework 13 is pretty good for this unless gaming or under some other high load and then it's a rushing sound not a whine.

I recently went to a conference, and almost everyone had either a macbook or a framework. Reviews for both were excellent. If you want a windows laptop (and you can afford the price) then a framework is pretty safe bet I think.

I got mine at the end of 2021 and then used it till the mid-2023.

I know that it’s not a fair comparison, but I still compare it to macbooks because I’m a mac user for years.

Pros

- Linux support is amazing, basically you just install one of the popular distros and ‘it works’ (c). I used PopOS and was pretty happy. You also get all the Linux tools like eBPF out of the box, which is +1 compared to mac.

- Extensibility is a big deal. You can get 1 TB / 32 GB version for pennies compared to mac, where upgrades from the base are ridiculously expensive.

- Design and look is very neat.

- Keyboard is a classic one and also good.

Cons

- Battery life is really bad; same with cooling. At some point I started having more meetings at work and it gets extremely hot, noisy, and dies very quickly.

- Touchpad is just subpar to mac. Also chassis rigidity is meh. I know they improved the display cover design (switched to CNC), but I have the first revision.

- Display is 2K’ish. I don’t really understand, why they go with this resolution. Even their new display is around 2.5K. IMO, Linux works best either with 1080p/1K or 4K with x2 scaling (I prefer the latter) because fractional scaling is bad. I struggled a lot with external 4K monitor because it was nearly impossible to adjust all sizes so texts were good on both and especially when you disconnect and go portable. I know it’s Linux and you can DIY everything, but for me it was just too much of a headache.

I still fully support this company and wish them all the best, but since getting the MacBook Pro 14 with M2 (company’s, not personal) in the mid-2023 my Framework is waiting for two things: i) 4K display module; and ii) ARM main board. If they release these upgrades I will jump into Framework right away and give it another try.

So I recommend it if Pros are more important than Cons for you.

UPD: formatting and conclusion

Well, I would never use a laptop, period. It's part of my work hygiene to leave work at my desk.

Personally, I wouldn't recommend them. It's not really Framework's fault per-se but Intel's mobile platform is terrible these days and doesn't hold a candle to the Apple's M-series chips for perf / watt.

I'm happy with it (13" specific feedback, latest AMD gen, but I had the 11th gen Intel before).

But if I can recommend it is a bit of a mostly yes but not soley yes thing.

Some of the good parts:

- can be repaired (I have a tendency for private laptops sliding of my bed or couch when I read something one them before going to bed so sadly I kind need that)

- the casing is robust and as it's mostly metal instead of plastic will bend before instead splintering (which is somewhat repairable and/or means its still usable even after heavy drops from the desk on a corner, yes I'm embarrassed about what I did to that laptop over the recent years)

- being able to charge it from both sides is absolutely awesome and probably has become for me a major must have buying condition

- the 4 extension slots (13", more on the larger one) turned out to be enough for me, especially on my work desk I anyway have a KVM Switch+USB Hub combo wired into the desk

- the USB C ports are robust (more so then on some Think pads), through even if they break you can fix them by replacing the extension port

- the motherboard (13") and co are fine, BIOS (13") had been a bit wanky during early 11th gen days but now is just fine, some UEFI security fixes have been a bit slow but as long if you don't have some high security business use case it probably doesn't matter. Custom secure boot platform keys work perfectly fine (I use sbctl).

- cooling (13") is fine, through if the system runs hot due to it's metal casing you might feel the heat at the bottom center where some of the fan slots are. But there are no heat issues at the top, or sides (including sides at the bottom) so mostly a non issue. (had been a bit of an issue with 11th gen Intel)

- CPU isn't really framework specific nothing to say here, but it's best to collect some general information (e.g. amd has a tendency for slightly less reliable WLAN on Linux)

- some people complain about weak hinges, but they made them a bit stronger and provide even stronger ones as replacement part. IMHO it's a non issue for many people except if you do work often in an environment where there is a lot of shaking or carry it while shaking and while it's open and the screen position changing being an issue. It wasn't an issue a few time I had been using it on a train or bus but it also hadn't been very "shaky" train/bus raids.

- the angle of the lid is 180°, i.e. it can be opened until it's all flat on the desk. While this doesn't matter for many when using it it makes it harder to break the screen by overextending the lid in an accident

- keyboard is fine, (but I would love if they had ThinkPad style arrow keys & home end buttons, in the end I remapped (in Linux) F9/F10 to Home/End

- mousepad is fine, but I don't have high requirements there so maybe ignore that

- fingerpint reader is okay, but I have seen better (not sure if it's a software of hardware issue)

- you can upgrade it, but as most cost comes from the CPU+Motherboard+RAM and my last upgrade also involved going to a new generation of RAM you won't save much money. But at least all sticker on the lid stay around.

- installation is quite easy and some past gotacha about keyboard cable length have been fixed I have heard, love how it opens up to the top

- I love the screen ratio, but can't won't anything about the screen as I probably would go with the newest 4k screen if buying new.

- camera & mic have separate off buttons which is nice

- can't say much about the battery live I never ran into any issues but given how I use the laptop and how by now many trains have power ports I think I wouldn't run into any problems even with Laptops which for 2024 standards have mid-low battery life time. What is nice is that as far as I remember when the battery is full and connected to AC it bypasses the battery, so no unnecessary constant battery ware when using it long time in a dock or similar. While that should be the norm macs cheeped out and don't have that anymore.

so all in all I'm pretty happy

But the whole "it's repairable, and up-gradable part" isn't as big as it seems. I.e. like mentioned if you don't upgrade every generation the upgrade is likely not much cheaper then buying new (and why should you upgrade every generation). And while you can repair it for people which treat their laptop with care most damages will be either "very bad all broken" or "slightly cosmetic no repair needed", in a certain way for many users the most important part is that breaking you USB ports (of expansion cards) is trivially repairable, which in my experience is one of the main not trivially user repairable failure points of otherwise repairable Laptops (e.g. T series ThinkPads). I also heard someone playing with hardware dev messed up some wires and expected their motherboard to be fried, but only the USB-C expansion card was fried, so that can be clearly a plus, too. But as I currently don't do hardware dev and don't know what is in the USB-C expansion card I don't know if that was just luck.

>My last purchase was a Vivobook S(15?), and even with the discount I regret it to this day.

I have an ASUS Vivobook S14 with an Intel i7 12700H, so about 3 years old at this point. I love it, runs Windows 11 (and the games I play) just fine and the OLED screen it has is amazing.

Anyway, if you want a "safe" laptop so you can get stuff done? Just buy something with respectable hardware (Intel Core i5 or AMD Ryzen 5 or higher) from any of ASUS, Dell, or Lenovo. They're widely popular brands for a reason.

Or if you want a foolproof laptop, just get a Macbook.

The framework is pretty expensive for what you get and there's so guarantee that it will work once put together.

A few years ago I bought a new PC by buying components. When I put it together it didn't work, I took it to a computer repair shop and then couldn't figure it out either. Not knowing which part was broken or if it was something I did wrong, I ended up throwing everything in the trash.

Since then I just pay the $200 for it to be assembled and get 5 year warranty. IMHO self-assembly makes no sense unless you're a youtuber earning money from making videos doing it.