I bought a 12th-gen Intel Framework last summer when they first came out. Aside from some thermal throttling issues (that are actually kinda bad and common, and Framework support has been so far unable to address), and so-so battery life, I'm otherwise happy with it, after I got used to the screen's odd aspect ratio and made my peace with it being a physically larger machine because of that. (I'm assuming the driver for this was the need for a larger mainboard due to the expansion slots and connectors for RAM, WiFi, and storage.)
A bit bummed that they're offering a matte display option only now; I don't see it offered in the marketplace, but I assume it'll get there eventually, and the glossy screen is $179, which isn't too expensive an 'upgrade', assuming the matte screen ends up being priced similarly. The higher-capacity battery will come in handy, though I'll probably wait until the existing battery gets a bit older.
I'm not interested in a 16" laptop, but I really like the black keyboard area, though the two-tone black keyboard area with silver touchpad/wrist rest is kinda ugly. I wonder if Framework will eventually offer replacement input covers (for the 13") with different aesthetics. One thing I miss from my old Dell XPS13 is the soft-touch material on the input cover. One cool small detail on the 16" is they've dropped the built-in 3.5mm jack and added two more expansion card ports, with one of the options being a card with a 3.5mm jack. Really smart move there; satisfies both camps of people who want and don't want that jack.
I think the thing that is most encouraging is that it does seem like they're trying to settle into a yearly cadence for new mainboard releases, tracking the latest chipsets from Intel (and hopefully now from AMD too). I was a little worried that they wouldn't be able to keep up, since they're still a small-ish company. Certainly not going to buy the 13th-gen or new Ryzen boards this year, but it's good to know that, assuming the company continues to be successful, I should be able to upgrade in a couple years.
> One cool small detail on the 16" is they've dropped the built-in 3.5mm jack and added two more expansion card ports, with one of the options being a card with a 3.5mm jack. Really smart move there; satisfies both camps of people who want and don't want that jack.
Normally this would annoy me a bit, but my 11th-gen has always had a bit of annoying line noise coming over the headphone jack anyway, so being able to break the whole of that out into USB is actually a compromise I'm more than willing to make. (Also I lol'd IRL at the riff on "courage.") But then again, my hot take on phones for a while has been that I'd rather have two USB ports than one headphone jack, so this is pretty firmly in line with that.
> I think the thing that is most encouraging is that it does seem like they're trying to settle into a yearly cadence for new mainboard releases, tracking the latest chipsets from Intel (and hopefully now from AMD too). I was a little worried that they wouldn't be able to keep up, since they're still a small-ish company. Certainly not going to buy the 13th-gen or new Ryzen boards this year, but it's good to know that, assuming the company continues to be successful, I should be able to upgrade in a couple years.
My guess is that would actually be less of a problem in this context, given that the the form factor is stable from year to year and they can just ship upgrades for individual components instead of making whole new devices on an annual basis.
> thermal throttling issues (that are actually kinda bad and common, and Framework support has been so far unable to address), and so-so battery life, the screen's odd aspect ratio, being a physically larger machine.
That is a strange review to conclude "I'm otherwise happy with it"
A bit bummed that they're offering a matte display option only now; I don't see it offered in the marketplace, but I assume it'll get there eventually, and the glossy screen is $179, which isn't too expensive an 'upgrade', assuming the matte screen ends up being priced similarly. The higher-capacity battery will come in handy, though I'll probably wait until the existing battery gets a bit older.
I'm not interested in a 16" laptop, but I really like the black keyboard area, though the two-tone black keyboard area with silver touchpad/wrist rest is kinda ugly. I wonder if Framework will eventually offer replacement input covers (for the 13") with different aesthetics. One thing I miss from my old Dell XPS13 is the soft-touch material on the input cover. One cool small detail on the 16" is they've dropped the built-in 3.5mm jack and added two more expansion card ports, with one of the options being a card with a 3.5mm jack. Really smart move there; satisfies both camps of people who want and don't want that jack.
I think the thing that is most encouraging is that it does seem like they're trying to settle into a yearly cadence for new mainboard releases, tracking the latest chipsets from Intel (and hopefully now from AMD too). I was a little worried that they wouldn't be able to keep up, since they're still a small-ish company. Certainly not going to buy the 13th-gen or new Ryzen boards this year, but it's good to know that, assuming the company continues to be successful, I should be able to upgrade in a couple years.