This is just my personal experience between the two. YMMV, and likely will.
I bought the 11th gen Intel soon after release. I was very much into the repairability and had high expectations. I was initially impressed but the honeymoon quickly ended. At the time it had BIOS issues. I don’t like how loud the touchpad click is. The screen was too glossy. The speakers were extremely underwhelming. The now well known 11th gen battery issue crept in. Battery life was 3-4 hours max. Annoying fan runs. Toward the end I began having fingerprint issues. Honestly it was just a bad experience.
Last fall I was also experimenting with switching to iPhone so I thought given the issues with my Framework, now is the time to try MacOS. Sold the Framework on eBay and bought a Macbook Air M1. Fast forward 6 months and my Apple ecosystem is a fail for me. After 30 years with Windows and 12 years with Android, Apple products are simply too foreign to me and I cant get used to anything. For a system that is supposed to be the most user friendly, I felt like everything took more steps for the same result.
Anyway so this spring I’m back to Android (Pixel 8) and please give me back Windows regardless of it’s own issues. After some research and debate I decided to give framework another chance with the AMD version. I have to say it’s a completely different laptop experience. It’s what my first experience should have been. Matte screen by default. Speakers, though the same in theory, sound far better (I cant explain that one, other than maybe I had truly defective ones the first time). It runs smooth and quiet - after 4 days I`ve heard the fan run a total of like 5 seconds. (I use it often, but not hard. Zero gaming or video editing). Though not scientific, my initial perception is the battery life is nearly double. Everything just works as I expect now. Of course only time will tell if any issues creep in. But if it all holds up, I’ll be very happy that I gave Framework a second chance.
ONE remaining issue: the touchpad click is still annoying IMO, but probably that’s just me being overly OCD about it. I saw a post where paper was inserted as a “sound baffle” so I may give that a try.
