Thank you for the answer. After using the Windows updater / manually installing the different firmwares from Windows, BIOS shows “16.1.30.2269 / Corporate”.
ME-Updater from EFI Shell or Windows would show:
The last command is the actual command to run the update. And it aborts on my device because that is the version that is already on it and I did not want to risk actually forcing it to run just yet.
Edit:
So without an actual answer and explanation from Framework, from this I conclude that
Note: We have removed the EFI update for now until we improve the stability of this update method based on user feedback below.
is a lie or at least obfuscation. And the actual & more important reason they do not want to admit to, is that they produced a half-baked updater or simply failed to communicate the instructions to run all of the update internally. Or the update process would actually brick the device. In which case I find it suboptimal to ever publish it anywhere and leave the EFI installer still hosted and not warn of it.
And since it looks to be the official updater from Intel, any problems with using it would most likely be a platform problem. I.e. a fault already in the BIOS that confuses the updater or makes it incompatible with what Intel defines as correct behavior.
Edit2: the backup dump the ME updater can create is identical to the one the officially released updater for Windows makes. If the updater does not fail somehow due to a privilege problem (i.e. the ME firmware is not writeable / modifiable for some reason. Would fail before it has a chance to make changes to the system), I find it hard to believe that it would brick. But the clear risk remains.
Edit3: confirmed it runs perfectly. Past users have already found that manual ME update and successfully ran it. New installer release uses the same exact updater with same arguments.