Advice on the following: FW13 w/ eGPU enclosure OR FW16

Framework Laptop 13
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Good morning, afternoon, and evening, Framework Community,

I am likely going to be parting ways with my Lenovo Legion 7i as while it is an absolute beast in terms of specifications, the battery life is absolutely egregious and in that regard not really suitable for my use case (just a general personal laptop as well as one suitable for comp. sci in college.) I had initially intended for it to be used as a desktop-away-from-home and to match my extremely powerful custom-built desktop at home, but realized I really do not need that and can get the processing power elsewhere if needed. Anyways, to get to the point: I have been eyeing the Framework Laptop (both 13 and 16) for years, practically since their inception, and am now considering securing the Framework 13 with the Ryzen 7040 series chips (while supplies last) and potentially utilizing an eGPU if necessary on the go, primarily due to reading conflicting reports on the Framework 16’s battery life (not exactly my top concern with a laptop, but it is definitely something that could have an impact at times) and so I decided to come here to ask which do you all think would be best for this use case? and, for a lesser question, is the battery life in the FW 16 really that much worse than that of the FW 13? I truly do want to support Framework’s initiative, which is why I am willing to take some risks.

Sorry if this is too incohesive, it was admittedly written a little hastily, but I hope I get my point across! Additionally, if this was the wrong category to publish this in, please do let me know and I will shift gears.

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Wait for the BIOS fix, FL16 has power management problem that causes the GPU to use very little power when the computer is supplied by 240W

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I have a 13, 7640u, and a 7900xt over a 40gbps usb4 dock, coming from a thinkpad+separate gaming pc. I love it! I get 5-6 hours of work/uni in Fedora, come home, just plug in a couple type-c cables and now it’s essentially a desktop equivalent. I wouldn’t consider it fully portable in it’s current state, though - I don’t have an enclosure as such, just a PCIe dock and a PSU together. If it was all in a normal enclosure, with a smaller GPU and an sffx PSU, then maybe, but still won’t match the portability of FW16.

TLDR with an obligatory IMHO: If you need a GPU anywhere you go, get a FW16. If you just need a laptop away from home and just want a GPU at home, eGPU is the way to go.

That being said, there is also the option if you don’t care about how expensive this gets, at which point you can get the oculink adapter for the 16 and have the modular gpu away from home, powerful eGPU at home:)

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