I have seen a few posts about this but they’re all a few years old at this point. The year is 2024 and thankfully more manufacturers are moving to haptic touchpads. Diving board design touchpads are frustrating to use and have more wear issues over time when compared to haptic touchpads.
Honestly this is the one thing holding me (and I assume many others) back from ditching our MacBooks and moving to framework. Is there any way you guys could team up with Sensel and offer a haptic touchpad option?
I get that Framework wants to diversify their product range, but I worry about them stretching their development thin, and forgetting about the quality of life features that made the Framework 13 matter in the market. My machine is showing its age when compared to the cutting edge features on the Thinkpads we’ve been buying for work.
Sensel hinted on Reddit that they had news on this in “early 2024”, but nothing has happened. It’s a real shame, because I felt at the time that Framework’s approach to modularity meant that these awesome features could be added in future, but it seems to have been all but ignored.
Haptic trackpads for one, hence being in this thread. Human presence detection, ryzen 8000 series chips, windows hello IR cameras (not cutting edge, I know), touch screen options.
My point was, it felt like the Framework was gearing up at the time to be a great ultrabook replacement and a serious contender to the X1 Carbon. I can take or leave most things, but the dinky little springboard does feel a little “early 2010s” for a laptop that has otherwise felt reasonably current.
ThinkPad X1 2-in-1 Gen 9?
Looks like this is only the first year X1s have had haptic touchpads. And that seems to be the only model out this year of Lenovo’s many notebooks which has it.
In the past I see they’ve tried it on the X1 Titanium Yoga (2021), X1 Fold 16 Gen 1 (2022), Z13 Gen 2 and Z16 Gen 2 (2023). But it seems it doesn’t stick around long on a particular model. It was reportedly very bad on the Yoga. Despite it being a €2,800 iGPU 13 inch.
The haptic feedback is just odd and the clicking noise also appears pretty cheap. The pad is also extremely sensitive and often recognizes clicks even though you did not want to click (the Windows settings was the default medium setting). The gliding capabilities are not perfect, either, because small movements are often not recognized correctly or the cursor just stops moving, so you have to lift the finger again. All in all, the touchpad is disappointing.
I find it hard to blame Framework too much when they are working with a lot less than Lenovo. And sensel touchpads seem to only be on a two models, from any company, this year. According to sensel. I’m guess sensel might ask for an obscene amount of money for it. Still given the modular aspect of Frameworks I do hope they can bring us one soon.
The Lenovo laptops you site were not using the Sensel touchpads that I’m talking about. The sensel touchpads are far superior and have received really good reviews (they’re on the new X1 Carbon laptops as optional and default on the Z13/Z16). The Surface Laptops (except the Go) now have haptic touchpads as well and it makes a world of difference.
I am really hoping for a haptic touchpad soon as Sensel did say on Reddit early this year to expect an announcement in early 2024 (and the way they said it seemed to indicate an option was coming for Framework) but one never came so maybe it just got delayed.
I got that list from Sensel themselves. Sensel.com
Just scroll down their landing page at Sensel.com, they list each model, as if they are shining examples of their Sensel’s haptic tech.
Perhaps the current laptops which have Sensel are better, and one would certainly hope so, but according to Sensel themselves those badly reviewed touchpads were Sensel’s haptic tech. Maybe they’ve improved the implementation across the board, or maybe it depends on how well it’s executed in a particular laptop. There are so few model laptops with Sensel touchpads that it’s hard to be certain.
Confirmed - I now have it on my refreshed work laptop, a gen 12 X1 Carbon, and we also have them on two eval P1s. The sensel trackpad is genuinely fantastic…nice and crisp, very responsive, some bugginess that disappeared with a very early driver update.
Looks like Sensel’s website is out of date, as may be some lingering opinions of reviewers. My opinion on the latter part of course, but I am comparing this to the response of the MBP trackpads (not an Apple fan by any stretch, but that is a feature they nailed).