Are these laptops "truly" upgradeable?

Framework Laptop 13
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Hi everyone, I have been interested in fully upgradeable laptops for a very long time and have been disappointed with most offerings on the market. There are the overpriced CLEVO laptops that do tout upgradabality which is usually limited to storage, RAM and GPU. You are stuck with CPUs of a certain generation since the motherboard chipset locks you to a certain generations of CPUs.
My question is, do Framework laptops take care of this issue? Can I freely upgrade the motherboard which means everything else is upgradeable as well, so I essentially have a desktop computer on a laptop form factor?
I got conflicting information on their facebook page, that’s why I am asking it here and would like a confirmation from an actual framework employee that these laptops would behave exactly like a desktop computer would when it comes to upgradeability. For me personally, being able to upgrade everything but the motherboard essentially equals to not being able to upgrade anything, since CPU is the factor that warrants an upgrade for me.

Thanks to all of you in advance.

EDIT: I have watched this video from the CEO and I am glad that the motherboard is indeed easily upgradeable Hands-On with Framework's Fully Modular Laptop! - YouTube
Then I guess there are no concerns on my side :slight_smile:

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I think it will depend on the ability of alternate motherboards and CPU architectures to be designed to fit a known form and shape.

Frame.work could certainly create a design for AMD CPU’s that are rivals to Intel.

Newer generations would probably be relatively minor differences in detail.

ARM architecture motherboards could be designed to fit, but may have some compromises due to differing capabilities.

Let them ship the current design to prove the concept. Then either the company or the community can work on alternatives.

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Totally understandable. I really appreciate the fact that they acted on principles pretty much no other company went for. I am looking forward to seeing how these concepts play out in reality. Hopefully, a laptop that is upgradeable like a desktop won’t be in the realm of insanity for much longer. I mean, if the motherboard ends up not being replaceable, then I don’t see how these laptops are gonna be any different than many CLEVO models.

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Yep, mainboard upgradeability is a core part of the Framework Laptop.

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I especially love the fact that the entire mainboard can be shoved into another case. :smiley: Excited for the possibilities of what to do with my old mainboards when I upgrade to something new.

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Is there any other MB that would fit in yet?
Is there already a norm?

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I disagree. the current design relies on the versatility of the thunderbolt/usb-c ports, which intel reserves the patents to. However, thunderbolt’s capabilities will be merged into the USB4 standard which AMD may use in the coming years as that develops.

But perhaps there is a market segment for a low-power ARM mainboard with low-bandwidth usb-c, but with the current failures of windows on ARM, I don’t see that happening unless linux users are hungry for underpowered chips (And I don’t see linux users tripping over each other to get the next chromebook).

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Is the form factor upgradable?