Community reviews

One other note on that. It is definitely way too long at the moment. I believe the timer is something like 12 seconds. We’re going to shorten that in a firmware update.

Thanks again for all of the other feedback. We’ve filed a bunch of it in our internal issue tracker for future product improvements.

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Just received the laptop this afternoon and hope sharing some early impressions might be useful to some people. Overall I am incredibly pleased with the laptop, this is an excellent product on its own merits as it is at the moment, and anticipating further upside - which I would say seems likely from the interactivity of the Framework team here - is exciting!

Briefly my hardware details and outline of setup steps:

  • DIY i7-1165G7, 2x16GB memory, SN850 500GB SSD, AX210 non-vPro
  • with the benefit of Community reviews - #7 by Michael_Lingelbach and the updated guides, opening up the laptop and installing the hardware was trouble-free. One slight freestyle was putting an extra crimp in the black wire connecting to the Wifi card to try and keep its metal tip from contacting the white wire’s tip, although not sure if that actually matters
  • ran Linux Mint Xfce 20.2 from a thumbdrive, installed to SSD, upgraded kernel to 5.11.0-25 along with headers, modules, and modules-extra (as Debian based Linux on the Framework Laptop - #11 by Anita_Lewis), with which Wifi and the trackpad just worked

Echo all of @Michael_Lingelbach 's pros. Coming from a Thinkpad x201 the typing experience is smooth sailing, and the touchpad is smooth/responsive/accurate. The fan seems to engage at a pretty aggressive temperature but even then in non-media use essentially never needs to engage, and when it does it does not run loud. Screen is simply gorgeous, yes on the more reflective side but at least in my office and home office not to the point of causing any problems; in theory a sample pack of matte protectors should be coming in soon and might have one that takes a little of the glare edge off. Did a video call on which the camera and microphone performed very well, if anything a bit better than a Logitech C920. The speakers performed well for the purpose, everybody sounded clear.

On the other hand, at least so far have not had as much trouble with the cons, knock on wood. Maybe this is something distribution-dependent, but I got a pretty decent run out of the battery - about six hours of web browsing, then installing Miniconda and a few environments within it, then compiling three releases of Octave (my laziness not wanting to avoid deprecated methods, so instead just keep several releases around), and the battery was only down to 20%. Only spent about fifteen minutes streaming video from Youtube though, so maybe media is more harsh on the battery. The base heats up a bit but never to the point of feeling uncomfortable. Have been compulsively checking on the power button for heat but even though the driver is not installed (not particularly bothered not having a fingerprint sensor) it hasn’t yet gotten to be noticeably warm.

So not terribly useful for the Framework team in terms of possible to-dos, but a definite vote of confidence in the laptop. Hope everybody’s experience is as good!

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Here’s my review with lots of comparisons to an X1 Carbon Gen 9:

TLDR returning the X1 :slight_smile:

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@feesh great review!

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@feesh Nice review! What’s the Shift+Caps+X shortcut?

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It’s part of a custom modifier layer I implement using AutoHotKey. The layer is activated by holding caps and I have bound various keys for easy access (e.g. hjkl arrows). I bind caps+x to delete and also take into account ctrl/alt/shift modifiers.

So my frequently used shift+caps+xshift+del mapping to permanently delete files doesn’t work on the X1 :pensive:

I’m hoping when Framework releases the EC firmware source that I can implement this directly on the keyboard firmware!

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Great review @feesh ! Looking forward to receiving mine and running it through some Hyper-V stuff.

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Thanks for the reviews @jeshikat @Michael_Lingelbach @A_L and @feesh

Highly appreciative of anyone else willing to share their experience because the core team appears to be watching these threads and issuing updates for issues, which makes the overall experience better for all of us.

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Got my Batch 1 DIY edition last week and finally had time to set it up. I have the DIY i7-1165G7, 2x32 GB memory, FireCuda 520 2TB, and AX210 non-vPro on Windows 10 Pro.

What I love:

I LOVE that it is modular and built to be repaired. My past two laptops were 2 in 1s (Surface Pro 3 followed by an Eve V) and the SP3 developed a screen discoloration issue after an MS firmware update caused it to run full throttle while inside my laptop bag. The cost to fix that three months out of warranty, $450, no thanks. My Eve V has been plagued with a wireless card issue since day 1 and I ended up getting a USB dongle to have consistent connection which laughably cost more than the AX210. I love the idea that if/when this machine starts having issues I can just buy a replacement component.

I love that both the microphone and the webcam have physical switches to disable them. It looks like the webcam is electrically disconnected as it disappears from device manager, however, the microphone does not, so not sure how that is being done.

Concerns I have:

Only real concern is with the hinge for the monitor. Pulling on one side or the other encounters more resistance than I’d like and you can see the panel bend just a little. I’m sure I can learn to pull it down from the middle, but would prefer a slightly less resistant hinge.

Other stuff:

Keyboard/Touchpad: Since I’ve been using 2 in 1s for the past 7 years my standards for things like keyboard travel and touchpads is going to be quite a bit lower than everyone else. To me, the keyboard feels really good. I feel like I could type on this all day. The touchpad is responsive and accurate.

Screen: I have it set at 1.25 scaling and I’m really enjoying the 3:2 aspect ratio. I do wish it was a 4K panel though. Coming from the Eve V with a 12.3" 2880 x 1920 panel and knowing that the upcoming Eve V is a 13.5" UHD+ 3840x2400 panel I wish there were additional options. I definitely notice the considerably lower PPI. I mention this only because I had originally pre-ordered the upcoming Eve V, but cancelled it when I heard about the Framework. I figured reparability was more important and that I could always swap the screen later with a higher resolution panel (and hopefully I’m right about that).

Disassembly/Assembly: Both were ridiculously easy. Everything is well labeled and the guides online (only needed them for the wifi card) are very well written.

Battery: The jury is still out on the battery. My battery monitor app says I should get around 8 hours surfing the web and running Office apps. I am however also experiencing the sleep issue that others have seen with the Realtek driver. I’ve also noticed that waking from sleep is sometimes slow and other times it’s instant. Might dig into that later.

Fan: Normally it’s silent. Only time I’ve heard it is when I put it on the couch for a few minutes and it didn’t have proper airflow.

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@Steve_Koch 4k panels are quite hard on the battery. I think this resolution is ideal for the size.

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HIgh refresh rate is probably a better choice honestly

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I think the current panel resolution is great, and any addition resolution would come at the expense of battery life. I’d be more interesting in a textured glass surface (built into the display glass, not a cover) like the Apple Pro XDR display or the Valve Steamdeck (top model) to reduce the glare, and any lower power display tech, but this really depends more on display manufacturers moreso than framework.

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A glass cover would have the added benefit of making the display housing a bit more rigid. However, it might complicate the ability to repair the unit as well, so not sure about it in the long run. Then again Framework, as a company, has proven that they are wizards at taking tech that is not repairable and designing it in such a way as to allow it to be.

What I secretly hope for is a touch and wacom / pen panel display. That would be the ultimate display for me. Still super happy with what I have.

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Massive props to Framework

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Hmm, I am on Fedora 34 (a respin published yesterday, 8/16), and I have libfprint-1.90.7-3.fc34.x86_64 installed. I wanted to try the later version to try to see if that would help me reset my fingerprint reader, but when I did the above, it did not install 1.92.0:

[root@fedora ~]# dnf install fedora-repos-rawhide
Last metadata expiration check: 1:45:53 ago on Tue 17 Aug 2021 08:46:50 PM EDT.
Package fedora-repos-rawhide-34-2.noarch is already installed.
Dependencies resolved.
Nothing to do.
Complete!
[root@fedora ~]# dnf --disablerepo="*" --enablerepo=rawhide --releasever=35 install libfprint
Fedora - Rawhide - Developmental packages for t 122 kB/s |  11 kB     00:00    
Fedora - Rawhide - Developmental packages for t 977 kB/s | 3.3 MB     00:03    
Last metadata expiration check: 0:00:12 ago on Tue 17 Aug 2021 10:33:23 PM EDT.
Package libfprint-1.90.7-3.fc34.x86_64 is already installed.
Dependencies resolved.
Nothing to do.
Complete!
[root@fedora ~]#
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Because the reason might be the rawhide repo is already Fedora 36 right now. You might need to install not rawhide repo but Fedora 35 repo. I don’t know the exact commands.

The following command options are to specify the Fedora 36 repo, and trying to get Fedora 35 package. There is a mismatch here.

--enablerepo=rawhide --releasever=35
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@junaruga Thank you for that tip. After a little internet searching, I installed it with the following (update instead of install):

dnf --disablerepo="*" --enablerepo=rawhide --releasever=36 update libfprint

Sadly, that did not resolve my problem of not being able to re-enroll my fingerprints. I clicked the button to delete fingerprints, and it acted as if it had done it, but a subsequent attempt to register a previously registered fingerprint failed with the same error as before – Failed to enroll new fingerprint.

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Here’s my latest writeup:

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@Ian_Darwin Nice review

Small correction needed:

you can add DDR4 SODIMM memory up to 64MB

I guess 64MB should be enough for everyone :slight_smile:

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Umm, yes. :frowning: Finger memory sometimes shines through. Has been emended.

Before that: 64K should be enough for everyone.

Before that: 3 or 4 of these new “computer” things should be enough for the world.

@aquaticDolphin Thanks for the nudge.

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