Don’t get me wrong. I absolutely love my Framework 16. But I’m starting to believe I should have gone with the 13.
I chose this size because of the extra extension ports so it’s more practical while docked and the larger screen so it’s more comfortable when used as a laptop.
I love the fact that its completely modular, but I would have been totally fine with the integrated keyboard/trackkpad of the 13 as I hate numpads on laptops.
I love the 6 extension ports, and I need 3 side by side so I can quickly connect power, HDMI and USB to my KVM while having a lot of free ports on the other side. However, I could also have invested in a decent USB-C dock for a single-cable solution with the same amount of free ports while docked.
I love the screen size and it’s great to have that much screen real estate while away from my desk, but it’s so large and heavy that I don’t move it around as much as it’s uncomfortable to do so.
Did you have a laptop before this one? What size was it?
I moved to big laptops in 2015 with XPS 9550, and for me it was worth it at the time, as 13" laptop chips were anemic (2 cores, can you believe this?) for any heavy work. Since then the performance keeps me using the bigger laptops, and the screen size is a nice bonus for movie watching when away from home.
I’ve also used FW16 for gaming when traveling, and it handled it really well.
And in terms of portability, my docking setup was not friendly to unplugging the laptop - the laptop was behind the monitor, and the dock was connecting with more than one cable. As soon as I moved my laptop to a free accessible space on my desk, and worked on having a single cable docking solution, I started using the laptop not only at my desk but also around the house for work, casual internet browsing and movie watching (both on the table and plugged into the TV). The laptop itself is pretty compact to use it portably, IMO.
The only unsolved problem I’ve had was that having a heavy laptop in a backpack during travels wasn’t friendly to my back, but I think even this one was solved with some sport and a better backpack
But the moral is - you definitely need to understand why are you getting a bigger laptop as the bigger size needs to be justified by something you want out of it. If you can’t find the reason, then 13" laptop is indeed a better choice
I don’t have a remorse at all.
I have a 14" for work, the kids both have the fw 13", but my eyesight is not what it was anymore, so the 16" perfectly matches!
No buyer’s-remorse here. The extra ports and the greater screen-size are great. But the possibility of eventually using the GPU expansion as a second battery is what sold me on the 16 instead of the 13, the 13 doesn’t have even the possibility of that.
My previous laptop was roughly the same size, including numpad. Can’t live without it, so the 13 never was an option for me. Pr-ordered the 16 the first week it became available, still too late as I was batch 8. Nothing to complain about, has been working reliably so far.
I wouldn’t need the 6 expansion ports as I’m mostly using a single-cable USB docking station, but they are nice to have. Screen size is great, portability better than my previous one (they fit together in my ancient travel bag). So, more than half a year in and no remorse so far.
No remorse here either. I have both, and am very happy with each. The 13 is more portable but I have so much fun with the modularity of the 16 that I most often am on it.
Depends on the day. Most of the time I’m not doing anything that I absolutely need the 3 main features that swayed me: a numpad, a dGPU, and a big screen. Those days, yeah, I feel like I would have been better off with a 13 and its increased portability. Actually, truthfully, those days I’d still be fine on my 2015 12.5" Dell, and don’t actually need a Framework at all!
But when I do need those things, there’s no question I made the right choice. Those days remind me why I bought it. For big tasks, it’s sooooo nice. Yeah it’s a little bulky and it will absolutely roast the battery when doing something GPU heavy, but there’s always something so satisfying about having the right tool for the job.
Honestly, right now, those days are a minority. That’s mostly due to having two children whose cumulative age is less than 2 years, but still, when I manage to sneak in an hour or two of good heavy use out of the 16, I am reassured that the 13 would have just been too much overlap with my perfectly good, albeit old laptops, and it was either the 16 or nothing.
I have no regrets on size since I knew what I was getting into. I have regret with the RMA process and support response, as well as the quality control (fitment).
I do have quite a few regrets and some buyer’s remorse about the Framework 16. In regards to the size, I knew all the computers that had the performance I wanted were going to be bulky.
Initially, I saw that there was quite a lot more value in buying something like a Lenovo Legion instead of the Framework, but I was adamant with getting the Framework as I liked the modular design and Framework’s mission.
Upon receiving it, it was even more exciting being able to use it. Unfortunately, that was when the hardware issues came to plague me. I had a severely underperforming CPU (14600 score on a 7940HS which is supposed to get 16500+ in Cinebench R23). The GPU also was experiencing quite a lot of coil whine and I’ve had to get 3 replacements.
After a super long RMA email chain, I had a mainboard and new dGPU module sent to me, but the issues were still present, so they decided to have me send it to their repair center. The repair center repair eventually took a month and a half, before I finally recieved the laptop back with only a dGPU replacement (I was hoping they were going to replace the underperforming mainboard too, but unfortunately not).
Now, my laptop gets around a 15500-15600 (Max with a cold start) score in Cinebench and the dGPU performance is still average (have yet to test it for coil whine).
Overall, if the hardware performed up to spec (similar to the reviews, 16500+ in Cinebench, etc), I would’ve been happy with what I bought even if it wasn’t the best value. Unfortunately, this was not the case, and I really felt like I was thrown a half baked product that had a lot of unpatched problems. The mainboard performs well under the average 7940HS performance (due to thermal issues), while the GPU performance is average, I just regret knowing that I could’ve bought a lot more for my money (like this Lenovo Legion 7 Pro 14900HX, RTX 4090M).
For travel I do prefer using my tablet. It’s very thin, ightweight and long battery life.
On my personal experience, I used to pick small laptops in the past, then slowly moved to premium high end laptops until I got tired with their low battery life and overheat causing random restarts. Framework 16 have a very good battery life and performance.
My only annoyance are fan speeds when playing videogames or compiling software, but capping CPU kinda mitigates this
It also depends what you do with your computer, my tablet is good enough when I’m out of home
The Framework Laptop 16 is a dream come true for me. It’s not perfect (yet), but everything has its caveats. Being a first generation product, I expected it to have some issues, and so it did. The numpad was doa, the touchpad spacers stood out a bit, the fingerprint cable connector got deattached by the fpc cable, the screen has a bunch of stuck pixels, but hey… don’t forget the fact, that if this weren’t a Framework Laptop, the whole laptop would’ve had to be sent in for every single issue.
I am glad to be able to repair it by myself, just needing the replacement parts. As for the widely criticized touchpad spacers, I bent them a bit by hand and voilà: problem solved.
Also, I like the possibility to be able to customize it by developing my own expansion cards or overcoming its limitations.
Yes, it is quite big. It wouldn’t be able to fit it in my backpack with the GPU installed. Gladly, I’m not a hardcore gamer and even if I were, I’d prefer a GPU with at least 12GB VRAM and configurable power usage to not drain the battery too much. It is too big to use on economy class flights, but I had no problems using it elsewhere.
The only regret I have is, due to its hefty price tag, I can’t get myself to order a second one to have one dedicated for tinkering and the other as a work machine, so as a temporary workaround I dedicated one SSD for work and the other for entertainment, both dual-booting Linux and Windows. I wish for a dual SSD board for the Expansion Bay to be released soon, already prepped a second Expansion Bay Shell with fans and a GPU Interposer for it.
Exactly this. The device itself is nice and exactly what I wanted, but I have some fitment issues on something about the keyboard assembly that Support just denies and I can hear my keyboard rattle as I type in a fairly silent room. I half suspect it’s the expansion cards rattling inside of their ports because there are some tolerances issues there, but I also cannot get the keyboard to adhere perfectly to the mid plate whatever I do. There is always a gap of some kind. Thankfully, I mostly use my laptop out and about where the ambient noise more than drowns it out, but it feels incredibly out of place on a €2000 laptop.
Still, I would rather take some rattling noises over the double keypresses issue some other people are having.
