I’ve had my FW 16 for five months now, and my best description for it is “flaky”
I also have a FW 13 that I’ve had for two years, and still use. Both are running the most current version of Fedora KDE Plasma. NONE of the below issues have ever been seen on my FW 13.
Issues:
If I close the lid on the 16 with it configured to sleep on close, there’s an approx 25% chance it will freeze completely when I open the lid again. I’ve found that if I manually lock my user session first, then close the lid, it pretty much never happens. So, I’ve got a workaround, but only as long as I remember to do it every time. When it happens, only a hard cold boot will work.
If my wifi connection drops out (router reboot, etc), occasionally my wifi will just stop working at all, no wifi networks show up. Have to reboot.
Trackpad occasionally “loses contact” which also kills the keyboard and macropad. I have to physically manipulate the trackpad module, sometimes as much as unmounting/remounting in order for it to start working again. Most commonly happens when I pick up/move the laptop while open.
The trackpad itself is frankly one of the worst I’ve used. It frequently (more than 50%) does not register multi-touch click-drag. Working with CAD apps has become very frustrating. Note that I’ve never had this issue with the trackpad on the FW 13.
I’ve noticed multiple times when the screen has stayed on when the lid is closed.
Infrequent system freezes unrelated to the sleep issue noted above.
1 - buggy firmware/bios Framework has yet to fix. I believe more recent Linux kernels work around this bug somehow. I’m on arch and have not had these freezes happen for a few months now.
2 - Terrible mediatek card Framework sells with the laptop. There are better options out there you can replace it with. I use a Qualcomm WCN785x which is much more stable.
3 - I haven’t experienced this. The worse I get is the keyboard resetting (lights go off then back on) sometimes if I lift up the laptop one-handed. But it never stops working after it does that. You should probably put in a support ticket for your issue.
4 - I would never use a track pad for CAD in any instance. That said, yes it is pretty bad. It really needs physical buttons like any sane track pad to be of any real use. But it’s what we got.
5 - Yes this is another design flaw Framework has neglected to fix. Goes with number 1 where it does not sleep properly. I think even beta bios 3.06 would cause it to actually wake up from sleep if any external power changed. For example unplugging the power adapter would wake it up, etc. Still waiting on a proper bios fix for this.
6 - You ould have to dive in to this issue to see hat the cause is. That is not normal.
While it does have a few issues mainly caused by Frameworks’ lack of care on bios fixes, it has otherwise been a pretty good laptop I think.
If my wifi connection drops out (router reboot, etc), occasionally my wifi will just stop working at all, no wifi networks show up. Have to reboot.
Yeah, the cards that come with the system are pure trash on Linux apparently. I have no idea why they ship with them when they’re trying to make Linux laptops. I got an AX210, which also has some issues, so maybe the other user’s Qualcomm recommendation is a good one.
Infrequent system freezes unrelated to the sleep issue noted above.
Have you tried updating to BIOS 03.07? Some users have reported that this helps with a common GPU freeze issue on the FW16.
NONE of the below issues have ever been seen on my FW 13.
This part is pretty interesting to me. Do you mind me asking what network card do you have on the FW13? I am curious.
It’s actually just as bad on Windows as well, so I don’t think it’s a Linux issue. It’s straight up crappy hardware.
My Wife’s Asus Windows laptop was having the same issue with wifi, that I just attributed to Windows being Windows, until I received my new Framework 16 that was doing the same thing in Linux (wifi completely dieing until reboot). Checked and sure enough, her laptop had the same mediatek card. At least in Linux’ case, I found you can reload the card and get it reconnected without rebooting.
Swapped out that card in both laptops and have not had an issue since.
Basically the same thing. The electrical connection from the trackpad breaks. I get these frequently too, just sometimes it doesn’t reconnect on its own, I have to encourage it.
I bought a Framework 16 in July and it was running fine until I updated it to firmware 3.07. The touchpad started flaking almost immediately and now, a day later, it is entirely unresponsive. Cleaned the contacts, tried different touchpad positions, rebooted, etc. No luck.
I put in a support ticket so I guess we’ll see what they do.
I’ve never needed physical buttons on any of my long lineage of macbooks, nor ever felt the need for them. Physical buttons are needed if a trackpad sucks. People who think they need them simply never used a decent trackpad and think they’re all garbage.
I also regularly use trackpad in Photoshop, Lightroom, DaVinci and more. Again - a matter of perspective. If shitty trackpads are all you’ve ever used, you’ll think it’s impossible to use them for things you’d typically use a mouse for.
Same goes for trackpoint fans - reason trackpoint exists is because decent palm rejection did not exist for the longest time. Nobody can convince me it’s more ergonomic to move your fingers off typing row to fiddle with a rubbery mushroom, than it is to simply lower your thumb from where it normally is during typing, and swipe it across a trackpad.
As far as I know, the MediaTek Wi-Fi adapter was a collaboration between MediaTek and AMD, which is likely why AMD require it to be used on their systems. Intel and Qualcomm are both competitors and they really wouldn’t want to see AMD laptops that use competitors’ parts.
This past weekend, I replaced the POS Mediatek Wifi card with an Intel AX210. Same one used in the Framework 13 13th gen.
I have not had a single freeze on waking from sleep. I’ve been deliberately trying to trigger it for the past few days, not one single freeze.
Note that I have seen references to similar issues with the Mediatek Wifi cards on non-framework laptops, so this is a crappy component issue, not a specific Framework thing.
Pretty interesting. I did the same because the Mediatek was garbage at holding a network connection, but it didn’t impact the GPU freezes.
I have no idea man. I still get weird chatter in the log sometimes (“perf: interrupt took too long (2524 > 2500), lowering kernel.perf_event_max_sample_rate to 79000” “usb 1-4.1: reset full-speed USB device number 9 using xhci_hcd”) and sometimes the audio over HDMI is flaky. Maybe there is some kind of fault in the bus itself? I have no idea. Anyway, they sent me a new mainboard which resolved the GPU freezes and some network issues which both the AX210 and the Mediatek card had, and it’s semi-stable now so I’ve mostly stopped worrying about it.
Over the years, I’ve been getting a sense that if you want solid experience, Framework isn’t it, yet. Especially when it comes to their gen 1 products. There’s a low bar somewhere.
In my experience (working 30 years in R&D for consumer electronics products) this is not so much because the bar for 1st gen products is lower (in fact, if anything, it is typically higher).
The reason 2nd gen is typically better, is because you had a chance to learn from the mistakes that were made in the 1st gen.
You can call it that, sure, but it’s equally important to note that this is something that affects every company out there, no matter their size. Remember the Apple Vision Pro?
Sadly, you have to make mistakes, before you can learn from them. No matter how experienced you are, you’re bound to make less mistakes on the 2nd gen then on the 1st.
