Framework AMD 13 - review after one year (disappointment)

Framework Laptop 13
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For those that are interested, here are my thoughts after one year. I bought a new
Framework Laptop 13 DIY Edition (AMD Ryzen™ 7040 Series) via pre-order just over a year ago.

=== Initial experience 9/10 ===
The pre-order experience is decent. Tracking of individual “batches” takes some time and the status updates are not great, but it eventually arrived. The unboxing is quite pleasant, with nice packaging. “Assembling” the laptop is lots of fun (although pointless, they are assembled and then taken apart in the factory :slight_smile: ), and it’s great to see the team’s signatures inside. The use of tiny T5 Torx screws is a mild annoyance, but at least they give you a screwdriver.
While out and about, several people asked about the laptop as it garnered interest.

=== Software/driver quality 5/10 ===
One of the main reasons I bought this laptop was overall Linux support, which has been a decent but a mixed bag. With Linux Mint 21.x and 22.x, the touchpad, webcam, audio, and graphics worked out of the box - amazing! The WiFi driver is poor and disconnects intermittently, even after updating the drivers. Similarly ACPI support is poor, and the laptop often drains itself or locks up instead of sleeping properly. The BIOS was shockingly out of date and vulnerable to “LogoFail.” After several months Framework released an update, which was difficult to apply but eventually succeeded. This addressed the vulnerability but did not improve WiFi or ACPI support.

Overall the software quality is “meh.” It’s better than vendors which don’t explicitly support Linux, but worse than most.

== Hardware quality 7/10 ==
The keyboard is an absolute joy to use, and I’ve had no issues. The 3.5mm headphone jack works well, and the speakers are decent although nothing amazing. The team did a good job of matching process/memory/graphics card to work together so there is no apparent bottleneck. USB-C works well for external accessories and a display, but see below.

The USB-C docking ports are cute, but unfortunately fail intermittently. The most common problem is a failure to charge with USB-C PD, particularly after a suspend. I tried various reputable charger brands (Apple, Anker) and tested with a Power-Z USB-C PD tester. The laptop will initially attempt to negotiate higher charging speeds, but then fail and power down. Sometimes switching ports works, and sometimes the only solution is to restart.

Just around the 13-month mark, the display failed in a way described in the forums (Display Issues - #18 by Alex_Ruddick). It’s a shame they didn’t go with a more reliable and high-quality display.

== Website support 9/10 ==
The support articles are generally excellent and easy to follow. The BIOS updates are a notable exception, and are not to the same standard as hardware articles.

== Email support 3/10 ==
I reached out via email with a picture of the failed display. Responses were prompt, but spent some time going back-and-forth asking for various pictures and tests. This was a waste of time, as they ultimately used the very first picture I sent to blame me for breaking it. They offered no resolution except buying a replacement screen. Overall, extremely disappointing.

== Overall verdict 6/10 ==
NOT RECOMMENDED. Buy Apple or Dell instead.
A fun toy, but sadly buggy and poor quality for the price. I was disappointed to find out Framework does not stand by their product, and cannot recommend them for serious use.

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I also got an AMD 7840U Framework 13 in December 2023, and have used it as a daily driver since.

I can confirm the WiFi issues and recommend you to replace the wifi with an Intel AX210 instead. It’s much more stable in my experience and quite cheap. I replaced it in the first week and have never gone back.

I can’t confirm the charging issues you’ve been experiencing though.

I’ve been using Arch Linux, and in the first two months, graphics support was a bit wobbly, with graphical corruption sometimes appearing, but one Linux Kernel update later everything smoothed out, no issues since.

I also don’t agree with your verdict. I’d recommend it to any person who’s a little bit tech-savvy and comfortable with replacing parts, I’ve had so much more hardware problems with other laptop vendors in the past, but none with Framework.

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Most of this falls under your choice to use a distro with what amounts to an ancient kernel in relation to the hardware. As to the BIOS well yes, not their strong point but certainly not shockingly out of date. Outside of Lenovo Thinkpad, or Dell Latitude/Precision, you won’t find truly up to date BIOS releases.

As to your recommendation to buy Apple…sure if you don’t mind being locked into that eco-system…hard pass. Dell has it’s own long list of Clown Car additions that it is also a hard pass.

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My suspicion is you’d have fewer software, wifi, and USB C port issues if you had an Intel platform FW13. In my limited experience with AMD desktops and laptops, I have commonly dealt with driver, BIOS, BSOD issues (Windows) and it sometimes took ages to see fixes. This is why I stick with Intel. I am hopeful AMD can continue to improve to avoid some of the niggly issues that people fight with when going AMD.

Your LCD screen issue is a tough one. If you bought a Macbook and didn’t buy Applecare, do you think Apple would replace your LCD under warranty? Same for Dell if you didn’t purchase their accidental damage protection? All that said, the Framework LCD is $159 and fairly easy to DIY. How much do you think an LCD screen is for a Macbook or Dell? Probably 3-4x the cost of a FW LCD.

Yes, Dell has a better track record with BIOS updates and to quickly jump on BIOS related CVE notices (at least with their business class machines). That’s true. Hopefully FW now has a better handle on this and going forward will provide improved BIOS and driver support.

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You are bagging Framework for Linux’s problem? It isn’t Framework fault Linux is missing quality drivers. It is your distros! Framework does what it can as a small company to HELP these distros, but still there is no way Framework has the bandwidth or personnel to support every distro under the sun that people might want to run on their Framework laptop. However, they do make a concerted effort to support at least 2 that work out of the box and well. Ubuntu and Fedora.

I think blaming Framework for the deficiencies of your Linux distros software stack is shade cast in the wrong direction.

As for the rest I am happy where you are happy and sad where you are disappointed.

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His software complaint is really about firmware. Linux driver support is fine, it’s the BIOS provided by framework that is an outdated buggy security nightmare.

Speaking as a 12th gen owner who has still never received a single stable BIOS update on linux since release. It’s a valid complaint. Clearly the greatest shortcoming of the company so far.

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Did you not see this?

As for me with a 12th gen, I haven’t had any issues with the bios. But I don’t follow security vulnerabilities either, so I might be missing something there.

I get the bios thing. I still think a lot of the complaint was about things not related to the bios and that is what I am talking about.

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Thank you all for your replies.

My disappointment is based largely on the mismatches between price/marketing and reality. If Framework were selling commodity/substandard hardware at commodity prices, that’s one thing. However, they are selling commodity hardware and software at premium prices!
Dell sells commodity hardware at commodity prices, and it works better than Framework to boot.
Apple sells better hardware at premium prices, and again their support is better.

Thanks for the WiFi recommendation. I’ll have to try it. Still, Framework gets no points for choosing a bad chipset :confused:

Oh, Linux users never really change do they? :laughing: I’ve got Arch on a different machine, but Mint is a perfectly reasonable and modern choice.

uname -r
6.8.0-50-generic

6.8.0 isn’t brand new, but it’s newer than both the laptop itself, and the officially-supported-by-Framework Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (6.5). Maybe wifi: mt76: mt792x: fix scheduler interference in drv own process · torvalds/linux@d53ab62 · GitHub is a useful commit, but otherwise there’s not much relevant in 6.12. Anyways, the laptop still shipped with inferior WiFi out of the box!

In my experience, Dell WiFi and BIOS work out of the box for kernels shipped in the past few years. Apple works also. (iPhone 4 notwithstanding) Framework has catchup to do, both to other companies and their own marketing.

EDIT: And the sleep issues with BIOS/ACPI are almost certainly Framework’s.

Well their screens don’t break in the first place :slight_smile: I’m still amazed Framework is managing to claim user damage to a screen that was closed in a case at the time! And yes, my experience with Apple screen replacements was better even when I told them I damaged it (by closing the screen on a metal spike jammed in the speaker grille). Granted, that was a corporate account…

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Yep, it’s still not stable for linux. The updater is windows-only, the one for linux is still experimental.

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image
image1920×1480 208 KB

Well, one positive outcome of this is realizing there’s another firmware update since the one in Q2 2024. Fingers crossed that the IRQ1 fix actually helps. The documentation remains confusing AF, though!

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https://mou.sr/3UHJJks

@Ferdinand_Bachmann This Intel WiFi card, right?

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AMD and MediaTek have a special agreement to “co-engineer” Wi-Fi. While I’m not sure it’s strictly exclusive, almost all AMD devices from the past few years use MediaTek Wi-Fi as a result.

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You don’t need the vPro variant, since IIRC the vPro stuff is intel-cpu-specific, so you can get the non-vPro Intel AX210.

But from what I’ve heard, even the vPro one will work, just without the vPro features (don’t know what those even are).

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Alex, thank you for sharing your experiences. I hope you’re also enjoying this back-and-forth while it does look like a lot of people are taking your feedback as criticism of their choices.

That screen must be really frustrating, and the wireless issues a suck on you enjoying the keyboard and form factor. I hope you get a fix for your screen.

I went with a DIY edition using the Intel AX210 straight up, not expecting much from the Mediatek device. I think that there should be advice from the Community Forums to build DIY and get the Intel AX210 instead of the Mediatek.

K3n.

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My screen malfunctioned similarly, and support has refused to replace it under warranty. Given the number of such cases I’m seeing in the forums and on reddit, this appears to be a systemic issue, not customer-induced damage as they’ve claimed.

At this point, I endorse your verdict. It’s a shame.

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I can also agree with this sentiment. I got a R9 16" and before powering the thing on swapped out the rz616 with an ax210 to prevent issues. Only issue ive had soo far with mine is the occational windows not sleeping correctly.

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I do not want to write a full review, so will leave my comment here.

I am using Linux as my main OS for at least last 15 years, during that time I’ve used many laptops including top of the line Dell XPS, some with hybrid graphics, several generations of thinkpad. from t430 to T14 (AMD version). I am on Arch Linux, which I’ve installed back maybe 8 years ago and since when was cloning between drives or moving main drive between laptops, some day I might try Nix. I have Secure boot + Full disk encryption with TPM and pin enabled. The last year I’ve spent with Framework 13 AMD.

=== Initial experience 10/10 ===
Had no problems, ordered, order was delivered, change in the order was handled through email without questions asked.

=== BIOS 9/10 ===
not framework responsible for the software, so I leave only BIOS. I’ve posted the issue with password complexity which was annoying, it was fixed, relatively quickly (I would say quicker than I’ve expected). Everything was working out of the box, didn’t have issues with wifi except slow roaming, replaced with Intel adapter for £15 solved the problem, might try back the original one day, but didn’t want to tinker at the time I would say wifi replacement was the fun I have with almost every laptop, dell XPS, acer (do not remember the model) OEM adapters didn’t work on Linux at all.

But comparing the experience to other laptops manufactures, I am supper happy, firmware delivered through fwupd without any problem, worked flawlessly. Comparing the size of Framework team to Dell or Lenovo, I can only say: “Amazing Job!”. Lenovo hasn’t fixed BIOS issues in my T14 AMD gen 1 yet, and it is now EOL so would never be fixed.

== Hardware quality 9/10 ==
My unit arrived with sticking Enter, but was replaced and since then had absolutely 0 issues, everything works better than expected. Happy with screen, happy with the keyboard, camera and microphone, fingerprint sensor just worked in Gnome.

== Email support 8/10 ==
Support was ok, as I would expect it to be, as I said my laptop arrived with a bit defective keyboard, after a few videos and steps trying to fix, the keyboard was replaced, so no complaints. Why not 10? A few diagnostic steps might’ve been challenging for a non-technical person, which I would advise going to a repair centre to do. Again, not sure how to handle it better, wasn’t a problem for me though.

== Overall verdict 10/10 ==
I would recommend. and do recommend everyone. Dell XPS, fan failed 3 times, returned on warranty, every time the fan fails I spent at least a month with support, amount of time lost for me was easier to order a fan and replace it myself (BTW very annoying process with getting motherboard out, engineer damaged motherboard doing that so ended up with the new board as the result), driver support, first 1.5 years were absolutely nightmare as half of the things were not functioning properly (again possibly just Linux kernel catching up). Lenovo a bit better. Framework had the best power saving and worked out of the box.

Apple was the worst, it crashed the WindowServer (me loosing all the work) when I connect Belkins TB3 dock (sold on the apple website), ticket still open (even laptop died), had the famous butterfly keyboard. Finally display cable broke after 3 years (at that time it was used by wife as she needs only browser and doesn’t use the dock station), so laptop went to rubbish as repair is not viable (£600 for new screen is higher than laptop value and has the same issue, £250 for a used one, which will last unknown number of hours), tried to eBay it, twice auction stopped at £80-100 and after buyer disappeared. I’ve replaced the Macbook with an old “tuned a bit” T430 which felt like an upgrade for my wife :smiley: .

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Looking at the picture, i am pretty sure that each and every customer support in the world will tell you this is customer induced damage, because it most likely was…
In like 99% of the times a screen looks like this, there was physical stress on the display, causing it to crack.
Sorry for your loss, sh*t happens, but i really dont think FW is the one to blame for this…

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I have been using laptops as my primary development machines for well over twenty-five years at this point, and have never had a screen fail in this manner through normal use.

Perhaps more to the point: if Framework either lacks the confidence in the ability of its chassis to protect the screens from damage from normal use, or more broadly, simply won’t replace screens with faults that could have been caused by customer use - they should clearly exclude that in the warranty, and let customers make an informed decision about the risks they’re willing to take.

Given the number of such complaints and the reported inconsistencies in how Framework has responded, I have to conclude either Framework’s screen supplier isn’t shipping high quality products, or Framework’s hardware design is inadequate.

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Edit to add - first, I am sorry that your screen broke. That stinks.

Next, is there any manufacturer that will “replace screens with faults that could have been caused by customer use”?