Sounds exactly what a first batch of a revolutionairy product should be… imho. Looking forward to my batch4 delivery.
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Agreed. I’m Batch 17, and have set my expectations to a reasonable level - it should basically work and be functional enough for everyday use, but not at all perfect or free of issues.
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I think that’s a pretty good take. I got mine a few days ago, and I’m quite happy with it. You could certainly look at it, compare it to a similarly price MacBook pro, and come away disappointed. But as someone who hasn’t handled such a MacBook and who just wanted something similar to the FW13 but with a better screen and GPU, and I’m thrilled with how the FW16 turned out. Framework has clearly put a lot of effort into the fit and finish. The touchpad is quite a lot better than the one on my first Gen FW13. The physical click is much more pronounced and has a better click feel at the bottom of the movement. My read on the touchpad spacers is that they likely had a cleaner solution but that they had to pivot during speaker tuning because the spacers would rattle at certain frequencies. This is supported by a statement made by a FW engineer at a Linux conference a few months ago who mentioned the resonance while audio tuning near the end of his presentation. FWIW, I’d much rather have slightly janky spacers than ones that vibrate along with the music. I don’t know if any pictures show it, but the spacers have a rubber like material on the bottom which likely fixes the resonance.
They also improved the feel of the hinges beyond even the feel of the v2 hinges from the FW13 which is impressive.
I’d be happy to provide specific pictures of the FW16 if anyone wants them assuming they’re not to difficult to take.
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i wouldn’t mind good shots of the hinges as mounted internally, since some of us were discussing the idea of shimming those to raise the lid (to make more room for a taller keyboard, such as a mechanical one). but don’t go out of your way for it
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I’d certainly become disappointed… at the MacBook Pro. For the same price it’ll hardly have any RAM and storage capacity at all and you can’t upgrade those either cos they’re soldered.
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Okay, got my Batch 3 DIY unit today and I have a lot of thoughts! But first let’s set some expectations.
While I may not always explicitly compare it to these, my perspective is based on the following:
- Dell XPS 17 (9700)
- Generally pretty repairable, and has good support for Linux. Just a few screws and the entire bottom plate comes off. Battery, RAM, and NVME swaps are easy.
- My daily driver for the last 3.5 years.
- Replaced by the Framework 16
- Macbook Pro (Various sizes and silicon)
- My company-assigned development machines since 2019.
- Currently rocking a 13" Macbook Pro from work.
My DIY Edition is configured as follows:
- Standard US English Keyboard with Numpad
- Expansion Bay Shell (No dGPU)
- As an aside, this part is actually one of the most exciting things for me about the Framework 16. With Dell, I was always annoyed by the fact that I couldn’t get a nicely-specced “mobile workstation” without also getting forced into an nvidia dGPU.
A few hours in, I’m pretty happy. After a few weeks I’ll post a “proper” review, but I do want to touch on a few things.
Good stuff
- The Keyboard: A lot of us have been apprehensive about the keyboard based on the reported experience of early reviewers. Fortunately, anecdote this may be, my keyboard doesn’t seem to have any of the flex issues.
- Note that I have my keyboard offset to the left, with my numpad on the right. It could be possible that this positioning helps stiffen my keyboard.
- Also note that I’m just one person
- I’m very impressed by the overall rigidity/stiffness.
- Compared to my Dell, this is much more stiff. The body and display panel both feel much more consistent and have much less flex.
- Compared to basically any Macbook Pro, the stiffness of the body holds up, but the display panel doesn’t. I imagine if it was tightly laminated and glued together, it would be similar - but at a sacrifice that doesn’t make sense for this computer’s design philosophy.
- Display: I’m very happy with this. Coming from a glossy 4K panel, I don’t find myself missing the extra pixels.
Annoying stuff
- Form factor: I was already expecting this, but for a 16" device it’s a little bulky. The display aspect ratio is great, but the bezels - especially bottom bezel - are a bit chunky. It’s still considerably smaller (in most dimensions) and lighter than my Dell, but much bigger and heavier than the M2 16" Macbook Pro.
Stuff that doesn’t annoy me, but might annoy you
- The touchpad spacers flex enough that it’s just impossible for them to perfectly mesh with the touchpad module. It’s subjectively the least “premium” part of the whole kit.
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Yeah, I just ordered a FL13 for my sister and chose the RAM - 16GB 5200MHz dual sticks were 60€, 32GB dual sticks 4800MHz 88€. That was an easy choice. Out of curiosity I went to compare to apple, that would’ve been 400€ lol. (Though I need to mention that Apples memory is higher bandwidth, but that doesn’t justify these extremes.)
Otherwise @Bennett_Vezzani, really happy to hear that you’re satisfied with your FL16.
I also agree that it’d be nice if the laptop were 2-3 cm less deep, it’d make it a lot easier to fit in bags. That’s probably my biggest gripe with it, everything else will be awesome :D
Note that there major compatibility problems with RAMs other than 5600 MHz (especially 5200MHz; 4800MHz seems to work sometimes). If you already ordered 5200 MHz be prepared to return/exchange them if the laptop doesn’t turn on properly.
Interesting, thanks. I went for the 32GB 4800MHz, thought that was easy to guess based on the small price difference (28€, every other laptop OEM would laugh at that).
If it doesn’t work, I’ll have to return it. I’ll make sure to test it ASAP.
Higher bandwidth would help the iGPU, but my sister won’t care about that. 32GB are also overkill, but why not if it’s just 28€ more.
Got mine last night, put it together this morning before work (~ 40 minutes including harvesting an SSD from a ServalWS and commentating on the process). I’ll be editing together a video of my setup experience. Unfortunately I can’t complete the setup due to having forgotten the USB with EndeavourOS’s installer on it. I’ll update on that process when I get the video together.
Overall issues we’ve heard about:
- Screen Flex - I asked 4 other people in our office to be sure I wasn’t missing it, and no one noticed any flex that was unreasonable. Between the workstations and gaming laptops we had on hand (tech company full of gamers so we had a good set) the flex was less than average.
- Keyboard - Keyboard is TERRIBLE compared to my Keychron with mechanical switchs…but compared to the other laptops here, again it’s better than average if not the best (subjective based on feel). There is no noticeable flex.
- Input Module Spacers - Easy to install when installed correctly. No alignment issues. They are visible, but not more noticable than the sticker next to my MSI touchpad on my work laptop.
- Memory Training - I setup a timer expecting a 20+min training but after 15 seconds it was trying to fully boot from an ancient windows installation on the SSD I harvested. I used a GSKILL 64GB kit. No idea if this had any impact.
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For gaming, a lower bandwidth is a bad choice especially with iGPU graphics only. For video editing etc. it shouldn’t matter much.
With soldering you can use higher bandwidth low power LPDDR-RAM. In the future this will become possible to use even without soldering thanks to the CAMM standard.
Sure, it’s just for office work so 32GB 4800Mhz make sense.
Also, regarding CAMM, it’s way too expensive atm. I hope that’ll be better in a few years, as it seems to be the solution for this problem.
I would like to say as well, i haven’t had issues with the fan noise it usually revs up in the beginning when i first login for a few seconds or when running some code but it is silent most of the time, and i do have the gpu installed, so it might be a windows specific issue as i am using linux.
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Got mine yesterday, I already set it up on Fedora 39 KDE.
Nice thing about Linux is that you can get 90% of the way there by copying your home directory over.
Things I noticed:
Screen:
- Screen flex isn’t really noticeable unless you look for it.
- Screen does not wobble when working on your lap.
Keyboard:
- Keyboard is better than my old MSI
- The online configurator is failing to connect claiming a protocol issue. I will try later again.
Touchpad:
- touchpad and spacers have alignment issues.
- The top of those panels are also sharp, so you notice it when typing.
- touchpad didn’t work at first, I then re-seated the midplate connector, and it resolved the issue.
- touchpad also has a slight rattle when dragging finger over. Basically the whole touchpad section with spacers is noticeably the lowest quality of the whole device.
Mediatek wifi/bt:
- Wifi 2.4/5Ghz seems very equivalent to the Intel AX210 in performance
- Wifi 6Ghz seems more sensive to bad signal
- Bluetooth has significantly better range
Sound:
- Speakers sound good, if a little weak on bass. But its sound changes significantly depending on bios settings and if in “pro” mode.
- “pro” mode makes it sound terrible.
- It would benefit from an equaliser, I think.
- Volume is more than enough.
The cooling system of the dgpu is… interesting. You can easily determine if the dGPU is in use by feeling the rear vents for heat. All CPU heat is going out the sides and all GPU heat is out the back.
Noise is not terrible, and if in powersave profile, the fans basically don’t turn on at all.
The camera/microphone is better than my MSI as well.
Battery life is very decent. I was getting ~6-8W power draw on battery with a few apps and browser open. So should get 10 hours of light usage easily.
Fingerprint reader really makes sudo and unlocking really easy. Very nice how it just integrates with PAM so that pretty much everything works.
Screen is excellent. Colours are a little over saturated.
I have not had a chance to do any fine tuning yet, but so far it feels pretty good out of the box.
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Hey, I have the same temperature issue and I gathered a bit of information using Dustin L. Howett / ectool · GitLab
I installed it using GitHub - tlvince/ectool.nix: ectool with support for the Framework Laptop 13 AMD Ryzen 7040 Series and it worked correctly on my 16.
After running ectool thermalget using the binary from the repo I got this table back (I don’t have a GPU)
sensor warn high halt fan_off fan_max name
0 363 363 378 0 0 ambient_f75303@4d
1 363 363 378 0 0 charger_f75303@4d
2 363 363 378 320 335 apu_f75303@4d
3 381 381 400 338 370 cpu@4c
4 0 0 0 0 0 gpu_amb_f75303@4d
5 344 0 0 323 347 gpu_vr_f75303@4d
6 0 0 0 0 0 gpu_vram_f75303@4d
7 0 0 0 323 353 gpu_amdr23m@40
(all temps in degrees Kelvin)
It seems like the fans are completely off until the cpu is at 338K, or about 64,85°C. I don’t know anything about laptop cooling but still I find this temperature very hot for just starting up the fans.
You can then control the fans directly by using ectool pwmsetfanrpm <rpm_number> or ectool fanduty <percentage>.
I also noticed you can override the temperature trigger of the fans using ectool thermalset however I have no idea how safe manipulating this is, hoping a Framework employee responds.
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Hard agree with your points about the touchpad and the physical design of the deck.
I hate all the hard edges and have literally filed mine down on the spacers, the touchpad and up by the F keys to make them bevelled.
There is a reason why every other laptop company in the world makes their keyboard deck as smooth and seamless as possible, cos framework feels awful in comparison.
I have fixed the rattley touchpad with a little electrical tape.
The other physical annoyance I have is the empty space vertically between the deck and the midplate, and the midplate and the components underneath.
This allows flex, since there is not enough padding to eliminate the empty space, and the midplate is not rigid enough to compensate.
It feels janky and underbaked and gives off cheap chromebook and bad plastic laptop vibes.
I’ve taped extra plastic on to the midplate and it’s fixed most of the mush. Given the price we are paying, I can’t forgive it or give framework a pass. Tolerances and fit and finish need to be better.
My feeling is that we’ve all been served up a substandard feel and design so that framework can chase the dream of modular keyboard deck, which is just not an important selling point for me.
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Well, that’s quite subjective.
There’s just a lot of trade-offs around the input deck, which serves most people fairly well.
I do hope that Framework will release a better touchpad module in the future.
There’s some hints that Sensel and Framework were/are in contact, I hope that’ll bear fruits in the future. It’d be really nice if they could incorporate that tech, as it seems to be the most disliked part of the laptop right now.
Ideally they’d release it in two versions, both centered but one of them is the full width so that people can avoid the inconsistent look. Or, maybe they are able to fix the spacers by then and make them consistent high quality. That’d be great as well.
Bevelling the touchpad panels look very doable, they are just sealed aluminium, the colour will be hardly noticeable. The air grille panel above the F keys is painted black, so bevelling there will be very visible.
I’m wondering if there’s some way to make them mount tighter (as in down). Will fiddle with the mounting brackets to see
I added some tape on the midplate where the rubbers would be (I think the tape was ~0.1mm thick), did some engineered tapping to try and bend the panels flatter, and deburred the top edge (scrape with a hardened metal edge, then buff with cloth).
It’s a lot better now. The feel by the bottom keys went from “Eeek!” to “meh”, and the panels are also much better fit with no more rattling when I use the touchpad.
I personally think this is something they could easily improve for later batches. Literally apply more strategic tape to the midplate and debur the top edge.
The panels are quite thin, so I feel that getting them consistently flat is a really hard thing to do.
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What browser are you using? And is it installed as a normal system package (not snap, flatpak, or appImage)?
Try adding a udev rule. docs.qmk.fm/#/faq_build?id=linux-udev-rules
~Edit~ And if anyone else needs to apply this, please post your distro.
Summary
Linux udev Rules
On Linux, you’ll need proper privileges to communicate with the bootloader device. You can either use sudo when flashing firmware (not recommended), or place this file into /etc/udev/rules.d/.
Once added, run the following:
sudo udevadm control --reload-rules
sudo udevadm trigger
It helped someone else on Fedora 39 KDE who was also failing to connect. If it fixes that for you, let us know. Might turn out to be something all Fedora 39 users need. Or maybe it’s just Fedora KDE.
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