FW 12" Laptop Questions

Framework Laptop 12
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Changing use case(s) has me considering a FW12”. But before I pull the trigger…

I’ll be setting this up dual boot Debian/Windows, and possibly connecting a large monitor via DP port.

While running Debian how well does the system transition back&forth between tablet/tent-mode/keyboard-mode? Is it fiddly and require restarts/reboots, or does it just work?

How well does the touch screen work in Debian(Linux)? Windows? Is performance smooth & snappy, or sluggish to respond to user input?

Any issues tethering to a large monitor via DP interface?

What are folks experiencing for battery life?

For you windows users: In Windows I’ll be running Lightroom, what memory/CPU recommendations might you have?

How well does streaming video in Windows & Debian(Linux) work? Smooth & fluid, or glitchy?

What I’m hoping to do is reduce the number of machines I have from 3 to 1. About 80% of what I’ll be doing is web/email access, Debian/Linux. Occasional lightweight photo editing in Lightroom, Windows with/without being tethered to a large monitor. And, video streaming, YouTube/Amazon-Prime, while on my treadmill, Linux hopefully in “Tablet/Tent Mode”. Maybe 0.001% of the time Zoom sessions, but if that doesn’t work, who cares. :slight_smile:

TIA for your input.

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Rod

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Those are all really good questions and I don’t have FW12, so I cannot really answer them.
I have seen others post some comments saying the display is not as good as the FW13. As you mention photo editing, I thought it might be worth mentioning, in case the color accuracy on the FW12 is not good enough for your needs.
Hopefully you can search this site to find the FW12 color comments from actual FW12 owners and then judge for yourself if it will meet your needs or not.

Another point, FW have a 30 day money back policy, so you could just purchase it, and if it does not work the way you need it to, you can send it back. That might be the best way to answer all your questions above. I.e. test it yourself.

The early FW12 has case cracking problems, but I think FW have fixed those and the fixed cases have been arriving with users. Previously, it took about 2 weeks for the cracks to show, so it might be worth waiting a little to see how it works out. I think it is a minor issue, and FW are replacing the cases of all users seeing the problem, so you don’t have to wait if you don’t want to as FW will fix the problem after if needed.

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I have been a 12 user for like 3 months now.

  • Touch screen works great. It is less responsive than an iPhone’s touch screen for example but it is adequately responsive for most tasks.
  • Monitors: work fine, just as you’d expect of any computer. However, my HDMI monitor for some reason makes Windows think it’s been disconnected and then reconnected whenever I wake the monitor up from sleep. Strange issue that didn’t happen on my old gaming laptop. Though, it might be a thing with my USB-C hub, and you’re planning on using DP not HDMI so YMMV.
  • Battery life: honestly kind of terrible. On Windows 11 the average idle power consumption with only a few light apps running is like 20W total. Considering this thing has a 50Wh battery, it’s only going to last just over 2 hours on a single charge assuming there is no inefficiency. My experience lines up with this.
  • Windows: “get as much RAM as you can” is what I would’ve said in August when RAM was a dime a dozen. Nowadays I would recommend you stick to 16GB RAM and use Linux whenever possible, but be ready for lag on Windows when running RAM-heavy apps. (If you are somehow able to afford 48GB today, it will work great without lag for the majority of things the 12 is built for even on modern Windows.)
  • Video streaming: As smooth as a macbook. Could not be better. However the poor color accuracy of the screen becomes really apparent when viewing red colors. The deepest red color the screen can produce is limited to a very slight orangish shade of red. You will be able to see it with your naked eye, and my brain has been unable to adjust to it with prolonged use, meaning you could always be missing that deep red.
  • I don’t use tablet mode so I don’t know how well that works. However I expect it to run smoothly as long as your OS isn’t buggy and you aren’t running heavy programs in the background so the window manager can have some resources to adjust to the new mode.
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Battery life isn’t great, but my experience does not line up with this. I have my charge limit set to 80% to prolong battery health. When doing general browsing, email, word processing, etc., with a Youtube video playing most of the time, I’d say I get 3-5 hours. I never let it get super low, and I’m starting from 80%.

I can’t speak for Debian, but in Fedora, switching back and forth from tablet mode works perfectly for me. With some versions of Linux, folks reported issues with that, but I think there was a fix talked about. There are threads on here about it.

In both Fedora and Windows, I find the touchscreen performance smooth and responsive.

I’ve had no issues plugging into external monitors.

The color accuracy of the FW 12 display isn’t very good. To my eye, it is primarily reds that are off, with many reds looking a bit orange. In general use, I sort of get used to it and stop noticing. But if you are doing some Lightroom editing and color accuracy is important, you might want to do that on the external monitor.

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More good stuff BigT thank you

Fingers crossed it will work well in Debian. If not it’s good to know that it works in Fedora. Not opposed to distro-hopping If I need to.

As mentioned in another posting this does conern me a bit I’ll have to see it. Luckily my photo editing is not for commercial need or fine art–just simple exposure, contrast, geometry IQ stuff, and mostly in Black & White :slight_smile: (I can always jump over to my 4K monitor if needed)

BigT I found the long thread you started WRT your Initial thoughts, LOTS of good stuff in there, that was helpful to me. Thanks doing all that work.

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Rod

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Great response, twisted_nematic57 just the kind of useful info I hoped for.

Windows: “get as much RAM as you can” is what I would’ve said in August when RAM was a dime a dozen. Nowadays I would recommend you stick to 16GB RAM and use Linux whenever possible, but be ready for lag on Windows when running RAM-heavy apps. (If you are somehow able to afford 48GB today, it will work great without lag for the majority of things the 12 is built for even on modern Windows.)

I’m going with 16G to start with, let me explain. I have an entry level Asus laptop: VivoBook X415EA_F415EA,with an 11th Gen Intel® Core™ i3-1115G4 CPU. 12G memory (~3200 Mhz). I set it up like I would the FW12. Dual boot Win 11, Debian 13. Lightroom installed in the Win11 partition.

Under Debian for what I normally do web access, email, the odd spread sheet, text doc…etc. Everything works just fine, no different than any other computer I’ve ever used as such, using even the Power Save mode.

Under Windows I get a similar result for activities as described above. Running Lightroom doing basic editing I see a little delay/lag to user input, but anything I do works OK. I tethered a 4k monitor monitor to the Asus’ HDMI port, plugged in the charger and everything ran smooth & silky. In this set up I put the Windows resource monitor on the laptop screen, and Lightroom & Firefox on the big 4K monitor. Then I just started using the app’s as I normally do. I would see memory usage climb to 80% or so, but fall off, never pegged at the max. Same observation for CPU utilization It jumped around from a few% to near max-% in “peaky” bursts but never pegged at the max. So I’ll start with 16G & see how things work. I have a stick of DDR5 ram in a FW13 I can steal for a while. If 16 turns out not to be enough I’ll order something bigger. (returning the 16G to the FW13)

I was all set to go with Framework’s i5 CPU. But, I was surprised how well the puny Intel Core i3-1115G4 in the Asus worked out, I read some comparisons of the two chip here Intel Core i3-1315U vs Intel Core i3-1115G4 - Benchmark, comparison and differences and here Intel Core i3 1315U vs i3 1115G4: performance comparison and decided Framework’s i3 offering should work just fine, the i3-1315 (Framework) being a bit more powerful that the Asus

…However the poor color accuracy of the screen becomes really apparent when viewing red colors. The deepest red color the screen can produce is limited to a very slight orangish shade of red. You will be able to see it with your naked eye, and my brain has been unable to adjust to it with prolonged use, meaning you could always be missing that deep red.

Hmmmm. this could be an issue. I’ll have to see it for myself. Thankfully FW has a 30 day return policy.

Thanks again for all the info, very helpful to my decision making process.

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Rod

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A post purchase follow-up.

The first amazing thing is how fast it was delivered. I ordered late Sat (12/13) afternoon. It was shipped (from Taiwan) on Mon my local time (near as I can figure that dateline thing) and was at my front door TUE afternoon.

Config: i3 processor, 16Gb RAM, 1Tb SSD. Set up Dual boot Debian/Windows-11. Mechanical assembly went smooth and easy. Debian/Windows-11 install also smooth and easy with no glitches.

No issues, works just as good as my iPad.

Again no issues, just as good as my iPad.

None, it just works, in both OSes.

Too early to tell for sure but 8-10 hours seem realist in Debian, from a 90% charge limit.

I’ve only done some incidental testing, but no issues, The machine remains snappy and doesn’t bog down. I’ll do more testing in a few days and update this post

Stop me if you’ve heard this…:slight_smile: Just as good as my iPad.

Well I found it. This is a viable machine for my needs as described. In fact I now have my Dell desktop, Asus entry-level laptop and iPad decommissioned and ready for sale.

Niggles? A few. A backlit keyboard would be nice, and/or a higher contrast colorway on the keys. The light color key symbols on the medium gray keycaps are not easy to read in dim light. And a wider color gambut LCD. Not deal killers, but nice to haves.

Hope this all is helpful to prospective Framework 12 buyers, happy to try and answer any specific questions you might have. Thanks to all who answered my initial post, your responses were instrumental in my taking the plunge to order.

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Rod

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Final update…

Yep, 8-10 seems realistic for me. I’ve been doing a lot of work to install software, organize and clean up file, online activities…etc. 8-10 is what I have be getting.

This testing was dome with the machine connected to the charger, and the power profile set to maximun performance in the Windows 11 setting.

I grabbed up ~40 pics in LR and buzzed through them, editing in my typical way, exposure, contrast, minor cropping/straightening, dynamic range tweaks using masks…etc. At no time did I feel I was being paced by the machine, It easily kept up with my workflow. Memory & CPU usage was quite low, well less than 30-50% for both.

Then I exported those images asking LR to downsize images to 2048 long axis, and do minor sharpening for screen presentation. That took 1-2 min, and finally I saw the CPU and memory jump to 100% utilization, at times. But the process just kept moving along with no stalls or ‘LR is failing to respond’ messages.

The only issue was the color gamut of the LCD, I found myself editing color images to improve the look of the reds. I’ll just have to tether to my 27” display for color editing in the future.

Finally I loaded the export images into OpenShot (an open source video editor) added an audio track, and exported to a MP4 video. Similar UI experience as mentioned above, and the export taking a few minutes.

For my needs this low end configuration punches above it weight. That’s it from me, the FW12” is a winner.

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Rod

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