At first glance, it was a bliss to set up! Putting it together (especially as someone who never touched a framework before) was easier than expected. Screws stay in place, and are numbered, you do not need to keep track on or risk losing screws!
Big parts such as the bezel and keyboard just snap in place using magnets. The only hurdle I had was that the manual says I had to remove a blue sticker from the thermal pads, mine didn’t have any. But that was quickly figured out, so overall, it was extremely easy.
Installing Arch Linux was as fast as can be expected, it worked almost instantly. Multitouch on Blender all worked as smooth as my MacBook Air (much to my surprise). The only thing that didn’t work out of the box was the audio and brightness changing function (which I all installed afterward), all necessary stuff such as Wi-Fi worked right out of the gate.
All in all, if the battery life is anything to go for (so far it is) this could very well be my daily driver.
The only part I didn’t buy from Framework was the SSD, which was a risk that I was taking, but even that worked out of the box right away (I did this because I paid like 200 euros less for a 4 TB SSD if I bought it in my country).
It turned on right away, no weird long wait for RAM training or anything like that. Honestly? It couldn’t have gone better, even with the thermal pad issue.
The keyboard is good, it’s not bad, it’s not phenomenal, it’s just a good keyboard. I like it, its definitely on par with my MacBook keyboard. The same can be said for the Trackpad, albeit it’s a bit smaller.
All in all, I’m very surprised how they made this so repairable, the keyboard is very thin (it bends if I grab it when it’s just the part, not connected to anything), but snaps in place just fine.
I don’t have the arm hair stuck between the spacer issue, but I don’t have many arm hairs to begin with (I don’t shave, it just doesn’t grow much), so I can’t really say for others.
The build quality is very good, but I don’t have anything to compare it to since I don’t own any older Framework laptop. I can open the screen with one hand and the laptop stays in place like how Macs do it, and it’s hard to bend the machine.
