Hello everyone, nice to meet you !
I’m a New désigner and i fell in love with the FW12 that is in my budget.
But i want to have your opinion to use it for design purpose.
At first i just want to use photoshop, illustrator and make video on instagram.
And later i’m thinking of getting a eGPU for youtube video.
Happy to have your though on this.
And whishing you all a good day !
The 12 does not have usb4 so egpu is not practically possible.
The support of framework said FW12 is eGPU compatible so i suppose this is just the performance which will be really bad ?
The 12 does not have usb4 so the only way to do egpu there would be using the ssd or wifi card slot which is quite impractical.
Not sure if there is some misinterpretation going on or support is misinformed there (or I am and they added usb4 to the 12 without me noticing XD)
Well i will try to ask them, and i will give back the answer here when i knew it 
Thanks for the help 
Ps: maybe i don’t need the eGPU and i will only buy à New pc desktop for more big project i think
The Framework 12 supports USB 3.2 which, while not slow, is not fast enough to handle a eGPU. A DIY work around is using the M2 slot as Adrian is alluding to. This involves using a Oculink adapter. You would need to modify the 12 to allow cabling and the height increase due to the Oculink. So it is not an easy or elegant solution and has several drawbacks (mainly the loss of the M2 slot which is being used for the NVME and storage).
Thunderbolt or USB 4 is an obvious upgrade for the FW12. Just remember that the 12 is targeting the education market and certain concessions had to be made to hit the price point desired. I really hope a FW 12 Pro is something that comes out in the future. A model variant that sheds the educational pricing and allows the 12 to have as much umpf as is possible.
Thanks ! I hope à FW12 PRO too. The surface pro from Microsoft is way too expensive.
Do you think the FW12 is enough for low design purpose ? Photshop, illustrator, and 1080p vidéo for social média.
The reason it isn’t suitable for egpu has nothing to do with speed, 20gbit does work for egpus as generations of thinkpads with half bandwidth thunderbolt 3 showed (and is much more than some single lane egpu setups have) but usb3.x does not support pcie tunneling which is required for egpu.
FL12’s color accuracy is low, only 50% NTSC (70% sRGB). Using it for designing may cause color inaccuracy of your products.
thanks for the information !
is it the same thing with the FW 13 ?
I’ve never tested the FW 13, but it definitely looks better to my eye than the FW 12 colors.
There is a thread on here about FW 12 screen color accuracy that talks about the “problem,” so to speak. The main issue that most folks notice is that reds look orange.
Edit: Here it is.
thanks i will look into i !
So finally i decided to take the FW 12 for light work, i will give my review here for design, when i will get it
The FW12 is a great laptop but just remember the market space it was targeted for and the use cases for it. Light work is exactly right. You might be better served by the FW13 for the eGPU needs tbh, ideally Framework 16 but that might be overkill.
yeah but if the FW13 does have the touchscreen in some futur i might upgrade my gear.
but it"‘s really big budget for me
I’ll be honest, you are paying a premium with Framework. They are a startup and a lot of R&D goes into making these laptops sustainable and repairable. If price to performance is a concern, you might have other options. Just something to keep in mind.
The touchscreen concern is valid, but just ponder if you want to get a 12in screen or a dedicated drawing tablet with any other computer. The FW12 screen is also pretty basic, it’s meant to take notes and stuff.
Might be the FW13 will get a touchscreen someday, but if it will also get a 360 hinge, which means changing the chassis, is another question, if convertible is important for you.
Hey, sorry to revive this thread out of nowhere, but I was wondering what your experience has been like with the fw12.
I need something to replace my ageing iPad Pro for a combination of industrial design sketching and light Adobe work. I have a desktop for heavier workloads with a drawing tablet for more detailed sketching.
For context, my iPad acted as an ‘everything device’, not the primary machine for anything, but portable and able to do sketching and other light creative work when I needed to work away from my main set-up.
I understand the value proposition isn’t great compared to other Windows 2-1s, but I highly value the repairability and upgradeability of the fw12 so I’m more asking if any major issues have made using the FW12 difficult or unsuitable.
At the moment, the screen is my biggest concern; colour accuracy is a nice-to-have, but ultimately, all work will be viewed on a more accurate screen at some point, so major colour issues will be noticed and can be corrected on a better device.
I got a FW12 for my 13yo for the repairability (I have several Surface devices, I love the 2in1 category) our only issue with it has been I opted for only 16gb of ram with a plan to add more later and now ram has 10x in price, but he’s been quite pleased with it overall. he just wishes it could run the Unreal Engine editor as he’s also interested in game design, but it runs most games he tries to play on it and it handles blender pretty well. I’m actually in the forums trying to sus out the best route for improving the ram situation for him…
Well, I created this thread and eventually bought one with 48GB of RAM. I’ve been using it for about six months now, and it works well for all Adobe apps. Color accuracy hasn’t really been an issue for me so far. The fact that I can use it like an iPad and that it’s lightweight makes it perfect for my needs.
The fan is a bit loud on adobe and games, but the biggest issue right now is the graphics card. Still, I can work on everything just fine. And if I can upgrade or repair it for around $200, I won’t need to buy a new one, which is totally fine for me.