FW13 Pro initial impressions

Framework Laptop 13 Linux
1

I thought i would share my initial impressions of the FW13 Pro (Intel Ultra X7 358H, 32GB RAM, 512GB SSD) so that others can make an informed purchase.
I am viewing it from the perspective of also owning a Macbook Pro M1 Pro (16GB RAM, 512GB SSD) running Fedora Asahi.

Which distro am i using?
Fedora Workstation 44, Kernel 7.1.8, running KDE Plasma

It doesn’t disappoint, but it also doesn’t really wow compared to my Macbook Pro M1 Pro

  • It feels snappy as heck, very responsive, some light games i tried run well.
  • Speakers can’t reach the water of the Macbook (both running linux), at all. I first thought the speakers were somehow broken as even my 8 year old Pocophone F1 sounds better…but no. Under Windows 10 using Dolby Atmos, it sounds more than fine, so i hope this is something that can be fixed using software in the future. Using EasyEffects and messing around with some online available preset can make it sound better, but not great
  • Standby consumption seems to be around 0.8-1W (all 4 modules populated, 2x USB-C, DisplayPort, USB-A), not great, not terrible (way better than Linux on Mac though)
  • The keyboard is great, i love it. I don’t really think it’s really worse than Apple’s
  • The Display is just great, HDR is unusable though (not that i care). It gets bright enough, and the anti-reflective surface is done really well.
  • Touchpad is good, seems to have a firmware bug though were resting your fingers on it means you have to press harder than usual to detect the click (You can slowly increase pressure on the trackpad and it will never trigger)
  • Things like battery charging limit does not seem to be settable under KDE Plasma just yet, either set it in the UEFI or via the framework_tool
  • The fan is noticable on way moare often, but it’s also not annoying like on some other notebooks, the CPU can get toasty

All in all it’s a kinda mixed bag for me. The main reason i upgraded from my mac to this is the better linux support (things like USB-C docking etc.), needing more memory (32GB instead of 16GB), but when you look at the used market, a M1 Pro with 32GB seems to go for about 1000-1200€, meaning with current memory/storage/overall prices, it’s kinda a hard sell

2

Hi! Thanks for your review.

I’m sitting in the same boat. Owning a MacBook Pro M1 with 16GB RAM and already preordered the Framework as Prebuilt with (kind of) your configuration just before the price surge. Looking forward to finally have a fully usable Linux machine that will have some small Windows Dualboot partition. The Mac felt too locked in for both C++ development and occasional light gaming.

Do you miss anything except the speakers from the MacBook world?

I also tried Asahi Linux a few months back but switched back to MacOS as I was not really happy with the worse battery consumption and some other minor hickups that made it feel truly like an enthusiast project. I mean, that’s kind of what it is but its also incredibly impressive what they achieved through reverse engineering and clever thinking.

3

A M1 MacBook Pro would be five or so years old at this point, so you’ll have to wait until 2031 to see what the FW second-hand market is like :cat_with_wry_smile:

It’s worth noting that M-series MacBooks have soldered RAM and soldered storage, which gives the Pro an upgradability advantage.

1 Like
4

Are you using the i915 or the Xe GPU driver? I’ve heard that the media angine doesn’t work on Alchemist with the Xe driver, but does it work on Meteor Lake?

5

@Rove Can’t say that i really miss anything. Been using it for a few days now and it’s just a good computer, didn’t have to take out the Macbook for anything.

@Squiggler That is true, yeah. The M1 Pro chip does show its age, but as long as you don’t need the most performance they are gonna serve you well for a while still. Just if someone needs a computer -right now-, the choices are limited by the market. (Thanks, “AI”.)

@dude_online
00:02.0 VGAcompatible controller: Intel Corporation Panther Lake [Arc B390] (rev 04)
Subsystem: Framework Computer Inc. Device 000f
Kernel driver in use: xe
Kernel modules: xe
From what i can tell, media hardware decoding works fine, i have not tried encoding yet though.

A thing i forgot to note is the build quality; it’s so good that you just forget about it.

Also i am very impressed by the efficiency, playing factorio, having lots of stuff running in the background, watching videos, means about 20-25W for the whole system.

2 Likes
6

I’ll share my impressions as well. I’m coming from macOS on an MBP M2 Pro. I have a much longer relationship with Linux than macOS though, so I’m not coming to it fresh (that should become obvious in a minute).

First, the build quality is really good. I’m impressed at how smaller and lighter it feels than my 14" Mac. Obviously it is a little smaller, but I wasn’t expecting it to feel so much smaller. This is nice.

The keyboard is excellent. I much prefer it to the MacBook’s. Both are good, but the tactile feel of this, along with the slightly longer travel distance, make it the better choice.

The screen is also excellent. Not perfect. Unfortunately there are some light bleeds from the edges but it’s mostly noticeable when the screen is black so it doesn’t bother me much. I’ve long wished for a matte screen on an MacBook Pro. It also makes it less bad to work in the sun - although the laptop gets insanely hot then! Not surprising though. The Mac is the same in that regard.

The trackpad is good. It’s the first non-Mac trackpad that I used that I didn’t find somewhere between crap and lacklustre. It’s not perfect, but it’s maybe 80-90% as good as the Mac’s. I find it a bit too sensitive though, and haven’t found a way to tweak that. If anyone knows, I’d love to hear it.

I installed Fedora first, as it’s officially supported and Framework have clearly stated any troubleshooting will go through either Fedora or Ubuntu first, to ensure problems are not OS-specific - which is fair. I don’t intend to use it though, so I proceeded to install Debian on another partition. The installation was far from uneventful but eventually I got there and everything works! Really, even sleep so far has been flawless! I hope I didn’t jinx it just now.

As others have said, it feels snappy, it feels premium, it just feels like an excellent Linux laptop.

I will miss some QoL features from Apple’s walled garden, like a good enough mail client, a good desktop weather app, a decent calendar app, and especially the desktop maps app - not to mention the Command key which is probably the most important innovation coming out of Apple - well, maybe second to Apple Silicon.

I also found the speakers to be bad. Far from the worst laptop speakers, and usable for casual viewing of instructional YT videos but I wouldn’t want to consume entertainment (movies, tv, music) through them.

I don’t understand why @onix331 says HDR is unusable. So far it seems fine - though I haven’t looked for anything specific. What should I be looking for?

Also agree the fan is not like on the MBP. It comes on more frequently (though really not during most normal/light use) and is a bit louder. Not in a way that actually bothers me though, so I’m absolutely fine with it.

Overall I really like the machine. It gives me an escape route off the increasingly hostile Apple ecosystem without having me doubt my life decisions. That was the main thing I was looking for and so far it seems to deliver in spades.

1 Like
7

@Cassiano_Leal When i enable HDR i get ridiculous amounts of backlight bleeding from all four corners when something more grey-ish or black is displayed. I owned a cheap 144Hz VA Panel for years that has a similar problem but not to this extend.

Without HDR enabled it seems to not show up as much

8

Huh, have you contacted Framework? Mine has some bleed but it’s really only noticeable when the screen is black, HDR or not.

I calibrated my HDR to 680 nits maximum, if that makes a difference.

9

Yeah i’ve just noticed that it really doesn’t make a difference if HDR is on or off, happens the same. The pic shows is pretty much like i see it with my own eyes

PXL_1
PXL_11920×1440 228 KB

But also, HDR is not even in the specs or anywhere