Hello,
I daily drive a Framework 13; however, sometimes the 13-inch screen is pretty small for me and the ports are somewhat limited.
I’m thinking of selling my Framework 13 and buying the 16-inch instead.
I saw a review of the product during its launch, but now that the Framework 16 is more mature, how is the experience with it?
Is the build quality good enough for daily use?
How is the fan noise when you are browsing web pages, etc.?
And how is the weight without the GPU? Is it manageable for everyday travel (school) or is it really heavy?
Also I have lying arround an 100w apple charger is it okay to use it or should I buy the 180 framework one ?
The 100w charger should be fine if you just get the 16 without the dGPU. Build quality has always been good in my experience (batch 1 here). Though, the paint will wear off rather quickly so it will end up looking ugly if you don’t put stickers on it or something.
Software wise, we are still on very buggy and awful bios/firmware after 2 years with still no fix in sight. Framework is, and always has been, excruciatingly slow to provide any bios update. And on the 16, every update has added more bugs than the previous versions. As it currently is on the most recent bios, we can’t game longer than about 30 minutes before the laptop locks its self into some lower power mode and fps plummets (with the 240W adapter connected). Among many other bugs I’ll refrain from listing here.
With respect to @jared_kidd, I’ve used the FW16 for only a few months less (batch 17 here), and I haven’t see any of the firmware bugs that other people are reporting in all that time. The only problem that I have seen is the laptop waking up while closed due to pressure on the screen portion pressing it into the keyboard, something that one of the recent firmware updates fixed.
As far as I can tell, the only real differences between my machine and the ones that have the firmware problems is that I didn’t buy either of the discrete GPU modules. I have no need of it, as I rarely game on my laptop, and when I do, I prefer old games like Master of Orion II or PS2 games through PCSX2.
If you do a lot of gaming, with or without a DGPU, you might want to apply the aerogel fix to prevent heat-induced keyboard failures. I haven’t done so yet, but my laptop seldom gets very hot.
EDIT: almost forgot to add this… I bought the 180W charger with the machine, but I leave it permanently hooked up at my desk. When I’m away I run the machine off of lesser chargers that I have around. 120W, 100W, sometimes even a 65W one that I have from my previous laptop. If I’m only using a small amount of CPU power, such as for programming or word-processing, those are more than sufficient.
Oh ok ok good to know I was a bit worried here lol.
I’m in the same case, I don’t want the extra gpu I just want more screen.
Exept of that which model of the cpu did you take and how is the battery life and weight ?
Mine was batch 9 on the 2nd Gen version only using the internal GPU on a Ai9 HX 370. I run both Win11 Pro and Linux on it, but now barely touch the Win11 OS.
So:
Is it heavy? NO. My 5 year old Lenovo Legion 17 inch is a brick in comparison. It is also lighter then the Thinkpad 15 inch I used at work 3 years ago (now retired).
Build quality: Mine is pretty much perfect. Only the spacers next to the Touchpad take a bit of shine of it. These will never be 100% smooth.
Fans: I run System Monitor on Windows and GKrellM on Linux. These sit to the left of my Display and show Fan activity (rpm) at all times. On Linux, they don’t run most of the time at all during normal work and browsing. When they do its around 1100 ~ 1450rpm. At those revolutions I can neither hear them nor feel them unless I put my hand on the side and then barely.
Power Supply: There are reports from Users that used other manufacturer’s supply and they appear to have either damaged the P.Supply or even the Laptop. I would purchase the 240W Supply if you can afford it. In that way you can avoid any future headaches.
The Ryzen 7 7840HS (the lesser of the two). I have a desktop system for when I need lots of CPU power, I don’t particularly need a powerful laptop.
Battery life… I haven’t tried it lately, and my recollections are a little fuzzy, but when I’m doing simple stuff (which is most of the time), my Linux widget says it will run a little under eight hours from the 80% charge that I keep it limited to. I have had it run out of battery in less than two hours, when I was playing a movie on a TV via the HDMI adapter. Unfortunately I can’t tell you what format the movie was in, it may have been one that required a lot of CPU processing.
As for weight: I seldom notice the weight, but I’ve been carrying around laptops since the late eighties, often heavier and always less powerful. It’s noticeably heavier than a lot of today’s slimness-worshiping machines. Worth it for me, as it offers a lot more power and capability for the times that I need it, but before I bought it one of my friends was urging me to avoid anything this heavy at all costs, so I assume other people would have other opinions.
I’m exclusively Linux. I suspect you may not have these issues if you do not get it with a dGPU. That does seem to contribute to a majority of these issues (cpu power limited to 35-45w when dGPU asleep, PROCHOT thermal throttling when not even hot, etc).
I have a FW16, exclusively Linux, with the dGPU, I don’t game nor do I push my hardware to its limits and I have not experienced any of the issues shared in this forum.
For me its been an excellent choice and decision for a Laptop.
I still haven’t been able to get this to happen - for example, last night I wrapped up a multi-hour helldivers 2 session - then jumped right into transcoding my jellyfin library (tdarr for ref). And then paused that workload before bed.
Back at my laptop now and it hasn’t dropped into a low power mode.
I am not saying you aren’t getting the issue, and I’m not saying that its not an issue “on Framework’s side” - I am more-so saying that I don’t think this is a bios issue and am starting to wonder if its a hardware issue w/the mainboard?
Laptop is working flawlessly on Linux for programming and video encoding tasks.
It can get a bit hot during long periods of constant CPU usage, but I’ve installed fan control app and align the cure to start vents eariler, so it’s more tolerable.
I’ve also replaced touchpad spacers with one 3d printed piece.
It is a bit larger than my previous Dell XPS 15 machine.
It doesn’t happen every time. In fact, I too played a multi-hour Helldivers 2 session tonight and it worked fine the whole time. I did start out with a 100% battery connected to the 240w charger this time. Dunno if that is the reason it worked this time or not. I just wish Framework would fix the firmware bugs that cause it to happen when it does, that’s all.
I dont disagree with you - I just wish I could recreate it so that I could help debug
Alternatively I have other strange bugs that seem to be firmware related that only some people have - such as my #5 USB port will stop working if I am using a USB A expansion port - but doesnt have that issue with USB C or the storage expansion cards.
