A couple hundred more pixels of resolution, slightly better brightness/contrast, perhaps more efficient power usage, not sure it’s worth the rounded corners cutting off 3mm of pixels. You can tell this was made for Windows only, as the bottom corners sacrifice less screen space than top for that Windows bar. Linux WMs often have it up top, where that 3mm roundoff will cut off information.
The camera may perform better in low light, but its fps is half the existing and same resolution. I’d need to see video comparison to be sold that this is even an upgrade.
The new mainboard is obviously an upgrade, I’m preordered. Same for the Linux keyboard. The rest though, feels like framework is cutting corners (hehe) with their hardware sourcing while engineering upgrades. Seems a strange decision to me, for a product I thought was competing in the premium laptop market.
It’s still a startup and I expect FW compared the tooling costs to get a panel that didn’t have those rounded corners with “just dealing with it” and investing those resources elsewhere and chose the latter. Can’t say I blame them, I’d have made the same choice too
I think the 3mm rounded corners should fit well with the default GNOME status bar, and should you want to place a panel/taskbar on the top side of the screen under KDE Plasma, you can easily insert tiny spacers on the left and right side.
Of course there are dozens of DEs for Linux, and I agree rounded corners aren’t ideal as the OS isn’t technically aware of them, but it’s something you can easily work around.
The resolution is better suited when using 200% scaling, which is of value for Linux users who want > 100% scale, because it doesn’t do fractional scaling well or at all. (That’s not for me, I use 100%, but I’m just one customer.) Everything else said, e.g. pixel density for text clarity, is not a significant change from my current panel. Even the 120 hz is only kinda neat when not using it for fast reaction gaming.
I was guessing that the panel was originally developed for a Windows only product. The resolution just happens to be better suited for a feature in Linux; I doubt it was designed for that purpose.
I’m on i3, bar on top, have information in those top corners. Yes, I could insert space there, but that’s a workaround which would require sufficient value to be worth it. For customers in this situation, I don’t think that value is there.
I’m sure that’s not the majority of customers, so I don’t doubt this will sell. I’m just kinda surprised that FW went ahead with this panel, rather than waiting for a better opportunity.
A couple hundred more pixels of resolution, slightly better brightness/contrast, perhaps more efficient power usage, not sure it’s worth the rounded corners cutting off 3mm of pixels.
120Hz VRR though is the biggest upgrade.
And while I take your point about the webcam being lower frame rate, but I’m sure 99% of people (including myself) are going to be using it for conferencing where 60 fps isn’t supported anyway. If you have an application where 60 fps is important, you’re almost certainly not using the built-in webcam.
And while I take your point about the webcam being lower frame rate, but I’m sure 99% of people (including myself) are going to be using it for conferencing where 60 fps isn’t supported anyway. If you have an application where 60 fps is important, you’re almost certainly not using the built-in webcam.
In a video on the new hardware, nrp directly explained that they’re intentionally focusing the webcam design choices specifically around videoconferencing, as they see that as the main reason someone would use the webcam: thus the choice to use hardware/firmware binning and limit the resolution to much lower than the hardware is capable of (for the gain in light collection and sharpness), and likely the choice to reduce the framerate.
That 120hz vrr display is very interesting. I hope minimum brightness is lower than current model. Higher resolution is also nice. I doubt I’ll use 2x scaling (I’m using 1.25x now, so I’ll probably go with 1.5x with that resolution). But I’m not throwing my perfectly working display away. Hope someone comes up with some clever ideas for reusing/recycling.
I’m surprised framework chose to offer a meteor lake upgrade. I thought that given they already offer a similar level of performance/efficiency with the amd phoenix version they will skip meteor lake. But I think it’s good for the customers interested in Intel specific features. It will also be interesting to see how this Intel gen performs with sodimm memory vs new thinkpad with lpcamm2.
Could you explain the value of 120 hz VRR, beyond a minor value to gaming? If I’m missing something, I want to be educated.
Yes, I read the reasoning for this choice, and agree it’s good enough for most video conf. But without the video capture side by side in various lighting conditions, it’s only a claim that the camera is an upgrade that’s worth the time and money.
Yeah I know what you mean, I have that on a 240 hz monitor, it is pleasing to the eye. The value of aesthetics is very much a personal opinion. It’s not worth the cost here for me. Honestly, if it didn’t have the rounded corners, I’d be considering it. E.g. I didn’t buy that monitor because of 240 hz VRR; because it’s an ultra wide beautiful panel, great contrast and P3 color
Maybe a bit of a dumb question: how’s Linux thread scheduling on P-core/E-core systems? I got in with the 11th gen, so I’ve been on the last generation before the big move to that design since I got the framework. It gives me reservations about upgrading too early and causing a regression in performance or battery life, especially given what I’ve heard about Alder Lake-onwards Linux scheduling on places like Reddit. But if my fear is unjustified, then I’ll probably plan on upgrading my board to the core ultra on release.
Oh, and can either of those concerns be mitigated by custom kernels? I use the cachyos-bore kernel which has an EEVDF scheduler right now. I’m not sure how that would translate over to the new Intel chip designs, or incorporate core pinning/parking.
