Long-time owners, what are your impressions on the build quality and feel?

[Luca2]

With this thread, I wanted to ask other Framework Laptop 16 users how they felt about the build quality after a few months.
I own this device since April, I was a Batch 11 pre-order and, as 6 months of ownership came, I realized that my feelings towards this laptop are mixed. Particularly, as time went on, I found the build quality more and more lacking. I have already taken this issue to support privately, but nothing came out of it: even after a month in the service center, the conclusion that my laptop is completely fine was reached. I concluded that my laptop is indeed functionally fine now, and what we are talking about is probably more or less lucky production tolerances.

Particularly, for me, it has been in the noises. My expansion card cut-outs are not really accurate, and I suspect that is the reason why, sometimes, the expansion cards audibly vibrate in them and rattle around, especially while typing hard in some occasions, and moving the device around - place it down on the desk and it kinda feels like a LEGO construction with the slots wiggling around and making noise. The keyboard (w/ deflection kit) ia also inconsistent: some keys feel and “listen” like premium laptop keys, some feel very hollow (5, 6, 7, 8 and keys in that area on my centered layout - which lines up perfectly to where the mid plate is not supported and has nothing below it), while some others occasionally make sibilant, “metallic” clanking noises, almost if the mid-plate is colliding with something. It’s the same sound you would get hitting a metal can with a fork. For reference, on a desk in a university library and several people typing on their laptops, my laptop is the one that emits the most wildly inconsistent noises when typing, between rattling, buzzing, sibilant keys and metal “clanks”.
The touchpad is similar. Sometimes you just get your regular clicky sound. Sometimes there are more layers to it, or another “click” diffused somewhere else in the laptop and sort of amplified by the void, especially when resting my hands on the palm-rest.
The input area deck also feels a bit squishy. When I lift the laptop, I have to grip it from the keyboard spacers, because gripping it from the lower touchpad area gradually bends the spacers down in that area - so I had to stop doing that. And the bottom cover’s paint is already starting to chip in several places, way faster than I have seen any other laptop cosmetically degrade, especially since my tech is always handled with extra care, rigorously inside well-padded sleeves in good backpacks, et cetera. This one’s prime-level nitpicking and a non-issue, but my previous laptop’s paint started to chip in a similar way after 2-3 years of usage, not 6 months.

I am happy with the laptop overall - it runs Fedora very well, the screen is the best I have used on a laptop and it consistently impresses me, performance is great (compiled gcc in mere minutes!), heat dissipation from the CPU is very fast and effective, fan noise is reasonable, the speakers are not nearly as bad as people say - the hardware is nice, they just need some EQ - and the whole package is relatively efficient clocking in at just 13.1 W of power draw with sorta low (but still plenty bright) display brightness and plenty of programs open, including two cloud-sync services working overtime to scan my filesystem for changes and 17 Firefox tabs; but I was very surprised to find these little things, mostly because I at least expected the build quality to at least not feel like a steep downgrade from my 2017 €500 plastic Inspiron laptop: I tried typing on it again after months of not using it, and wow, the keyboard deck really did feel much more solid, the key-to-key error much better, and the entire body just felt more rigid, as though I could be rough with it and hold it as wrong as I would like and it’s not going to care. Neither laptop is quite MacBook level, but the old cheapo plastic laptop with a TN screen ends up feeling significantly more solid. But the 16 is also significantly more modular, with magnetically-attached parts and hot-swappable inputs, so it makes sense, rationally.

[EchoAndroid]

I have similar opinions about the build quality. I don’t have any issues with the keyboard, or with the machine making strange noises, but I have noticed the paint on the bottom left corner of the laptop start to wear which I’m not accustomed to after only 6ish months.

I also feel like the laptop just feels more fragile that it should, mind you it doesn’t feel cheap or particularly poorly made considering how it’s built, it just feels like if I grabbed it by the screen or just the corner of the chassis it might fold like a house of cards, which is not a level of care I’m used to needing with a laptop.

[Luca2]

Yes, exactly. I’m pretty convinced the noises are a tolerance from my unit - one that I probably have to live with. But everything else is a design thing.

The main theme I feel about the build quality is the “You’re holding it wrong” clip. I quickly adjusted my usage patterns of the laptop just to be overly cautious. Lift the display up with two hands, don’t lift the machine from the Expansion Bay Shell, don’t lift it up from the Touchpad area, don’t type too hard, don’t click the touchpad too hard, don’t put too much weight on the palm rest… as you said, yes, it requires a lot of care.

I had been considering getting a cheap T480 on the side if I can fetch a good price for the purpose of having a secondary machine that I can be rough with in certain situations. For example, I simply left my laptop home recently instead of taking it to a flight because the thought of putting it through all the bumps and stress of the flying process gave me the impression that it might have not made it unscathed.

Alas - we knew we were buying into a first generation product, and this was predictable.

[Chad_Nelson]

I haven’t had any issues on my (batch 17) FW16 – no rattling, no odd keyboard sounds, no paint chipping (yet). I don’t use it constantly though, I rely mostly on my desktop machine, the laptop is only for when I’m away from my home office.

(I also don’t have the optional discrete video card, if that makes a difference.)

[lbkNhubert]

Batch one, no complaints. I use it every day but it’s not my primary work machine, and I am not a touch-typist, so I am not beating on it 24x7, nor do I feel qualified to opine on the keyboard feel for someone who is more in tune with them.

The edges of touchpad “module” on mine were slightly higher than the edges of the spacers. One time when I had that part off I gently be it by hand, and now things are pretty flush. Needing to do so may bother some, and that’s a reasonable stance. It didn’t bother me at all, as I like to tinker. Part of the appeal to me for the 16" was the modularity, and I expected that with it would come some tradeoffs such as the imperfect alignment of the spacers and trackpad module.

In terms of the machine feeling flimsy or not, this also was an expected tradeoff. It’s not glued together like a Mac, it is easy to take apart, and it is highly modular. I expect that doing so necessarily reduced the rigidity. I haven’t run into any rattling or other spurious noises - knock on wood.

Good question, and interesting commentary and feedback in your post and the thread.

[FlyingTypeTrainer]

Batch 9 and I am pretty satisfied with it. The only problem I really had when I received it was some raised corners on the aluminum spacers next to the track pad, but after some gentle bending by hand they are now flush and have stayed that way. It overall feels solid and aside from one small gray smudge of a transfer from the bezel to the frame next to the keyboard it still looks new. I did upgrade from the normal expansion bay to the GPU one and that was a worthwhile investment that I wish I had done on my initial pre-order.

[Jorg_Mertin]

Batch one owner here. I have mine actually vertically placed next to my work laptop, both connected to a Dell TB4 dock connected to a 32" 4K screen with builtin KVM switch.
As I happen to travel, I tend to take these 2 with me and on the road I actually open them up.

So, the only issue I really have is the drivers are not able to boot the FW16 directly to use the Dock/Screen. I have to unplug the USB-C at every boot so that the screen is recognized when I plug it back in.
For the rest, I’m quite happy with all it provides. Amazing speed. When I do my diving videos - the 60Fps preview is just there. No stuttering etc.
In the beginning I thought I’ll game a little bit with it too, but TBH, I barely game anymore Must be the age/maturity hitting
Most important for me is the fact that I can upgrade and replace parts if needed.

[CauseOfBSOD]

Batch 6 owner. I have generally liked the laptop, although I have had issues with the paint (or whatever silver coating is on the metal parts) wearing away easily to reveal a dark grey metal underneath.

Additionally, my trackpad module deflects up on the left side when inserted into the leftmost position (where I have it installed, since I find that when typing my palm is less likely to end up on the trackpad in this configuration) and has started to cause slight damage to a portion of the display (its not noticeable in regular use, just annoying and feels different when I run my finger over that portion of the display). I bent that side of the trackpad down a bit with my hands and it deflects less now, although I couldn’t completely eliminate it (at least not without fear of causing worse damage). Its very possible that this second issue is due to my own stupidity though (I whacked the trackpad module with a vive pro controller on accident, leaving a dent slightly to the left of and inline with the bottom of the trackpad, which I suspect could have resulted in aggravating the deflection to a more severe level).

The issue with the trackpad is not present when it is in the middle slot (either spacer behaves fine in the left slot, and the trackpad is inline with these spacers).

Also my dGPU died shortly after i received the system (seems like this happened to a few other people as well but its overall rare, and you can at least replace it independently of the rest of the system if it happens out of warranty, and if it happens in-warranty you can at least access your SSD if you want to put it into another system to get access to data). The failure was covered by warranty (although there was a decent bit of back-and-forth with support as they tried to pin down the issue, which is understandable given the cost of the dGPU).

[Luca2]

Right, another thing to note here is that the bigger surface of a laptop poses a challenge. Me and other folks who like big laptops have already gotten used to the fact that big laptops often don’t feel as rigid as their smaller counterparts. For example, take office laptops like ThinkPads T-series - the big ones are usually much more prone to deck flex and other build quality "misses* than the smaller ones. I’m a computer scientist, not a mechanical engineer, so I don’t really know - but it actually intuitively does make sense that a short piece of metal will deflect less than a long piece of metal with the same amount of supports. It must also be why companies usually start off with smaller laptops.

[Luca2]

The deflection on the touchpad area (and keyboard area) is interesting. I don’t really care about it on mine because it’s an expected trade-off, but it seems to be partially caused by the mid plate being too thin and bendy (if you look at it closely, you’ll see that it’s not straight, is feels like a “fluid” that approximates a straight position to some degree but actually isn’t, it has a non-zero first derivative in a lot of places), and the tolerances on the individual modules.

While it’s not a big deal, if I were Framework, I would have made the laptop 1 millimeter thicker, and made the mid plate much thicker. There are lots of complaints about the input area and deflection, and none about the thickness. But also - hindsight is 20/20…

[Lupin]

I have lot 14, and I use it quite a bit, in general I am satisfied with the construction.

But one doubt, when you talk about the paint that is losing its color.

Are you referring to the parts that can be changed like the tradkpad or the spicers? or the part made of magnesium? (because that would be a very serious error).

By the way, I travel a lot by plane and I have never had any problems.

[CauseOfBSOD]

im talking about the magnesium bits. the trackpad and spacers have kept their colour perfectly (aside from one scratch on the trackpad). the area around them? not so much.

[Lupin]

Well then the quality control is terribly bad for such an expensive laptop. And the logical thing is that the framework would take over.

I’ve had much cheaper latops that haven’t had that problem.

I find the quality control regrettable. Every day it is more difficult to defend them.

[Luca2]

I have a little bit of an intermediate stance here.

Yes, the QC is horrible. And my experience with Support tells me that should you end up with an annoying QA miss that is hard to diagnose on video / sounds, you will just be left with an expensive laptop that effectively feels worse than something much cheaper would. It’s a minor annoyance because it’s mostly just a cosmetic issue that you eventually get adjusted to, but I think this highlights very well a good example of what you are giving up by going this route right now - which is the level of precision and quality control you would traditionally get with a regular laptop.

It is important to understand that modular laptops are not a silver bullet, they are not the solution of every issue- they are a trade-off, and there are some very good reasons to opt out of the modular designs. This is an idea that I am very glad exists because I think the user should be given a choice, an an user should be able to say “I don’t care about precise quality control or ultra thin laptops, give me something modular that I can update” and they should be able to choose that. Without Framework, we would be in a world where you can only get the other end of this trade-off, like it or lump it.

I think the 16 is currently in what I would call the “someone’s gotta do it” phase. Someone needs to buy the Gen 1 for future more refined generations to exist. As for me, I feel like I have done my part in supporting right to repair, by making a pretty high investment on an early model, and my conscience feels at peace. I don’t know if my next machine will be a Framework. But even with all the issues, I am still happy that I helped towards what I think should be the direction of the entire laptop industry.

[taezea]

Batch 1 here.
I have not really had any issues with the build quality. Everything still solid and no rattles. the padding for the keyboard flex made it better for me keyboard wise. So that “issue” was tackled.
I did however had issues with the thermal solution, where the Liquid Metal slowly deteriorates, seeping away from the core. Increasing the fan ramp up and noise at moments where I wasn’t even doing much.
I had a board/heat-sink replacement but I noticed the same thing happening again slowly losing performance.

I since then I took the matters in my own hands and have replaced the LM with PTM7950 and that solved the degrading performance.

The customer server I have experienced was great and can only say anything that I had opened tickets for were dealt with quickly without much back and forth. And closed with satisfactory results.

[Gmanny]

If you compare the paint on the magnesium part between Framework and Surface Pro, at least on my Surface Pro 3 there was a pretty thick (my estimation 0.2mm) clear coating on top of the actual paint so that if you scratch the tablet, you don’t scratch it up to magnesium, you just damage the clear coating. Still looks worn, but at least the color is more consistent.

Also helps because the hardness of the paint seems quite low. I.e. the aluminum parts have aluminum oxide coating, which is naturally pretty hard, thus not many things can scratch it, while the pain on the magnesium part is closer to plastic in hardness, so just rubbing against a sharp object already leaves a noticeable trace.

I hope FW is working on a better coating for the magnesium part. If they release it, then OP, you would be able to get it and resolve both the paint chipping and also possibly the tolerance problem with expansion cards.

[Luca2]

Exactly what I am looking at right now. I know that getting a new bottom cover kit might be a good way to reroll my luck and get rid of at least some of the rattling (I am sure some of it doesn’t come from the expansion cards but it’s something about the mid plate), but it’s a hard sell being the current gen.

A future generation with fixed, added rigidity, better tolerances etc. would be a significantly easier sell - and my old bottom shell would stay as a spare part in case I damage the new shell.

[Luca2]

Interesting - I cannot reproduce the same performance degradation on my board. Probably for the better. Either that’s a lottery too or it doesn’t really affect my use case - both good cases.

I’m happy you were able to resolve the manner, though. Interesting that other aftermarket cooling solutions also work, due to the heatsink’s design I was pretty convinced it would be impossible to replace the liquid metal with something else

[Gmanny]

For science I took a kitchen knife to a Surface Pro 3 and the underside of my FW16.

Surface off-center:

Surface at 90 degrees:

Framework 16 off-center (top three scratches are the new ones, others are from rubbing in a backpack):

Framework at 90 degrees:

Takeaway - doesn’t seem too different, but Surface Pro’s scratches look lighter when viewed at 90-degree angle.

Edit: just out of curiosity tried the same pressure on the aluminum touchpad spacer. It left a scratch which is only visible slightly at 45-60 angle, otherwise totally not noticeable.

[Luca2]

Nooo, it physically hurts me inside to see the scratches done for science :((

I do appreciate the effort for science, though. Hopefully at least you’re able to cover it up with a sticker

Still - feelings aside - there is a drastic difference here and that reveals that you were correct, the paint on the underside of the Framework 16 is too thin. This would be one of the first things that I would like to see changed on a second-generation device. Again, it is no big deal - but we are at a point in tech where no laptop above a certain price tag has one singular deal-breaker, at worst it’s almost always a death of a million papercuts that all contribute to a degraded user experience, small issue by small issue. This also looks like an “easy” enough problem to fix - use a thicker layer of paint. Or… own it. Do not paint it at all and reveal the magnesium’s true colors. Though that would be tough to match aesthetically.

Oh, also. I do know the reason why Framework does not make “black / space gray” models, but this would be a great reason to re-evaluate that decision. The scratches / decolouring are only so visible because the contrast between the magnesium and the coating of paint over it is stark. A “space gray” colourway would not only look amazing, but possibly work around this issue - even if the paint chipped at the same rate, it would take some pretty trained eyes going at it with the specific goal of findiing something wrong with the laptop to spot it. And frankly, it would look great together with the black keyboard!