Looking for a Good Laptop but have some questions before I purchase

Framework Laptop 13
#1

So I want to buy a laptop that’ll allow me to
• Record Music
• Edit photos
• Note taking
• Gaming
Would Framework laptops allow me to do all 4 if not any recommendations because I’m actually clue less on what laptops are good or what are no good.

One of my friends introduced me to Framework and I’m intrigued but don’t wanna spend my saved up money on something I’m not sure it’s gonna perform the way I need it to.

Just need some assurance or guidance onto what laptop I should purchase…(PLS)

#2

As always, the answer is…it depends. How much gaming? What kind of games? Do you plan on using an eGPU? How much time is split between various tasks? What software do you use? How often do you plan to use the laptop? Budget? Time spent away from wall power? Some more details and we can help you decide on what laptop is best for you.

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#3
  • Note taking should be no problem, unless you want to take handwritten notes using touch/pen input. Framework doesn’t have that.
  • Photo editing will work, but note that the Framework doesn’t have an SD card reader (you can only get a MicroSD module, but many professional cameras use full size SD cards). You can of course use an external USB SD reader, but it’s not as nice as it could be with other laptops.
  • Music recording should work, but the buildin mic and speaker aren’t that great. But you’ll probably use external ones anyway if you do this properly. You may need an external USB sound card/amplifier as the build-in one (for the headphone socket and the build-in speaker is quite cheap/bad)
  • You can do some light gaming, but the Framework hasn’t got a discrete GPU, so it’s not a gaming laptop and you won’t get good performance when running modern shooters etc.
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#4
  • in my experience, the 11th gen i5 could handle an audio interface over USB in Ableton just fine.
  • Photoshop also runs mostly smooth, I found gimp to be a better experience.
  • this has been my use case for the past year; battery lasts long enough to get through my ~3h of classes each day, but I use it in between for readings so normally I go for 6h of use before charging at an outlet in the library.
  • retro games run flawlessly, but you won’t be playing anything modern above 5 fps unless you have an eGPU (my GTX 1650S runs Apex on Low-Medium at 60 on the framework).

If you want something beefier for gaming, you’re not going to be able to easily throw it in a backpack for note taking and battery life will suffer heavily (I studied computer science; the plight of my gaming laptop friends was endless). If you go with another ultrabook (xps series or a MacBook Pro), you get more battery life but lose the Framework message and features. In my case, customizing an XPS 13 to my desired specs doubled the cost of the computer compared to framework, which would have left me unable to buy an egpu.

I was able to eliminate market competitors for various reasons, but my deciding factor was that I only wanted to have one computer, and any other options wouldn’t allow me to do that.

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#5

Alright so I won’t be doing any fist person shooter game I’ll most likely play like league of legends or (w.o.w)

Also was looking online for a sd reader full size ones that cameras usually have and I found an adapter that has both big and small sd slots… hoping that’ll do the job.

For note taking I’ll most likely use Google doc tbh or in all reality a regular pen and paper notebook just because I don’t type to fast.

Never heard of an egpu a quick search and I got a headache I don’t think I’ll be using one unless recommended I suppose l.

So the plan is to run photo shop or some other photo editing platform for estimated time of roughly an hour…My music editing will be running quite some time maybe like 2-3 hours mixing and maneuvering beats/audio files around … Google docs we’ll be in use for the longest periods of time to note take and to revise and study…Gaming won’t be to often once in a while when I find time I’ll play some league or something.

Time spent away from wall power like 4-6 hours and that time will mostly be spent on note taking for class

My budget is $1,500 - $2,000
If I do decide to go Framework I’ll go with copied pasted ( i7-1280P (Up to 4.8 GHz, 6+8 cores) | 32GB Memory | 1TB Storage | WiFi 6E with vPro | Windows 11 Pro ) which according to the website will run me a little over 2,000 but can do if I know this laptop will be good to me in the long run

@GhostLegion … what’s your advise or do you need more information?

#6

You likely don’t need the 1280P, that’s for business use that comes with features you likely won’t need. The 1260P does lose 2 performance cores and some marginal clock speed but you should see better battery life and should cost hundreds less.

If you are comfortable with following a guide and installing the RAM and storage yourself (which isn’t too hard, I promise) you should go DIY. Again you can save hundreds. A DIY computer with the 1260P, 2TB of Storage, 32GB of RAM and Windows 11 Pro would cost 1,717. Switching that to the 1280P would run you 2,127. Just a little more the the prebuilt for double the storage. You could save even more by searching for other vendors for storage and RAM options.

Gaming won’t be an issue nor would you need an eGPU for the 2 games you listed. @Be_Far and most reviews state that Photoshop won’t be an issue either. Music editing…I know nothing about I must confess. If it’s CPU intensive then it shouldn’t be a problem, just know that for Photoshop and music editing, I would suggest being plugged into wall power to prevent draining your battery. 4-6 hours should be achievable, especially with some tweaking of settings.

Final question, do you need more than 4 ports for audio gear and photo editing? If yes, you can buy a dock to expand one port into multiple but that might annoy you. Overall I think the FW laptop should be able to suit your needs.

#7

For music, my old computer could handle a dozen tracks in Reaper and it had specs way way lower than what you’ve listed (like, 6 GB of RAM and a seven year old processor). If you have 50 tracks loaded with real-time plugins, then you might need some serious specs. For somebody who just wants to play around a bit with music, you don’t even need the i7 processor (i5 would be sufficient) and you could easily get by with 16GB of RAM.

Second what @Jonathan_Haas said about an external USB sound card, and that’s true of any laptop (not just Frameworks). For audio work you want to invest in a USB interface, both to get a better sound card and so you can plug in serious microphones with XLR cables. You might also want to plug in a midi controller at some point, so make sure you get a USB interface that also has a midi input.

Editing photos with the GIMP, I’ve been using the GIMP since the days when I had like 500MB of RAM. It will work even on a really really low spec machine (very slowly). With the specs you’ve listed, it would be plenty fast.

Note taking, you could do that on an Apple IIe back in the 1980s.

All in all, I’d say the Framework would be more than sufficient for everything you want to do. You could also do those things perfectly well on a cheaper computer with lower specs, either a cheaper Framework or something from another brand.

Also, you could probably get much better battery life if you bought another brand, though you wouldn’t be able to replace the battery four years from now when it gets old (on a Framework, you can).

For me, I didn’t buy a Framework because it was necessarily faster or gave higher performance, but because I plan to repair it and keep it running for nearly a decade. In the long run that makes it a cheaper and less wasteful machine even if the initial purchase price is higher than what I would spend on another machine with similar specs.

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