Based on the specs it looks like the Framework 12 doesn’t include Thunderbolt. Both the i3-1315U and the i5-1334U support thunderbolt. What gives?
I’ve had a policy for the last couple years to not buy anything that doesn’t have Thunderbolt or USB4, so I guess I won’t be buying the 12, unfortunately… 
Edit: I still might end up buying one because I still want a tablet of this size but am mighty disappointed still.
Yeah it appears that FW12 does not have Thunderbolt in the spec while I am still go for its small form factors. Perhaps they forgot to add it in the spec while the current design has it. If not, hopefully the new mainboard would have this included in the future.
FW12 has some tradeoffs, like single slot memory and Thunderbolt feature. It is better that they would have coreboot support to the new mainboard.
Despite of those above, they are not the deal breaker for me right now.
Honestly given how expensive it already is for a budget laptop, I’m not surprised this is a corner they cut
I’m not a hardware engineer however my understanding is that Thunderbolt is built-in to the cpu (confirmed on Intel Ark) and the only significant hardware needed to support it is a retimer near the port(s). Therefore supporting thunderbolt shouldn’t increase the cost by more than a few dollars…
I could be wrong but I’d like to know why this wasn’t included as I always get mad when I see otherwise good laptops with Thunderbolt omitted; for other manufacturers I write it off as a market differentiator for their more expensive products but for Framework? I don’t understand why it would be left out.
Supporting usb4, to get actual thunderbolt you need to go through certification which sounds pretty expensive.
It does add some mainboard complexity and the redrivers are not cheap(as far as mainboard components go) but I really do hate when it is left out especially since both intel and amd go out of their way to provide almost everything necessary. For how expensive the 12 got it is a shame this was omitted.
Well, the original 11th gen Intel boards weren’t certified and yet Thunrderbolt still worked just fine on them. They just can’t slap the Thunderbolt trademarked logo on it without proper certification.
Without certification it is just usb4 with a very complete featureset. But at least according to their spec-sheet the 12 also does not have usb4. Having usb4 but not getting the tb cert would have sounded like the most reasonable cost cutting measure there to me.
Thunderbolt requires much more expensive retimers, so Framework Laptop 12 supports USB 3.2, DisplayPort output, and power input on all four slots instead.
What would be the cost of a retimer (+ PCB redesign), even for just one port? No need for full TB certs, but even one USB4 port is quite useful for high-bandwidth connectivity, e.g. storage, eGPU, or docks. I understand it’s a relatively niche use case, but given that the cost of related peripherals should go down over time as USB4 becomes more common, and given that it only has a 2230 M.2 slot (granted, 13 does as well), it’s a bit disappointing to be limited.
However, given the budget limitations, any decrease in cost that doesn’t harm your goals makes sense.
How much more expensive are we talking here? Even having just one non tb certified usb4 port would be a massive capability add.
I found a few tb4 retimers on intel ark that claim ~3$ which is a lot for a component on a mainboard and probably also needs a bunch of passives but I am pretty sure if you asked people if they want to add a thunderbolt port for 5-10 bucks to their 600+$ laptop a whole lot of them would take it but I assume/hope you did some market research on that and came up with a different answer unfortunately.
Putting them on all ports may be a bit much when aiming for the budget segment but it seems to have ended up a bit expensive for that anyway and for going for the premium budget one it seems to have a lot of cut of edges. Single channel memory just makes things slower and limits max memory but you can still do everything you could with dual channel, the absence of usb4 takes away some options entirely.
I adjusted my mindset to just enjoy what’s available right now and hope customer feedback is taken into account for future upgrades.
Personal preferences:
That or go all the way in the other direction and make something ultra budget with like an n150 or something. But the base platform cost of this thing is probably too much for going that way to make sense.
But the lack of usb4 is kind of the biggest hole here, all the other points can be somewhat mitigated.
Biggest hole for your personal preferences. For me it’s backlit keyboard and battery runtime (which is not even known at this point… just expecting the worst) 
Nirav! I wasn’t expecting you to reply to this but thank you for the clarification 
Would have still been nice though to have a version with Thunderbolt/USB4, even if it were only on the higher end model. While the ports are otherwise full-featured, not having Thunderbolt/USB4 leaves useful functionality on the table like being able to use eGPUs, PCIe enclosures, or just having faster external storage; while I know that most of these use-cases don’t really go together with relatively cheap laptops, for those of us that may already have them or are wanting to buy a Framework 12 to have a reparable/durable laptop regardless of the price from a company we admire, it’s a meaningful feature.
How much more expensive is “much”?
According to Intel the JHL8040R retimer has a “Recommended Customer Price” of $2.90.
Is that number accurate or completely off-base?