Reviews are dropping

Framework Laptop 16
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Hang in there B1 gang…looks like reviews are dropping so hopefully we’ll be getting our shipping notifications soon™

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We’re sharing a newsletter/blog post today with a roundup of reviews, but one thing we want to call out:

This is the largest batch of review units we’ve ever shipped, and we expect more reviews to trickle in over the next week. For context on our press units, many companies ramp into production, manufacture a large quantity to fill retail channels, and cherry pick some golden units from that as review samples. For us, because we’re entirely direct to consumer, our ramp is extremely fast, and units go to customer hands immediately. That means to get press units out weeks ahead of time to provide a sufficiently long review period, we send out production-intent qualification units. The “intent” part of that is that these are usually functionally identical to what ships to consumers.

With Framework Laptop 16 though, the product is complex enough that we identified issues during manufacturing qualification that we’ve since fixed. Changes and improvements we’ve made on all customer systems include resolving some instances of audible electrical noise, reducing sliding friction on the Touchpad Module, optimizing the thermal resistance of the CPU heatsink, making improvements to the liquid metal application process, improving overall system stability, and a number of smaller fit and finish refinements. In retrospect, we would have loved to get these improvements into the units we sent to reviewers, but it’s most important that our customers have a system that works smoothly.

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Is part of the newsletter addressing some of the concerns in the preview models? I realize that’s super quick turnaround and kudos to you guys if you can do it, but that would be really neat to see just how big of a difference there is between the press models and the shipped units.

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Yeaaaaah! A quick list of the reviews I found:

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Suggestion to make this thread a repository for links to reviews.
So link away, guys!

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Yes let the party start .

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hmmmm only one youtube review , waiting for Dave , to review it

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hummm

Linus team have found one flaw in it , lets how FW team patch it because it would take few minutes to fix : https://youtu.be/eUCm4wKarpQ?si=HDBHsuR8yc0upHSU&t=251

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Phoronix review here: Framework Laptop 16 Delivers Great Linux Support & Performance, Excellent Customizability Review - Phoronix

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high temperatures, very noisy. A laptop weighing more than 2 kilos. I will wait for the comments of the first buyers but with that price and these reviews…

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Linus tech tips compensated the keyboard flexibility by adding some thermal pad under the the midplate… I hope this is the kind of improvements that will be on the final consumer product

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These reviews are certainly all over the place. My guess is The Verge and Just Josh (and possibly others) got units that were more problematic than others. I’ll definitely have go check my unit when it comes.

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Dave2D sucks. I haven’t really liked a review hes done since 2021. And given it seems like review units arent exactly golden units this timd around, we may as well not have had any.

With Digital Trends, Phoronix, and LTT’s reviews all being mostly positive but Just Josh’s and The Verge’s having serious issue, particularly Sean Hollister’s unit from The Verge, I’m starting to wonder if two defective units made it through QC?

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I am curious if there’s any chance that the thermal pads being there could negatively affect anything. It didn’t seem like it would affect airflow or anything based on the thermal pads’ positioning (at lease from what I could tell at first glance), but I’m curious if anyone could notice a potential tradeoff of LTT’s fix for keyboard flex.

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Since the reviews aren’t of the golden units, and are instead early production units, I think the most appropriate way to look at these reviews is in aggregate and “average” them out.

My impression after catching up on all the reviews: solid first iteration, but needs work. Not something you can recommend to your non-techies wondering about a gaming laptop… yet, but still something worth considering if you are a techie that’s OK with the price and performance.

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That’s how I’m seeing this too. We knew the review units were not golden units, FW were very up front about it.

I’m excited to see actual customer reviews, and see how it improves over previous batches…

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A detailed and, in my opinion, objective test report can be found at notebookcheck :slight_smile:

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Radeon-RX-7700S-performance-debut-Framework-Laptop-16-review.790807.0.html

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" This isn’t our first rodeo: Remember when the Steam Deck similarly wasn’t ready on review day, but shipped in small enough batches with diligent enough updates that most buyers didn’t have to endure the worst? Framework is similarly shipping this laptop in small batches, and I sure hope it follows the same update trajectory."

This is why I’m not too upset with the reviews. The Steam Deck has become a fantastic device despite initial thoughts that it wasn’t ready. I feel FW will be along the same trajectory.

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Yeah, that’s my impression by what I was reading in the Verge review. Late stage validation units, not early mass production units.

Still, I imagine some of the software side of things will still need buttoning up, so I’m a bit thankful I’m in batch 12. Thanks to all the early batch beta testers!

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Phoronix having no issues on Linux and Windows having issues for The Verge makes me think these were driver related. I’ve seen Windows Update downgrade drivers (specifically for AMD APU’s) to unsupported versions for months at a time before it get’s corrected. My daughter’s MSI laptop has had this happen as few times with stuttering and freezing.

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