There was indeed a specific firmware issue that resulted in a blue screen on Windows in some scenarios, which we’ve since fixed. It seems most of the reviewers didn’t run into it, but The Verge did. Actually, in our internal testing, I was the only one in our team who was seeing the same blue screen, which helped us debug and root cause it.
It’s been great to see the positive feedback from Phoronix on Linux though.
On the vapor chamber issue that we resolved on customer units, the problem was unit to unit variation. Both LTT and The Verge received units from the same batch, but it is possible that their samples behaved differently. The Verge’s heatsink did pass our test criteria though in the factory, so we of course accept their results and feedback as is.
We are going to continue to tune fan curves. We had one fan curve update during the press review cycle, which means some reviewers were on a newer curve and some may have been on an older curve. However, it’s important to call out that if the system is under maximum load like during a benchmark like FurMark, the fans are going to spin up to maximum RPM. Fan curve updates mostly impact day to day usage in things like browsing or productivity.
Thanks friend. We’re going to do everything we can to keep that trust (and I personally will too).
Spoiler for the iFixIt video:
Repairability score 10 out of 10.
It’s sad that with everyone else, repairability is an afterthought at best, or something to be avoided at worst, an obstacle to future profits.
If iFixit gave us anything less than 10/10, we’d probably shut down Framework.
Yeah, for you guys, Framework, anything less would have been extremely surprising.
What Framework has built in only a few short years, it’s great to see.
am going for this laptop as my side personal working laptop as my current MSI GT75 is very heavy cant carry it with me its more like desktop , so with FW 16 i will be opening a lot of chrome tabs lets hope it will have no problem , in my current msi i have 1000 tabs open lol 870 on chrome and 200 on brave . My MSI fan not make any noise with 1000 tabs its under 50 decidable. finger crossed for FW16
Surely Chrome unloads tabs that haven’t been used recently. I know Firefox does, or else the laptop I’m on at the moment would have melted long ago. It has nowhere near the specs of a FW16. Yet, the fan is normally not even running, despite 3955 tabs across 3 windows. Plus a second Firefox profile running with a few more tabs.
Yes, I have a problem.
Well 50 dB max seems to be typical for comparable machines with dGPU in full throttle gaming mode.
Have a look at the notebookcheck sound test, laptops such as “Lenovo ThinkPad Z16 Gen 2” or “Dell Inspiron 16 Plus 7630” have the same max output.
Saying products such as “Lenovo ThinkPad Z16 Gen 2” don’t have a “commercial future” seems to be a bit of a stretch to me.
LOL 3955 tabs , i thought its just me who have this bad habit of opening tabs R&D and leave it for later . LOL you break my record . i have 1000 tabs opened in series of 9 chrome windows . 3955 tabs in 3 windows will be quite difficult to switch through lol
The gaming result from notebookcheck is 10%-30% behind 4060, and other reviewers states it just same as 4060. Anyone have any idea?
On notebookcheck ThinkPad Z16 Gen2 have better (smaller) temperatures where You usually place your hands while typiing (both on Idle and on Max load), than Framework 16.
I really hoped that large laptop as FW16 is, with such an “innovative” cooling system, would do better with the heat dissipation. But after all, I will not cancel my preorder, even though I had to (as a resident of Poland) do some “tricks” to get the order placed. 
It depends on the laptop model and how much power they feed the GPU. For the RTX 4060 models coming out ahead of the RX 7700S, they’re simply feeding it more power, up to 140W I believe.
@nrp thank you for sending Phoronix a unit. I wasn’t familiar with his work before, but he answered a lot of the more niche question’s that interest me and are almost never covered for a general audience.
Kinda surprised that Ars hasn’t dropped their review yet.
Problem is, when I compare the fw16 to TUF gaming a16 which got a 95W 7600s, 7600s is faster in 1/3 games(5%-6%). Although fw is faster in a few games(about 13%-15%), its still make no sense. I guess that’s because the drive of GPU isn’t fine yet.
@nrp might have adressed this discrepancy in test results in his post in this very thread:
could also be other power/thermal management reasons in the other laptop models, of course
~6 months worth of pre-orders disproves that pretty easily.
@nrp Hi and thanks for taking the time to address people’s concerns. A few pieces of info I haven’t been able to find in any reviews: How dim does the FW16 display get? One of my favorite features of my FW13 (gen 11) is how dim it gets for low-light usage. Also, what is the minimum refresh rate of the freeSync variable refresh rate?
Also just wanted to say that I’m happy to keep my FW16 pre-order since you guys have had an excellent track record of improving and polishing the FW13 in my opinion. I’m very happy with my new matte screen and gen 2 hinges. Please keep up the excellent engineering!
