Reviews on the new Framework Laptop 13 are live!

Framework Team Blog
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The first reviews of the new Framework Laptop 13 (AMD Ryzen AI 300 Series) are now live, and the first Batch 1 customer systems start shipping tomorrow! This is our 7th version of Framework Laptop 13, and the refinement that comes from iteration really comes through in the reviews. With the Ryzen 9 option, this is by far the highest-performance Framework Laptop 13 too, across both multi-threaded CPU compute and graphics. Reviewers also really enjoyed the new translucent Bezel color options.

Check out some of our favorite highlights from reviewers:

“All in the Framework 13 upgrade with the Ryzen AI 300 series is a great option for developers, content creators, and Linux enthusiasts at large. With the flagship AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 option is excellent compute capabilities with competitive power efficiency and great thermals.”

– Phoronix

“The updated Framework Laptop 13 is the best yet, with a quick AMD Ryzen AI 300 processor, long battery life, and the company’s signature modular component design for excellent future upgradability and sustainability.”

– PC Mag

“The Framework 13 laptop with the new Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 is here, and it’s not just more powerful, it’s more customizable than ever.”

– Linus Tech Tips ShortCircuit

Our Framework Laptop 13 production line is running at full tilt, and we’ll be able to ship the full set of pre-orders quickly. Pre-orders are still open, with systems shipping within Q2.

In our last newsletter, we shared details around how the new tariff environment impacts our products for US customers. The latest summary is that all of our in-stock and pre-order systems are orderable again in the US at their original prices. There are some configuration items and parts where we still face significant tariff impact, and those remain at elevated prices. We continue to update our tariff blog post as the trade environment changes.

Framework Laptop 12 orders are now open in all countries we ship to, and the response has been incredible. In the first day of pre-orders, we sold more than what we had originally forecast for the first two months. We’re currently on Batch 7 of pre-orders, but we have a lot of production capacity ready to fulfill orders quickly. If you can’t wait, you can also move your order into Batch 0 by donating $250 USD or more to Hack Club, a non-profit that enables student makers and coders. In case you’re curious, of the five colorways of Framework Laptop 12, Sage is currently the most popular. We’ll be launching color-matched Stylus options for Framework Laptop 12 in Q3 too.

We have one more update to share: we’ve launched Framework Laptop 16 Mystery Boxes in the Framework Outlet in the US and Canada. These are made up of assorted returned parts that didn’t pass our criteria for use in Refurbished systems. That means they could have functional issues, cosmetic issues, or just straight-up be broken. That’s what makes it a mystery! If you want to pick up some material to tinker with, these are available now.

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Looking at the notebookcheck one it looks like there is something weird going on with idle power.

Probably the amd drivers/firmware need a bit more time in the oven XD

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Definitely seems like battery life isn’t quite what it should be. It’s new hardware so somewhat expected, but hopefully their firmware game is on point this time so it improves quickly :crossed_fingers:

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Agreed, notebookcheck is more objective than many other media outlets

“Total Sustainability Score” is negatively impacted by “Software Updates” score

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Agree. “Software”, includes the firmware as well.

For example, wasn’t / isn’t there supposed to be a BIOS update for 11th gen to handle the 61wh–>55wh transition? Last BIOS update for the 11th gen dates back to Jun 2024.

Is the USB-C / iPhone / voltage compatibility fixed this time…the 6th time around (11/12/13/A7000/CUS1/A300)

Yikes, what’s that click in the LTT review (timestamped)?

Some components are showing their age: Webcam, microphone, speakers.

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I can’t seem to find a link within the first post to a Notebookcheck review. Is it this one?

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The Linus Tech Tips review speaks of a new keyboard, as does the PC Mag review. (The latter manages to say that the keyboard ‘now has 1.55mm of key travel’ without . . saying what the travel was before.) I wonder whether the new keyboard - which Linux says one can fit to old models - is less prone than are the previous models to scratchiness and to occasional key failure. (Both of those problems have discussed on this forum.)

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No that one is for the current gen intel model. This is the one for the ryzen ai one (still can’t get over how bad that name is)

Pretty sure the main feature/update of the keyboard is replacing some metal parts with plastic to reduce rattling in combination with the speakers, I do wonder if that does have an impact on the “scratchy” keys but I kinda doubt it. Would have probably been the better thing to focus on but I may be biased as an exclusive headphone user XD.

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What’s going on here (timestamped in the video)? Thought the fan curve and noise has been improved…no?

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I mean the test is prime 95, if all fan curves end at 100% they’ll all eventually get there.

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Let’s take the extremes: Best Performance vs Best Efficiency.

To me, best performance means, throw every bit of juice at it (max TDP). Whereas, best efficiency is more towards the notion of highest task or usefulness per given unit of energy (i.e. Not necessarily at max TDP, unless max TDP happens to be most efficient, which typically isn’t). Think along the line of energy consumption per 100MHz increase, for example.

So, with that, best efficiency might be at some x.y GHz, at some TDP…which means the fan shouldn’t need to reach 100% fan speed…which should then mean quieter than Best Performance.

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Pretty sure this refers to the windows power profiles which afaik don’t do much with the tdps and would get overriden by the ec anyway if they did. They do influence how agressively it boosts (and stull like usb autosuspend and ssd sleep states and all kinds of knobs) but in the case of prime95 it doesn’t really matter as it’ll end up in steady state all core where stuff like agressive or not boosting don’t really matter anymore.

I do agree they should have some convenient way to set the max fan speed somehow and let it throttle, at min fan speed you can still cool quite a lot.

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That’s the point, Framework doesn’t provide that layer of software integration to bridge the communication from OS back to the EC. Someone correct me if I’m wrong on this, but with other laptops, Dell / Lenovo / Asus, there’s a software layer they each developed whether it’s to trigger based on power profile changes or have OEM power profiles changes…which then notify the EC to behave differently.

For example (reference):

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This goes along with end-user defined custom fan curves as well, the software communicates back to the EC what the updated / modified curve would need to be.

There’s a lack of this from Framework.

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In Linux. The power profiles selected by the user are communicated to the EC, that acts differently as a result. I don’t know what happens in windows.

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power-profiles-daemon does the same thing

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Sorry, I should have said Windows. That screenshot of Fan Noise from Matthew Moniz is on the Windows side of things. Yes, Linux does have better battery life depending on the power profile selection.

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Battery life, performance, noise: