Touchpad Quality Lacking

Framework Laptop 13
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First and foremost, everything so far about the framework has been amazing, high quality, has good tolerances, really simple assembly, good performance, and an outstanding team of people who develop and support the products. Where it falls apart is the touchpad.

Yes, I know I can use a mouse (and I do when I can), and even though the tap functions are wonderfully responsive, the issue is that the click functions are just awful.

This is on an AMD 7040 series framework 13

The bottom left has 2 click levels, where the first click does nothing, and the second click registers an action, the bottom right has a single click level that works, the top left and right corners are unclickable, and at different points across the left and right, the touchpad feels somewhat spongy when pressed and doesn’t the 2 click levels falls off somewhere in between.

I know that I as a consumer and I assume the user base for the frameworks would be willing to pay $50-200 more for a top-quality touchpad on the input cover assembly. And I undertand it is a small team, but I’ve looked at how they hire, and it might even be wise to consider hiring expertise from someone at apple who worked on the touchpads, because it is a component that has to be used in places where you are on a plane, or maybe in a meeting or press conference. And its a major, make or break kind of component for a lot of people, and I almost didn’t make the purchase due to concerns with the touchpad.

Now that it is said and done, I am content with the purchase, but it makes the machine hard to recommend to a friend or family member who will find something like that extremely frustrating. Many people are used to a touchpad click, and thats how they feel comfortable using a laptop. Thats something to consider as prices go to a more premium level, and if framework was to market a more premium user experience, they will have a much better user sentiment moving forward. This isn’t the first topic about the touchpad, and it won’t be the last unless they can make the touchpad higher quality. It certainly isn’t at the top of the industry even though other aspects of the business and laptop may be.

This isn’t to be overly critical, just to provide some constructive criticism.

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That doesn’t sound right. There are no “2 click levels”. Your touchpad is either rubbing against the case edges or is just plain defective.

There are adjustments you can do involving backing the screws out a bit (search the forum) or you can contact support.

The trackpad might not be to everyone’s liking but yours is not working properly.

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this is the expected behavior, as the touchpad is a “diving board” style, where it is attached to the keyboard cover at the top, and can be pushed down at the bottom to click a button underneath registering the click

I have seen many reports about an issue like this, and my best guess is that there is a general misunderstanding of the mechanism compounded by a less than ideal design that leads to this. My guess is that your trackpad is slightly misaligned, and that the left side has a little play to it that the right side doesn’t have. The first “click” that you experience is just the left side closing a small gap between the pad and the right side’s natural position, then the second click is the actual click.

I would recommend contacting support to see if they can help you resolve your issues. If they can’t help, many users have opened up their trackpad assemblies and done their own fixes by shimming the trackpad. I myself don’t care for the physical click, and only use tap to click, so I have shimmed my trackpad to never click.

While this is all my assumptions, there is a chance that there is a deep design flaw with the trackpad, and if there is I hope Framework would look to address it. There is always a risk buying early gen hardware, no matter how expensive it is. I do think Framework has done a good job to take care of customers who encounter issues like these, but hopefully they are also able to make better hardware in the future as the team grows.

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@Azure this is a super interesting perspective on it. I can understand that the diving board design is intended to function in the manner you’ve described, and that’s fine, it just seems low quality in my opinion. I think that a trackpad with consistent responsiveness across the entire pad area would offer a much more premium user experience.

I also like how you’ve managed to shim the trackpad to remove the ability to click. Can I ask what you used to shim it, and where? Could you provide a link to a similar post/topic showing this process? That’d be cool!

I reached out to support and should be in touch with them soon.

I disassembled the laptop, looked at the trackpad, took it off, and put it back on, but couldn’t get a different result from what I was already experiencing. So I’ve gone ahead and just left it assembled for now, took some videos for support, and will see what they say. Loosening or tightening the screws didn’t change much for the 2 click level issue.

Also, the FW support team has been wonderful, and I am not coming here just to complain. This is a great community, and I think feedback on the trackpad is important if they are going to be moving to somehting like the FW 16, which costs significantly more, and is easily in the premium laptop price range. If the trackpad on the FW 16 is the same way as the FW 13, it will be a shame.

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totally fair critique! I just wanted to respond to some of your points about responsiveness, since you were saying that you couldn’t get a click from the top half, which is unfortunately just something the diving board style can’t really do.

I agree with you here, and there are lots of people who really hope that someday sensel and framework could partner together, but this just isn’t currently an area that Framework is focusing. The good news is that for the longest time there were also complaints about not having a glossy screen, and now we have one by default.

I can definitely put together a bit more of an in depth guide, but I basically did what this post describes, and put about 2-3 small pieces of paper between the bottom of the trackpad and the small metal bar that is under it, on the bottom side of the trackpad (where you click it) one piece of paper reduces the amount the trackpad moves, and as the OP of that post says, can improve tatile feel for some people. I don’t like any movement, so I added more paper to completely stop the trackpad from moving down (you can still get a physical click if you press hard, which I have needed a couple times when trying out linux and tap-to-click isn’t enabled by default) the middle ground I have also seen someone mention is to use a slice of a bandaid, which is a little thicker than 1 bit of paper, has adehesive to stay stuck in there, and still lets a little bit of physical clicking (though I didn’t try this method myself).

If that’s still a bit confusing I may be able to take my trackpad apart at some point and write up an even longer guide with pictures, but I’m a bit busy this week so that may not happen soon!

Glad you’ve been taken care of well here, and I definitely hope that one of these DIY hacks, or even a future trackpad upgrade could improve your experience! I understand your gripes about trackpad quality for the cost of the laptop, but you also have to remember that part of the price you pay is the small company tax and the repairable laptop tax.

Despite their best efforts to not make any compromises, the Framework team did have to work around a lot of challenges to get the laptop they wanted, and I’ll even agree that while trackpad quality is not the best in the industry, but I love so many other aspects of the laptop that I can forgive it.

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@whatisframework Any luck with FW support? I have the exact same double left click issue and also tried disassembly and re-alignment with no luck!

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@FW_ATR yep, they confirmed there was an issue and sent over a new input cover assembly after I sent all requested info back.

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Thanks mate, I’ll give that a shot!

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@Soukyuu - FYI, I tried this suggestion and it didn’t help with the touchpad issues. I’ve submitted a support ticket and waiting for a response.

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Posting an update in case anyone has the same issue.

I’ve received a replacement input cover and no longer have any of the stated touchpad issues. A big thanks to the excellent Framework team!

The turnaround was quick after I provided the necessary details.

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