When I originally heard there was going to be a 16-inch framework I was elated.
But then I saw the price tag. And then I saw the specs.
Why wasn’t there ever a plan to make a cheaper 16” laptop, for instance with a 7840U processor?
Not everyone associates a big screen with a high-wattage CPU.
After all, I’ve used a Raspberry Pi connected to a 24” display. It seem almost like Apple-style thinking to make a big-screen computer a super luxury product with power-hungry CPU.
i like low power large laptops, but bigger = more power is pretty standard. lower power with bigger screens are unfortunately a smaller user group. it also would create a performance overlap which might cannibalize sales for as small of a user base as framework has. when a company is as small as framework, it’s wise to prioritize very different models.
I doubt framework will make a proper low power big screen, but there’s some discussion on a 13 to 16 mainboard converter here in the forums?. personally (though a 16 owner), I actually prefer having a 13” screen with a portable second screen.
The 7840U and the 7840HS (what Framework already offers) are the same physical chips just run at different wattage (and with newer generations AMD has consolidated chips like that into a single SKU with configurable wattage).
Additionally you can turn down the wattage of the CPU. The official way of doing this is through OS power mode settings, in which case the 16” 7840HS can be configured down to 20w on battery, which is below the default wattage of the 7840U and only 5w above the minimum selectable wattage of the 7840U. Third party programs can be used to turn it down further, but that isn’t officially supported by Framework.
So the 7840U and 7840HS are the same physical chip and the 7840HS can be configured down to similar power levels as the 7840U, so I doubt the 7840U would be different enough to justify another set of SKUs.
This has been done so many times over by HP, Lenovo, etc. that it would be a loosing endeavor for such a small company to be price competitive with the billion dollar hardware companies.
The appeal is understandable, it is just that the marketplace would not make it profitable. The same thing can be said for smartphones. Most people are ok without a flagship processor; they want the larger, nicer screen. If companies made such a product it would not be nearly as profitable as cramming cutting edge electronics into the the thinnest possible smartphone case with a gorgeous display and a camera that makes SLRs’ collect dust.
Higher end displays are only so good if they have the pictures/videos to back them up. Nobody would purchase a phone that took literally 4 seconds to take a picture and process it. Video at 360P and 15 FPS? Nope, its 4K and 60FPS…so the higher end processor ends up being a better fit with larger real estate in the long run. Small niche cases can be made for little offshoots like this configuration. A small growing company can not afford to write themselves into the endless catalog of failed startups.
Meanwhile, Lenovo’s 16 inch Thinkpads start at less than $1000. I think your argument doesn’t hold water and sounds like a straw man.
In the end, Framework’s philosophy about big laptops is a mirror of Apple’s. Whoever is making their laptops (Compal?) probably told them whatever they ask for can be made at varying prices. They’ve just decided that bigger = premium. And in so doing, they lost many customers.
This is always such a limited approach to what Framework is selling. Yes, spec for spec there are cheaper laptops out there. But what other brand is letting you choose your ports? What other brand is selling a GPU and CPU/motherboard you can user-upgrade? What other brand is selling more NVME slots? What other brand is selling the adjustable keyboard and numpad and lets you move your trackpad around? What other brand is selling every single piece of the laptop piecemeal so that you can easily fix it and avoid third-party gambling on parts from China? None. And all of those things make it cost more. It is a personal value determination on whether or not it is worth it to you.
I recently replaced a dying keyboard on a much less expensive MSI laptop with similar specs for someone. Had to take the bottom off, disconnect the battery, disconnect the daughter boards, remove the heatsink and fans, disconnect the speakers and wifi, disconnect the screen, take out the motherboard, cut out like 100 little shitty plastic rivets, preserve the metal shielding tape as best as I could, put in the new dodgy keyboard from China with an uneven backlight that will never feel as good as the original because those rivets are gone, and then do everything in reverse. Made me want to shoot myself thinking about my Framework 16.
The Framework 16 is absolutely worth the higher price.
Just how much cheaper would you expect a laptop with lower performance CPU to be? I suspect you would find it would come out at around US$50-100 - is that really worth the engineering hassle of producing a cut down model?
Engineering costs have to be spread out across the sold units. There is a setup cost for the production line. Logistics are more expensive with more SKUs.
You might very well end up with the low performance unit being more expensive.
The lower TDP processors will normally use the same socket and generate less heat, so there is no “engineering hassle”, that’s FUD.
you seem to misunderstand the economy of scale to carry both sku’s would be more expensive not less in this business model, if they were selling millions of each laptop like lenovo or HP it would be different but when buying from amd the smaller the batches the more they cost so you use whatever chip that can cover the most use cases.
On top of that the engineering costs aren’t as trivial as you make out, you still have to test and validate both models and much of the savings of using a lower wattage part are using a cheaper power delivery and cooling if you just ship with the same layout just a shittier cpu you are wasting more money on each laptop because it is over specced.
You seem to misunderstand that a lower wattage CPU is not “shittier” – it’s better if it results in less fan noise and longer run times on battery.
While economies of scale might be a concern if they weren’t using a lower-TDP chip in other products, they actually are using such chips in the 13”, so your argument falls apart.
sorry when i said shittier i just meant lower performing silicon, but anyway no they don’t use a 7840u in any other laptop. It’s also worth pointing out the 13in mainboard is designed differently than the 16in so it wouldn’t be a drop in replacement even if they went with a 7640u it would require a new board revision and carrying significantly more replacement parts.
The 7840HS is the same CPU as the 7840U, just with different TDP settings, so I don’t think it would require much board change.
But if less fan noise and power usage is the main point, one could just reduce the TDP setting of the HS, without changing any hardware.
And all the points of more SKUs being more expensive still stand.
It is a worse binned 7840HS but yeah technically the same silicon the issue is the savings in costs if using components for the HS on the U is negligible the cost savings for lower power devices comes from having cheaper power delivery, cooling and often times smaller batteries.
According to one website their TDP ranges don’t even intersect. So how are you going to make the 7840HS a low-wattage processor?
| 7840U 15-30 W (configurable) | 7840HS 35-54 W (configurable) |
|---|
yes because of market segmentation they don’t sell them as lower wattage but you can run a 7840u on as little as 1.5w and the performance per watt curve actually peaks at about 13w