I posted about a week ago about how the only thing holding me back from getting a Framework 13 is the lack of OLED. It’s true, if there was a high-res OLED option I’d feel very comfortable with buying one. I’m coming from the “Apple world”, using micro LED displays, love those dark blacks and vibrant colors.
That said, I’d probably be ok with the 2.8k LED display. I JUST WISH there was a place I could go to actually see the screen, in real life before, buying it.
Can I get some reviews and opinions on the display quality?
I have the Framework 13 with the 2.8K LED screen. It’s running openSUSE Slowroll and is one of the best looking notebook displays I’ve seen. The screen is very sharp and clearly displays the very tiny details in my wallpaper photo. One of my brothers who has a high-end Thinkpad with a FHD screen was quite impressed with how much better the Framework 13 screen looked compared to his Thinkpad. Since it’s so easy to replace any component on a Framework, there’s also the possibility that an OLED display may be available in the future.
If you buy a Framework, you have 30 days to evaluate it and get a full refund if you decide you’re not happy with it. I would also imagine that if you decided you didn’t want to keep it that a friend of yours, who’s looking for a new notebook, might be happy to buy it from you. Given how few used Framework computers show up in the “Community Market” section of the Framework forums or on eBay, you could probably sell it for what you paid for it by putting it up for sale on Craigslist, the Framework forum “Community Market” or eBay.
You can also reduce the price of a Framework by buying the DIY version and buying the RAM and M.2 NVMe SSD from other suppliers than Framework. If you’ll be running Linux, you can save yourself the cost of a Windows license by buying the DIY version without an operating system. Even if you need to run Windows, you can still save money by buying a DIY version Framework and buying the OEM version of Windows elsewhere.
In my opinion, the display is excellent. It’s very sharp, offers strong viewing angles, and delivers pleasing colours with respectable black levels. While it doesn’t achieve the deep blacks of an OLED panel, it’s still impressive and unlikely to disappoint. The 2.8K panel’s refresh rate also makes everyday use feel noticeably smooth and responsive.
Don’t forget that, being a Framework laptop, there’s also the potential to upgrade to an OLED panel in the future if one becomes available .
I have the 2.8K screen and wish I had gotten the lower-end display.
It’s those stupid rounded corners at the top. When I’m in full-screen text interface in LINUX, it cuts off the top left corner of the first character of the first line. Very tedious since that is such an important position in LINUX. When I’m editing text files in vi, it gets in the way.
Also, I’m getting backlight flicker (the display’s contents are visible and stable the whole time, but the backlight dims for a few milliseconds and flickers for a few whole seconds at a time).
Finally, I see a tiny bit of what used to be called “burn in” back in the cathode-ray tube days. Apparently, people call it ghosting now, but it’s not exactly ghosting (which is a slow display’s normal catching-up to fast movement on the screen–this was an issue for FPS gamers in the early days of LCD screens or today’s e-ink screens). If I have a light-colored window open on a darker background, right after I close or minimize the window, there is an afterimage of parts of the window (usually the edges) that lasts for several seconds.
All these make me wish I had bought the lower-end display, though I have heard that that display has what-they-call ghosting too.
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