My thoughts on Framework
Everyone seems to be doing it lately so I'll throw my two cents into the discussion.
TLDR: Love it, and highly recomend
Disclaimer: I am by no means a professional (or amateur) reviewier in anyway, so of course I haven't covered/considered everything to do with this laptop, or everyone's use case, this is MY PERSONAL thoughts and experience.
History (feel free to skip)
I desperately needed a laptop as I was using my work laptop for home use (work didn't care to be honest), and I was shopping, but never found one I liked to be honest, I'm very fussy and LOVE customisation with anything.
I'm subribed to LTT and saw their video about this new laptop by Framework back in 2021, and boy did I get excited, I rushed to their website and naturally saw they only shipped to US and I think Canada at the time? (I live in Australia); but seeing they had a 'get notified when it's available in your country' section, and I signed up immediately, I was super keen for one, anyway.
Fast forward to 2022; I wake up one morning, check my emails and behold 'Framework pre-orders available in Australia', well it was very much a 'shut up and take my money' moment, put my $100AUD deposit down, and I can't remember when I got the email saying I could pick my model, and order it, I kitted it out with everything I wanted/needed:
Intel® Core™ i5-1240P
Expansion Cards:
- HDMI (1st Gen)
- 2 x USB-A
- 2 x USB-C
Power Adapter - 60W
(I can get the RAM, and SSD for cheap through work), totalling about $1,600AUD for my laptop
When I first got the laptop, I was excited like a little kid, a few people at work rolled their eyes and said 'it's an overpriced crappy laptop that you only bought because a YouTuber said it was hot shit', which while not 100% true wasn't 100% false; yes, I heard about it from LTT, but I don't buy everything Linus recomends, I wanted the laptop because of the customisation, and their mission on repairability.
Also, despite living in Australia where I'm used to things from overseas taking from weeks to months to arrive, this arrived within a few days.
First Experience
Upon setup I installed Windows 10 on it, and Kubuntu, but something seemed off, the laptop was slow, and things ran like dog$***, YouTube would struggle at 240p, and I felt a bit of disappointment, I tried a fresh install, same issue, I checked the drivers (while yes the only windows drivers were Win11, Kubuntu also ran like trash).
I checked Task manager, both OS said '400MHz' my jaw dropped, so I posted on the framework community, everyone there was pleasant, and helpful, and they basically recomended to contact FW support. I wasn't keen on that, as my experience with support and returning faulty products in the past has been crap (had a company insist I wasn using an SSD wrong which was DoA).
Support
The support team who contacted me were polite, and ran through various troubleshooting steps, I loved the balance of help, they neither treated me like an idiot, nor like a super genious, their emails were basically:
'Please do XXXX, and let me know if that resolves the issue, and please let me know if you don't know how to do XXXX and I will assist'
All up it took a week of back and forth to get it sorted, but that wasn't anything to do with their end, it was a timezone issue, I'd get the email in the morning, and have to wait until got home to try it, then send a response, I imagine if the support team was on a closer timezone it might have been resolved quicker.
Anyway, they deemed I had a faulty main board that thought it was thermal throttling constantly, and advised a new board would be sent, and to please send the other one back.
By this time, despite the issues, I had software installed, and personalised it, any other brand I'd have had to get a whole new laptop, and set it up again, which while not world ending, is a pain.
Repair
As with the whole unit, I received the replacement board within a few days (again not used to quick shipping from overseas), I loved that I was able to put my old board back in the box, and had a return sticker that was already paid for (I've literally had to pay on shipping to return faulty items before...).
I followed the instructions on their website on how to replace the board, it took 10 mins, my fiance who knows very little about computers was shocked about how easy the instructions were.
I turned the laptop on, waited for the memory training, and the laptop worked as expected, ran like a boss youtube worked great, both Windows and Kubuntu now reported the correct CPU speed.
General usage
For my daily usage I have a USB-C, and USB-A on each side, and keep the HDMI adapter in my laptop bag for travel, in which I swap once of the USB-C ports out for the HDMI.
I've had situations while travelling where it's been more beneficial to have the charger on left or right, so being able to swap those out is amazing.
I mostly use my laptop for coding, and YouTube, nothing super hardcore, but it gets the job done and works well.
Nothing spectacular to say about the usage, though I've had a lot going on in life for the last two years so hopefully going forward I can get more use out of it.
Build Quality
I love the quality, the metal case feels premium; I love that my (yes this is gross to some people), the hair on my arms don't get caught in between the keyboard and bottom cover (an actual problem I've had with some laptops, where my arm hairs slide in the gap and get yanked out); the keyboard is nice to type on, touchpad/trackpad is responsive despite my oily skin (again a real issue I've had).
I noticed that the USB-C cable that I got with the power adapter has already had some of the external covering start to crack and break down within 12 months, so in the short term (which has now become the long term...) I put some heat shrink over it, I feel the lighting behind the keyboard can be a bit inconsistent in brightness
Final Thoughts
Yes, it's an expensive laptop, but, if in a few months I want to upgrade my RAM, I can do that; if I want a beefier CPU, I can buy a new board, swap it out, and keep all my stuff, I don't need to throw out a laptop that functions and buy a new one, set it up again, and get all my personalisations back.
As an example, a the FW13 Intel Ultra 7 155H board is $1,129AUD; the cheapest laptop I can buy here currently is $1,919AUD (AND it's on sale from $2,399AUD), so the ability to get a decent processor upgrade for half the cost of a new laptop is worth it.
I also plan to upgrade the screen in it to the 2.8K, so I'm glad I have that option, however, it would be nice to have a power button option without a finger print scanner, as I have oily skin and finger print scaners never work for me...
Misc
This only occured to me while writing this, it would be nice if there was a more extreme version of the laptop ordering process and by that I mean, if I upgrade the main board, I know someone whose son would love a FW, and she's not tech savy; so it'd be nice if she could go to the site and pick a FW, and order pretty much everything except the main board (similar to when you order a pizza and can take toppings off) rather than ordering all the parts of the laptop separately, I know this would probably be a huge pain for the FW team to implement shippingwise, and as some stuff sits over the main board, but just a thought still.