The Hunt For The Perfect Laptop Continues
The Hunt For The Perfect Laptop Continues
This is a bit of a rant; feel free to skip it if you’re here for the KDE content. This isn’t the first time I’ve blogged about the dearth of truly great PC laptops out there, and …
This isn’t the first time I’ve blogged about the dearth of truly great PC laptops out there, and I suspect it won’t be the last.
You're viewing a single thread.
I’ve been daily driving a framework 13 for like 9 months now. I’m pretty happy with it as a Linux machine.I can and will nitpick here to some of the points made in the article - but I’d buy another / recommended it regardless.
- the touchpad. It’s a diving board style. It’s also got a good amount of play in it prior to clicking. The diving board style means it’s tough to click at the top. Tapping works great. The extra play takes a little getting used to. It’s 1000% functional and works well - but if you’re snobby about trackpads, you won’t like it. It’s way worse than an Apple touchpad, but an upper end windows touchpad. The trackpads play also tends to allow “crap” and dirt to fall in there. I’ve had to take it apart once to clean it out (which is super easy to do on a framework, but it’d be nicer if I didn’t have to do it at all)
- the price - it’s a bit high for the specs. But that comes with the territory of a non glued laptop
- battery life is ok
- speakers are kind of crappy. They are fine, but they ain’t wowing anyone.
- the keyboard is ok
That’s it. 9 months of daily use, I love it, that’s my complaints list. The idea here is that someday, a better trackpad, or keyboard, or speakers will become available-and it’ll take me 5 minutes to upgrade. It’s a desktop laptop. And for me, everything “just works” on fedora 42.
I've got a Framework 16 and love it.
Framework are nowhere near the scale of any of the large manufacturers, and they've had to spend a huge amount of time and money on R&D, so their laptops are probably always going to cost more. IMO it's worth the price though, given you can keep updating it over time.
Another vote here for framework 13. Love mine.
I've had mine about 4 months, minimal issues. I got a 7840U slightly on sale when the new AI 300 series came out.
I'm also running fedora 42, but it's Bluefin, based on silverblue. Everything works out of the box.
My biggest complaint is the sleep battery drain, iirc it's something like a few percent per hour, so I just get in the habit of turning it completely off if I'm not home with it plugged in. Otherwise it's dead when I need it, which sucks.
Also the fan can be a little loud and overzealous under barely moderate load, though I've found keeping it in power saving mode helps keep things cooler. Though I've been using it for note taking during some schooling this week, and it's been stone cold and silent, lasts all day on a single charge. So it definitely depends on your load. I appreciate having the power available when I need it, but wish it was better at keeping itself underclocked (or whatever it needs to do).
And finally the stock Wi-Fi 6 card in it gives some people problems with certain routers. Though I've only ever had problems with my parents starlink router 🤷♂️ That's a quick $20 upgrade though, to Wi-Fi 7, I just haven't needed to 🤷♂️
But still I'd buy another in a heartbeat.
Keyboard is great. Screen (2.8k) looks great to my eyes, though others say it has issues. No flex in the body. Touchpad is a little funky, but still great.
Plus when I want to upgrade the platform in a few years, or any component breaks before then, I can just fix it or upgrade it.
Highly recommend.
I bought a current gen Framework 13 earlier this year and love it. Fedora 42 has been working great on it.
I would echo all the same points.
Does the keyboard flex when pressing on it or typing? I've watched assembley videos and the keyboard doesn't seem well supported by the frame.
Literally zero flex on the keyboard. I just pulled it out and pressed hard on it. No flex of the keys pushing down through the metal (like a gasket mounted mechanical keyboard would do), and zero flex of the aluminum.
I'm curious about this as well. The keyboard flex was always brought up by early reviewers for the Framework 16, and I think Framework said they would make a more sturdy keyboard for it later, but I haven't heard any updates about that.
None - see above.
Thanks, that's good to know. I heard the Framework 13 wad solid; I thought I was replying to a comment about the Framework 16, though. That must have been a different comment. I heard the 16 has a little flex.
Got two frameworks, a generation apart. No flexing issues
I've been getting annoying amdgpu crashes every now an then. I've tried all the various BIOS and kernel params but so far nothing has worked. Next step is rolling back a kernel version, at least that's what I've gathered from all the threads about it. It's bothersome but not frequent enough to be a real pain.
(This is an amd framework 13 with fedora 42 / wayland)