In January, I spent two weeks with the most modular laptop ever made: the Framework Laptop 16. It’s a gadget lover’s dream: You can swap out its keyboard, touchpad, ports—even its entire discrete GPU. You can transform it from a sleek work laptop to a decent gaming machine in two minutes, which charges with the world’s first 180W USB-C power adapter.
But at the time, I gave the Framework Laptop 16 a 5 out of 10. The product gave me multiple blue screens of death, crashed, felt flimsy in places, and ran hotter and noisier than its performance suggested.
Six months later, with a new device and new firmware, I feel a little better! Not good enough to fully recommend, but enough to give it a 6 out of 10, which we define as: “Good. It has problems, but also redeeming qualities.” But even though the laptop is more stable, most of my other gripes still don’t work.
I’ve now spent an extra month with the Laptop 16 and swapping out its various parts, just as the company finally fulfilled its pre-orders and released the laptop for general sale. I’m happy to say that I’ve only seen the computer crash once all month — a “Windows doesn’t appear to have loaded properly” error that I haven’t been able to reproduce. Apart from its incredibly annoying habit of not sleeping when its discrete GPU is awake, it’s a faithful companion for work and play – including Verge liveblog, edit videos for our social media channels and write stories including this one.
We’ve even figured out my mystery problem where the excellent 2560 x 1600 screen suddenly looks washed out — this is due to AMD’s Vari-Bright setting, which tries to save battery when the integrated GPU is in command. I turned that off and it’s been bright and colorful ever since. (Jedi: Survivor looks great.)
But this heat and noise! With my original review unit, I saw the AMD Ryzen 7940HS heat up to over 90 degrees Celsius. Although this replacement comes with a slightly weaker 7840HS, I measured 100.8°C peak while playing a game — and even 92.5°C one day when I was just writing a story in a web browser. The keyboard and touchpad don’t get that hot, but I often have sweaty fingers working from this machine. The Laptop 16 runs quieter when you turn it off or set Windows to power-saving mode, or with the discrete graphics card removed. But the full dGPU package doesn’t seem to have enough of a cooling solution for everyday use.
The fan noise still drowned out the laptop’s speakers below average, enough that my wife wandered over again to see what I was doing. “Oh, this is your laptop. For a split second I thought you were vacuuming the living room, she told me. Just browsing a few websites with the laptop on was enough to pass 70°C and have the fan revving to a loud, audible degree.
And while some issues have been fixed, like the one where the larger SSD could disappear when you come back from sleep mode, there are still gremlins to find. Twice the touchpad suddenly stopped scrolling and stopped accepting button presses until I physically removed it from the system and reinserted it. I have repeatedly received a Windows message about how my “USB device may have limited functionality when connected to this port” even if I just plug in the charger.
After a month, I decided I could live with the flexibility of the lid and the uneven surfaces created by the Framework’s modular dividers and touchpad. All of these are a bit straighter in my new module and are a small price to pay for the unprecedented modularity and repairability you get here. But I also want you to know that the flex and gaps aren’t completely fixed and create occasional rough edges on the fingers and wrists.
But I don’t know if I could live with the heat and noise in here or the weird problem this laptop has when the discrete GPU is active and I try to put it to sleep. (“If there’s a program that keeps the dGPU active, the system won’t freeze,” spokesman Eric Schumacher confirmed via email.) I came back one morning to find the battery completely dead because the laptop woke up after I closed the lid, and I seen this behavior many times when i left it on. I shouldn’t have to close apps and check the GPU in task manager just to put it to sleep reliably.
This is an innovative machine. No company has ever made a laptop as ambitious as I explain at the beginning of my original review, and I want that idea to exist! I personally want to buy a superior work and play laptop that I can upgrade and repair year after year like the company’s 13-inch machine. I feel that potential here. But I’m reviewing a laptop, not a crowdfunding campaign for a generation of laptops, and I’d personally wait for a future revision of Framework Laptop 16.
Yes, I know there’s no guarantee that the Framework will continue with upgrades if the laptop isn’t selling well. The company has never committed to letting you replace the Radeon RX 7700S with a more powerful GPU in the future. But in April, CEO Nirav Patel told me that the 16-inch model has a healthy future roadmap. I’ll take him at his word.
Photography by Sean Hollister/The Verge
