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Framework Laptop 12 review

arstechnica.com

31–40 of 398 posts

Re: Framework Laptop 12 review

#31

As much as I like the ideals Framework is espousing, I'm seriously considering just making a folding shell for a Raspberry Pi 5 (maybe Pi 500) and a second gen Wacom One 13 (stylus w/ touch screen) and a battery.

Unless you're working with MCUs etc. and want the GPIO pins, you'd get far more value out of a reasonable ASUS or Lenovo model. The SD card is a big bottleneck on the Pi.

There is an M.2 hat for the Pi 5 that allows using an NVMe SSD instead of the SD card.

Re: Framework Laptop 12 review

#32

Is it unreasonable to think Framework should be able to make a laptop competitive with the 5 years old MacBook Air M1? I get that Framework focuses on making repairable machines, but does that prevent them from making a fanless, hi dpi, good performing, long battery life machine? I wouldn’t expect parity with an M4 machine, but it doesn’t seem unreasonable to think they should be competitive with the much older M1. I…

> but does that prevent them from making a (...) hi dpi (...) machine?

It pretty much has that though? 1920x1200 at 12.2" is 185.59 PPI. Standard DPI (PPI) is 96. HiDPI to my knowledge isn't properly defined, but the usual convention is either double that or just more than that - the latter criteria this display definitely clears, and the former (192 PPI) is super super close, to the extent that I'd call it cleared for sure.

It's pretty hard to not clear at least the latter criteria on a laptop anyways. You'd see that on 720p and 768p units from like a decade or two ago.

Re: Framework Laptop 12 review

#33
post #24

Is it unreasonable to think Framework should be able to make a laptop competitive with the 5 years old MacBook Air M1? I get that Framework focuses on making repairable machines, but does that prevent them from making a fanless, hi dpi, good performing, long battery life machine? I wouldn’t expect parity with an M4 machine, but it doesn’t seem unreasonable to think they should be competitive with the much older M1. I…

I'm confused. The article shows a few charts where a Framework laptop is faster than M4 Air both in single and multicore CPU benchmarks. Their office suite benchmarks puts it at almost 10 hour battery. See Framework 13 Ryzen AI 9 HX 370. To me, being able to run native Linux alone is worth its weight in gold, even if it was slower.

They didn't describe the full specs of their test rigs (that I saw) but a similarly spec'd Macbook Air is going to get better battery life than the equivalent Framework 12 or 13 based on the 10 hours they quoted for the 12. (The 13 gets even less). And saying that the best possible CPU framework offers in a 13 inch format beats the consumer line of Macbooks.. sometimes.. you would really need to like/need Linux. At which point, get the cheapest Macbook Air M4 you can and then just use the money you save to get a decent NUC.

Re: Framework Laptop 12 review

#34
post #27

What do you all use for a modern web development machine. 16GB of ram is no longer enough, I will soon upgrade to a new MBA with 32GB, but I still fear that won't be enough. I was looking at the latest framework and you can get it with 96GB of ram for $2k, that's $3600-$3800 for a mac and it's a much larger mac than I want. A quick scan of Dell and Lenovo non workstation class laptops didn't show any with more than 3…

The Thinkpad P15 workstation line of laptops support 128gb of memory. I've seen refurbished gen 1 at around 600 USD and 128gb of ram (has 4 slots) is another 250 USD on top. (Give or take, I'm converting from euros, and the US market doesn't VAT so it should be cheaper than that)

Re: Framework Laptop 12 review

#35

Is it unreasonable to think Framework should be able to make a laptop competitive with the 5 years old MacBook Air M1? I get that Framework focuses on making repairable machines, but does that prevent them from making a fanless, hi dpi, good performing, long battery life machine? I wouldn’t expect parity with an M4 machine, but it doesn’t seem unreasonable to think they should be competitive with the much older M1. I…

Yes.

"Repairable" is a bit of a fool's errand. It really hinges on availability of spare parts, supply chain, etc. They will never sell enough of this niche product to nerds to make that a long-term reality.

An old MBP is far more repairable because so many were made there will never be a shortage of parts on eBay.

While an emphasis on repairability is noble, the false prophet of brick-like pluggable USB modules ain't it.

The newest Apple laptops all have easily replaceable ports that do not require replacing the logic board, so that novelty is even more useless.

Re: Framework Laptop 12 review

#36

The pricing is crazy, they need to halve the prices to be competitive with Apple and Lenovo on the high-end and ASUS on the low-end.

I guess that’s just the cost you have to pay for repairability and extension.

I've been using my framework 13 for a while now and it's been a great laptop - part of what pushed me over was their mission of making devices lives longer, my hope is and was that maybe the vote of confidence they survive long enough to build up to a model the Apple fans here would want or at least not complain about.

Re: Framework Laptop 12 review

#37
I really love the lavender — VAIO-core! I do wish I could get the other modules in lavender too, but I understand why they wouldn't want to fractally-complicate their stock keeping for those items.

> the Laptop 12 can only fit a single DDR5 RAM slot, which reduces memory bandwidth and limits your RAM capacity to 48GB

According to this post from a Framework team member, a single 64GB SODIMM will work too and just didn't exist yet at the time Intel wrote the 13th Gen spec, so they only advertize 48GB: https://community.frame.work/t/64gb-ram-for-framework-12-sin...

> Old, slow chip isn't really suitable for light gaming

I wish the reviewer would specify what phrases like “light gaming” mean to them. My FW12 is in a later batch that won't ship for a few more months, but I'm coming from a ThinkPad T470s where I already do “light gaming” (mostly TBoI Repentence and Team Fortress 2 with mastercomfig medium-low). I can't imagine the 13th Gen graphics would be worse in that regard than my old laptop's 7th Gen.

Not having Thunderbolt seemed like kind of a bummer to me too, but then again my T470s has it and I can't think of a single time I ever actually used it for anything. I tried one of those external GPU enclosures once, and it was kinda cool just to see that such a thing was possible, but I've never been one to want to tether a laptop with a thicc cable lol

Re: Framework Laptop 12 review

#38

Is it unreasonable to think Framework should be able to make a laptop competitive with the 5 years old MacBook Air M1? I get that Framework focuses on making repairable machines, but does that prevent them from making a fanless, hi dpi, good performing, long battery life machine? I wouldn’t expect parity with an M4 machine, but it doesn’t seem unreasonable to think they should be competitive with the much older M1. I…

> but does that prevent them from making a (...) hi dpi (...) machine? It pretty much has that though? 1920x1200 at 12.2" is 185.59 PPI. Standard DPI (PPI) is 96. HiDPI to my knowledge isn't properly defined, but the usual convention is either double that or just more than that - the latter criteria this display definitely clears, and the former (192 PPI) is super super close, to the extent that I'd call it cleared f…

The baseline of 96ppi is nominal only. Form factor and intended distance from screen matters a lot. In the laptop form factor, you’re aiming for more like 110–125 as 1×. Apple laptops range from 221–254ppi as 2×.

186ppi is designed for 1.5×, an uncomfortable space that makes perfection difficult-to-impossible, yet seems to have become unreasonably popular, given how poorly everything but Windows tends to handle it. (Microsoft have always had real fractional scaling; Apple doesn’t support it at all, downsampling; X11 is a total mess; Wayland is finally getting decent fractional scaling.)

Re: Framework Laptop 12 review

#39
post #27

What do you all use for a modern web development machine. 16GB of ram is no longer enough, I will soon upgrade to a new MBA with 32GB, but I still fear that won't be enough. I was looking at the latest framework and you can get it with 96GB of ram for $2k, that's $3600-$3800 for a mac and it's a much larger mac than I want. A quick scan of Dell and Lenovo non workstation class laptops didn't show any with more than 3…

30 years ago we could play Doom with 4 MB of RAM.

Web development has devolved to the point where now you need 32 GB to view a Chinese take-out menu.

Re: Framework Laptop 12 review

#40
post #37

I really love the lavender — VAIO-core! I do wish I could get the other modules in lavender too, but I understand why they wouldn't want to fractally-complicate their stock keeping for those items. > the Laptop 12 can only fit a single DDR5 RAM slot, which reduces memory bandwidth and limits your RAM capacity to 48GB According to this post from a Framework team member, a single 64GB SODIMM will work too and just didn…

TF2 will absolutely run smoothly. I’ve been playing Persona 5 on my Framework Laptop 12.
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