Review: Framework’s lightweight modular laptop is a winner

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When we originally covered startup Framework's ambitious plans for a fully repairable, modular laptop aiming to compete on even ground with industry champions like Dell's XPS 13, it seemed like quite a long shot.

The company's proposed 13-inch laptop was to be its very first product and include custom-built hardware features no other company had ever offered—most notably, four modular bays replacing the usual collection of hardwired laptop I/O ports. Each bay features a deeply recessed USB-C port that can accept a module offering the user an external USB-A, USB-C, DisplayPort, HDMI, or MicroSD port.

Designing and building a feature like that is a big risk—doing so for the first time while planning to compete evenly with industry-leading compact laptops like Dell's XPS 13 in weight, width, thickness, and price raised our eyebrows so far it hurt. But we've spent several days with a review unit—and Framework has satisfied all of its major claims. Its new laptop isn't perfect, but it's a solid competitor that lives up to its promises.

Overview

Specs at a glance: Framework 13-inch laptop, as tested
OS	Windows 10 Pro / Ubuntu 21.04
CPU	3.0 GHz 4-core Intel i7-1185G7 (4.8GHz boost)
RAM	32GiB DDR4-3200 (64GiB maximum)
GPU	Intel Iris Xe (integrated)
SSD	Western Digital Black SN850 1TB NVMe
Battery	3572 mAh / 55 Wh
Display	13.5-inches at 2256x1504, 100 percent sRGB gamut, 400+ nits brightness, non-touch
Connectivity	four modular bays (support USB-A, USB-C, DisplayPort, HDMI, MicroSD modules) 3.5 mm phone/mic combo jack (not modular) Intel Wi-Fi 6E (AX210) 1080 p / 60 fps webcam fingerprint reader no Kensington lock slot
Price as tested	$2,100

When buying a Framework laptop, a new customer can select one of three pre-built configurations or go "DIY" and select each individual part themselves—although the DIY build also requires assembly on arrival. Our biggest questions about Framework revolved around the physical design and its promised repairability, so of course we went DIY.

Our DIY build basically shot for the moon—it features the company's fastest CPU offering (Intel i7-1185G7), 32GiB of fast RAM, a 1TB SSD, and even Intel Wi-Fi 6E. Checking almost every box (we opted not to buy a Windows 10 license or the maximum 64GiB RAM the laptop can handle) resulted in a $1,900 price tag—although we're listing the system above as $2,100 retail, since we used Windows 10 for the majority of testing.

If you want the same build including a copy of Windows at a lower total price, the Professional trim features all the same hardware and a Windows 10 Pro license for $2,000—or Linux users can do what we did, skip the Windows license entirely, and save $100 off the Professional package's cost.

One component you don't have any options with is the display—it's a 3:2 aspect ratio 2.5k design, glossy and non-touch, featuring 400+ nits brightness and claimed 100 percent sRGB color gamut. We measured the display's maximum brightness at 418nits; we were not able to scientifically test the sRGB gamut.

Although we weren't able to directly measure sRGB gamut, we can say that deadmau5's psychedelically colorful video Pomegranate was obviously more vibrant on the Framework's display than on a 24-inch HP VH240a monitor, which itself claims only 72 percent sRGB gamut.

First impressions—assembly

The DIY Framework arrives significantly disassembled—the motherboard is in a mostly assembled laptop, but the NVMe SSD, Wi-Fi card, and system RAM are sitting brand-new in their own little boxes, along with a selection of Framework's custom I/O modules. That means DIY'ers have some work to do—but opening up the Framework to add all the components is a fantastic experience for veteran PC mechanics.

The first step is removing five Torx T5 screws from the bottom of the laptop, using an included driver. All five screws are captive, meaning they stay attached to the laptop even after fully unscrewed. Once the screws are fully loosened, the next step is turning the laptop upright again and opening it up as though for normal use.

The next step is simply lifting the entire top plate of the laptop—including keyboard and touchpad—straight up. With the bottom Torx screws loosened, the only thing holding the top plate in position is a bunch of small magnets; there are no plastic latches or tabs to tease loose. Next, stick a finger in the loop on the single ribbon cable connecting keyboard and touchpad to the motherboard and lift straight up—then put the top plate, with keyboard and mouse still attached, aside for later.

With the motherboard fully exposed, sockets for two RAM DIMMs, an M.2 NVMe SSD, and an M.2 Wi-Fi card are boldly labeled, free of obstructions and easy to fill. Even attaching the fiddly little antenna leads to the AX210 Wi-Fi card wasn't as much of a chore as it typically would be, due to the wide-open design of the laptop. We routinely work on large mid-tower machines that are more difficult than this travel-size laptop!

After inserting RAM, SSD, and Wi-Fi, it's time to close the Framework back up again—a process just as pleasant as disassembly was. Gently press the connector for the keyboard/touchpad cable straight down into its socket, then place the top plate on the motherboard. After a little gentle wiggling, the magnets in the chassis pull the top plate firmly into position with an audible click—and the only thing left is re-tightening the five Torx T5 screws on the bottom, again with the included driver.

If you have trouble separating components, the T5 driver has a perfectly functional plastic spudger on its reverse tip—but we don't think many people will need it. Even though the top plate fits tightly onto the chassis, the absence of latches or tabs made separating it with nothing more than a thumbnail quite simple.

Now that the laptop proper is assembled, it's time to fill the modular I/O bays. We selected one USB-A module, one HDMI module, and two USB-C modules. Applying firm, smooth pressure inserted three of four modules easily—but we had a slight misalignment with the HDMI module, requiring a bit of wiggling to resolve.

Our difficulty with the HDMI module seemed to be a result of it and the bay we chose for it being at extreme opposite ends of the laptop's mechanical tolerance specification—the HDMI module operated smoothly in all three other bays, and all three of the other modules operated smoothly in the bay we'd selected for the HDMI module.

Although we got the HDMI module inserted into the one bay that didn't like it relatively easily, we'd recommend less experienced users consider just trying a different bay if they encounter the same problem—there's not much point in fighting a minor misalignment unless you absolutely need that one module to go in that one bay and nowhere else.

When each module is fully inserted, the user hears and feels a satisfying tactile click—that's a retention lever engaging. To remove the modules, you need to press a release button on the underside of the laptop and work a thumbnail between the back of the module and the front of its bay.

A moderate amount of force is necessary to remove a module, even with the release button pressed. We found the level of snugness ideal for parts that are designed to be somewhat infrequently swapped—the installed modules don't feel like loosely attached accessories, they simply feel like a normal part of a normal laptop.

Unfortunately, we did have one non-mechanical problem—the laptop was supposed to ship with a USB Windows 10 installer, with Framework's drivers slip-streamed into it. Ours arrived without the installer, so we tried using our own—but the laptop for some reason refused to recognize it as a bootable device. We worked around this by using another 1TB NVMe SSD with Windows 10 already installed on it, then performing a factory reset.

After factory resetting our own pre-installed Windows 10 NVMe, we just needed the drivers—which weren't yet available on Framework's support site. Reaching out to our Framework contact got us a direct download link for a single 800MiB driver bundle, which solved our remaining software problems.

First impressions—actual use

With hardware, operating system, and drivers installed, the Framework laptop is a solid competitor. We weren't very fond of its 3:2 aspect ratio, which makes the laptop noticeably deeper than a competing Dell XPS 13—but we know many readers love the nearly square displays, and if you like the aspect ratio, there's a lot to like about the display. It's sharp, bright, and offers more vivid colors than the majority of laptop displays we've tested.

We found the keyboard and touchpad pleasant but unremarkable. The keyboard's worst feature is the usual compressed arrow-key layout; beyond that, we had no complaints with it—it's nicely tactile, and we immediately touch-typed quickly and accurately with it.

The touchpad features multi-fingertip gesture support, along with physical detents to left-click and right-click like it's ten years ago; it's accurate and stays cool when the device is under heavy load. Fingerprint reading isn't built into the touchpad—instead, it's built into the square LED-lit power button on the upper right of the keyboard.

In normal use, the laptop is cool and quiet—but pushing it hard with a half-hour multi-threaded Cinebench run forced it to spin up its fans. Under maximum load for several minutes, the keyboard heats up noticeably—but, thankfully, the touchpad and surroundings (where one might rest a palm with some weight) remain as cool as when the laptop is unloaded.

We didn't find the heat at the keys actively uncomfortable—but if your workload involves pushing the system to its absolute limit for long periods, the noticeably too-warm keys during such a run may be something to think about. After completing a run, the keyboard temperature returns to normal within a moment or two.

Moving on, we're happy to say that the modular bays are even better in use than they were during assembly—we needed to plug and unplug USB-A and USB-C devices quite a lot, and doing so doesn't feel any different than it does on a well-constructed "normal" laptop.

Performance (multi-threaded)

We found performance of the Framework laptop something of a mixed bag. Our top-of-the-line Intel i7-1185G7 CPU is an absolute beast when it comes to truly single-threaded workloads—but when pushed with multi-threaded workloads, it can't hang with modern high-end Ryzen mobile processors.

If you're not familiar with modern high-end Ryzen, the Framework feels just plain fast—but if you are, the noticeable disconnect between its incredibly fast single-threaded performance and its mediocre multi-threaded performance is likely to grab your attention.

Framework's i7-1185G7 is configured for 28W TDP, leading to stronger multi-threaded performance but weaker battery life—something that advanced users may be tempted to try to reconfigure for themselves. At 28W TDP, it doesn't perform quite as well as the i7-1185G7-powered MSI prototype we tested last year—but it handily outperforms the same laptop configured for 15W TDP. We suspect somewhat less-effective cooling is the heart of the difference between the slightly faster MSI prototype and the Framework.

Both i7-1185G7 systems are utterly dominated by the Ryzen 9 5900HS in the ROG G15 in Passmark and Cinebench testing, of course—and even the much cheaper, lower-power, and considerably older Ryzen 7 4700U in the Acer Swift meets or beats their performance.

The one real multi-threaded outlier is Geekbench 5—in this one benchmark, the Framework gets beaten not only by the MSI prototype at 28W cTDP, but also at 15W—and even by a 2020 Dell XPS 13's 10th-generation i7-1065G7.

Performance (single-threaded)

Moving on to single-threaded performance, Framework does much better—its Passmark and Cinebench single-threaded results are near-indistinguishable from the 28W MSI prototype's. Even the monstrous Ryzen 9 5900HS in the Asus ROG G15 has trouble keeping up with the i7-1185G7 systems.

Geekbench 5 is, again, a significant outlier—single-threaded Geekbench is the only test in which the Framework laptop beats all contenders, including the otherwise-faster MSI prototype at full cTDP. As always, we urge readers not to get too carried away about single-threaded performance—there isn't anywhere near as much difference between the bottom of the charts and the top on the single-threaded benchmarks, and there are much fewer truly single-threaded workloads than many users assume.

Performance (gaming)

The Framework is not a gaming laptop, as the 3DMark Time Spy results above make brutally clear—Intel's new Iris Xe integrated GPU is impressive, but it looks like a pitiful wind-up toy when forced to square off with the ROG G15's RTX 3070 mobile.

Within its own weight class, though, the Framework does quite well indeed—as we can see more easily in the Night Raid chart. 3DMark Night Raid is a test intended specifically for laptops and other systems with integrated graphics only—so we left the curve-wrecking ROG G15 and its RTX 3070 mobile out of it.

Framework turns in scores about 10 percent lower than the MSI prototype laptop with the same i7-1185G7 CPU and 28W cTDP—but the two of them handily beat the rest of the integrated-graphics field. For now, Intel's Iris Xe enjoys an industry-wide and commanding lead in integrated graphics performance.

Battery life

We believe that battery life is the closest thing to a true Achilles' heel for the Framework laptop. In PCMark 10 Modern Office battery testing—which includes a mix of office applications, streaming video chat, and desktop idle workloads—the Framework doesn't quite hit nine hours of runtime, despite its solid 55Wh battery capacity.

8.7 hours isn't terrible for PCMark Modern Office—but it's not great, either. For reference, we included a couple of really cheap laptops in this chart—Walmart's eternally-cursed $140 Evoo and its passable Ice Lake-powered $500 Gateway. The Framework beats both cheap laptops—but it can't hang with the still-inexpensive Acer Swift and gets utterly dominated by Dell's XPS 13.

We suspect the Framework's high-brightness, high-resolution display is the culprit for its relatively poor battery life—the XPS 13 at the top of the chart is a 1080p non-touch model, as is the Acer Swift below it. Directly comparing 3:2 resolutions with 16:9 or 16:10 resolutions is an exercise in frustration—but the Framework's display offers noticeably higher pixel density than its competitors here, and that does not come for free.

Linux

ubuntu battery testing — Framework's battery life relative to competing laptops was far better under Ubuntu than in Windows—the Swift 3 above it is one of the best Linux laptops we've tested. Credit: Jim Salter

Framework's hardware was too bleeding-edge for Ubuntu 20.04, which failed to even get to a desktop. Happily, Ubuntu 21.04 was an entirely different story—under the most recent six-month Ubuntu build, Framework purrs along happily with all important hardware detected and surprisingly good battery life.

Under 21.04, only five devices show up as "unclaimed" in the output of lshw—an Intel GNA scoring accelerator (part of the Deep Learning Boost feature set), the fingerprint reader, an sRAM controller, a Serial Peripheral Interface controller, and an unspecified power device that appears to belong to Framework itself, rather than an Intel processor or chipset. None of the missing devices noticeably affect usability—Wi-Fi works fine, as does the iGPU, touchpad, and everything else we tested.

The Framework also manages surprisingly high battery life under Ubuntu—in our semi-scientific video playback test, Framework runs neck and neck with the outstanding Acer Swift 3 at just over five hours, with everything else (including the XPS 13, which in this case is hampered by a 4k touchscreen display) trailing well behind.

Conclusions

To our surprise and delight, we feel that Framework made good on all of its promises—the Framework laptop is priced similarly to a Dell XPS 13, at nearly identical thickness, width, and weight. The modular bays operate well and strike us as likely to continue performing well over many years of use, and we've literally never seen an easier-to-repair laptop.

We don't have much trouble recommending this laptop, even to people who aren't particularly concerned about long-term repairability. The biggest potential downsides we see are the glossy display—which some will love due to the aspect ratio, and some will hate due to the aspect ratio—and the battery life, which is only mediocre.

We dig the massive configurability of this laptop, we like the removable modules, and we don't mind the very slight performance deficit as compared to the MSI prototype laptop with the same processor. Although the overall appearance of the Framework probably won't wow anyone, it's not likely to raise any eyebrows either—the machine just looks like a normal mid- to high-end laptop, albeit one with a very unusual aspect ratio.

If you're at all interested in working on your own system, or you pine for the tall, skinny aspect ratios of old, we don't think you could beat this Framework laptop. Even if you aren't particularly moved by those factors, the Framework is at least worth considering.

The good