 Framework, a laptop manufacturer that specializes in reputable and up-credible laptops, has recently launched a slew of new products including a much-awaited AMD version of the 13-inch model and the Framework 16, a bigger and more-performance laptop. The Framework 16 is being so far when hell of a controversial laptop. It is being met with criticism and while some of it is fair, however, I do find a lot of the common pieces of criticism to be unfounded or just partially true. In this video I will go through some of them and offer an alternative perspective. This article or video will have several points so feel free to skip to the one that you want. The Framework 16 is overpriced and you should buy something else. The Framework 16 is ugly and cheap, other laptops support Linux just as well or do they? Who should not be buying the Framework 16? Please note that as always this video is also available as a text on the article. For this particular video the article was written by my friend Luca, links in the video description and all credits to him. So the Framework 16 is overpriced and you should buy something else. This is the most common criticism. The Framework 16 is a pretty expensive laptop, not one you should get if you are shopping on a budget. Not one I can afford to be honest, but what you get in return is a lot. So firstly this is a fast laptop. It might not be the fastest one on the market and you can get more GPU power for the same price if you look at Legend, but this laptop is no slouch. It packs a Ryzen 7, 7840 hs running at 45 watts and cold by liquid metal. You cannot do better than this unless you want a compromise integrated graphics performance, heat or power consumption, a whopping 3 headpipes exhausting the air from the sides of the laptop and a set of cooler master fans. The GPU the Radon 7700 s is not the fastest one on the market but isn't as low GPU by any means. This is a nice setup. These are powerful parts that are cooled properly. The rest of the parts are no slouch either. The panel is a 500 nit IPS display with a 2560x1600 resolution, 165hz refresh rate, free sync and a whopping DCI-P3 color coverage. This is a very solid spec and one that I am struggling to find on most competing laptops at the same price point. Most of them top out at 400 nits, which is still good, but very noticeably dimmer and just 100 s RGB color gamut. The keyboard, which is hot swappable by the way, on top of being excellent also has QMK and NKNKRO support. QMK is a completely open source keyboard firmware that allows for insane level of customization. And at first on laptops, NKRO, which is NKRollover, is an essential feature way too many laptops lack. I have owned a competing laptop of the same price point, a Lenovo ThinkPad P16S AMD and the typing experience was underwhelming. I typed really fast and it felt like the keyboard just couldn't keep up, which is not what you want to feel on a keyboard. Others would appear at a delay and some keys were definitely missed along the way. This will not happen on this keyboard and this is not something to take for granted. What this laptop gets you that others don't is true upgradability. Here are the key points. The motherboard can be upgraded at a fraction of the cost of a new laptop. Due to how modular everything is on this laptop, here the motherboard is merely a small router for the AMD SoC ECcheap and RAM Sodeam Vulan slots or Wlan slots. Everything else you get to keep. The GPU can be upgraded, more powerful GPUs will come out eventually and you can always upgrade to a newer model. The screen can be replaced just like an old laptop, because most newer laptops burst thinner bezels but the price for that is that everything is glued down. That means if you break your display panel on your legend laptop, you're simply screwed. There are tons of horror stories of modern laptops shipping back from an official display replacement with some kind of issues like the fact that the bezel was glued down poorly and keeps detaching. This is not the case here. The bezel is magnetic and the panel is easily accessible. Don't get me wrong, this is a very nice panel, which also applies to part price. If you break it, you are still allowed to curse as much as you want. The repair is not going to be cheap. But compared to a whole new laptop, well it's significantly better. But this is something that everybody knows, let's talk less exciting things that I do not see talked about enough and that are personally more compelling reasons to me. The reason I usually recommend against gaming laptops is that the DGPU is the most common point of failure. Gaming laptops get very hot, especially the DGPUs. Those things run at monstrous TDPs and are often very hard to kill cool. Often kept under strain for hours on hand in one tiny space where they simply cannot be kept cool enough. It is very frequent that the first component die right after the battery is the DGPU. Sometimes they even get so hot, they desolder themselves from the motherboard. But the worst part is that in a lot of cases, a dead DGPU signal, a dead laptop. A lot of laptops won't post if the DGPU died or they will, but the broken DGPU will give you a lot of grief. Should this happen on your framework laptop, the rest of the laptop survives. You get rid of the broken DGPU and you simply attach a new one or none. I have never recommended a laptop with a DGPU except in specific cases where the other person absolutely needed one and couldn't be able to stop. And this is the first one I will be able to recommend with a clear conscience. This laptop is also made to last as long as possible. The fans are upgradable. This means two things. Firstly, unlike previous attempts at modular laptop graphics, in this iteration, GPUs come with their own fans. If a newer DGPU requires more powerful fans, this can be done. Also as fan technology improves, newer fans can be installed at a later time, allowing for more powerful CPUs and GPUs to run or just keeping your existing configuration core than it was technically possible before. In a stark contrast to a lot of other laptops, you do not have to get an overkill configuration immediately. This can allow you to save some cash. On a lot of laptops like MacBook Pro's components are soldered down to the motherboard, so you should pick future proof specifications just for your laptop to last. These factory upgrades are also very often overpriced. Here you don't have to do any of this. You can get the base model, source your operating system from elsewhere, get your own RAM and storage and not get a whopping amount of them right away if you don't need them now because you can always order it later. You don't even have to buy the GPU right away. If you are currently not into gaming but you are worried that somewhere in the future you might need to tap into dedicated graphics, you can add a DGPU at a later time. No pressure. Corollary, high-end configuration of these laptops are much cheaper than the competition. As an example, I'm a programmer, so I'm personally comparing these laptops against Thinkpads, MacBooks, Dell XPS and etc. The DIY 32GB RAMs, 2TB NVMe and a nice NVMe Torival Apple's speeds is less than half the price of Apple's laptops sitting $200 per year against a whopping 4,090 years. Yes, I was honest, I picked the lowest end M2 Pro configuration which is the closest to the 7840HS. If you want the highest-hand GPU option, you end up at about 4700 years. Ouch. Same story when compared against Thinkpad configured with 32GB and 2TB from the factory. Curiously, when you pick the DIY option and begin to get further from the base configuration, the laptop turns into an objective bargain. The XPS 15 is harder comparison to make, it's still more expensive, so at least about as overpriced, but the display panel is not nearly as nice, color accuracy, refresh rate and resolution pixel pitch are lower, the RAM is slower, 4800 MTS against 56 MTS etc. The closest we can get to the framework 16 on the XPS 15, which is 32GB RAM, 2TB SSD, RTX 4060, as all other GPU options are slower and the nice 3.5 display, different class of display, but not the same thing, but still a step up from the base model, is about 300 euros, so yep, definitely more expensive than a DIY framework 16 configuration with an equivalent power. Definitely not overpriced. And on top of that, Linux support is solid here, with a dedicated Linux person in the company who will provide Linux specific support and will push firmware upgrades to fix Linux bugs. Fedora also has framework specific tags in their issue tracker since the project wants to ensure smooth running on frameworks. If you are a heavy Linux user, all framework laptops ensure you will be treated as a first class citizen, while on most other laptops and especially laptops competing with the framework at this price bracket, all you're hearing from the manufacturer is, well, Linux is not supported, so we won't help. As a bit of a personal note here by the way, framework also helped out the Linux community many times and even Keri, we recently did a wallpaper competition and we just went around asking for companies to give us one free laptop to use as a prize for that competition, so they just gifted us a laptop, just like that. So yeah, they do care about Linux. Can you believe it? This is one of the most widely recommended laptops by the Linux community. You can choose your own parts. One pretty frequent complaint about other gaming laptops is that there is either a parts lottery, the quality of your NVMe and RAM are based on luck, or the chosen parts are outright bad. In fact, browsing gaming laptops communities, it is frequent to find advice on how to replace the onboard RAM with something more reasonable gives a laptop a massive performance boost. Not all SSDs are made equal and not all RAM are made equal either. With this laptop, you will not have to pay for a useless piece of trash that will be replaced with something more reasonable immediately. You can and you should throw in a top notch NVMe and memory right away and rest easy knowing you're not being bottom-necked by shit-tier parts you would never buy spontaneously. But your OEM both saves up. And your data is saved because you did your homework and both one of the best NVMe drivers for endurance you could possibly source. Where does this world of techs get at? There is no other laptop on the market that offers the same level of flexibility, repairability, upgradability as the framework. Not only that, other manufacturers charge prohibitive amounts of money to get away from the base model. So it has been demonstrated that while retaining its modularity advantage against the competition, the framework 16 is still a strong contender against other high-end laptops when you consider high-end configurations. Part 2. The framework 16 is ugly and cheap feeling, not cheap for the price, it feels cheap. This is probably the most valid complaint. I am going to play the devil's avatar advocate here because there are some points against framework's strategy that need to be noted. Few things in life are purely good or purely bad. One of the positive side effects of modern laptop trends is that soldering everything down led to a simplification of everything. The parts count has decreased and those parts are all highly integrated. Skipping sockets gives opportunities for performance bumps, soldered down LPDDR5 RAM runs at 64 mega 100, 6400 megahertz as opposed to framework's 5600 megahertz SODIMM, S-O-D-I-M-M-S. Over-savings design simplification that result in lower overall cost that will be reflected onto the customer if the manufacturer is honest, less money for a much better machine and higher structural integrity while reducing thickness and allowing to have a more beautiful design. You can have your cake and eat it too at the tiny cost of not being able to service your laptop properly anymore. This is a subjective choice. The framework 16 is already pretty much as good as it gets for the design choices it makes. There is no glue in the laptop, only magnetic parts and screws, expensive and good quality materials are used throughout it. To me, this is one of the hallmarks of good build quality. Will it bend a little more, sure, but there are a lot of moving parts so this cannot be avoided. Will it be uglier? Well, absolutely. Did you see that relatively small touchpad? It's not pretty, but if you look at how it's done, you can see that the negative space around the touchpad is used for the connection pins, so there is a reason for that. This is a choice you're going to have to make yourself. I am not trying to argue that the framework is not uglier and cheaper feeling than the competition, because it probably is, but I am saying that it's not due to cheapness and it is not an indicator of a less durable laptop. If anything, it's competing design that gives you the illusion of durability and illusion only. Part 3. Other laptops support Linux just as well. Or do they? The Linux community kind of like framework, to the surprise of effectively nobody. Both laptops are beginning to gain record high levels of consensus in the Linux community. This has a few reasons. Linux users already have a mindset and set of frame phrases that is compatible with framework's choices. If you have already given up on some high-candy details, commercial software support and smoother rough edges for the greater good in your operating system of choice, then the framework follows this same philosophy. It's the Linux of laptops, if there exists one. Not as high-candy, not as flashy, not as refined, but offering clear advantages to the end user. The Linux support on frameworks is just great. The company is personally dedicated enough to run Linux that they not only have official guidelines to run it, but also contacts with Canonical and Fedora project to ensure smooth running on Dubuntu and Fedora. In fact, there is a tag just for framework-related bugs in Fedora issue tracker. Not only that, but the framework runs Linux without proprietary drivers. This is huge for support and removes a lot of headaches that come with them. As an example, the Dell XPS 13 and 13 Plus developer edition, such as the one that I do have. All these little things come with our own specific Ubuntu image because proprietary drivers are needed for the integrated webcam and other functionality, none of this on the framework. On top of that, the framework 16 uses AMD graphics, AMD cards run on the fully open source AMD GPU driver, which simply does not have many of the problems that Nvidia drivers are notorious for, especially on notebooks. If you're reading this from a desktop-based Nvidia setup and are reacting like this isn't my experience, I'm fine. Do not expect that this will transfer over to Nvidia laptops. This makes the framework 16 automatically more Linux-friendly than some laptops by Linux-specific companies who instead use Nvidia. What about the legendary Thinkpads, though? Well, Thinkpads have always been the strongest option for Linux. However, modern Thinkpads are clearly getting worse on that side. I have personally, not me, Luca, tested a Lenovo Thinkpad P16S AMD on Linux and what had to report back was not pretty. One of the main issues was the soldered-down Qualcomm NFA 725AW LAN card, one that has existing Linux drivers but pretty bad support. The AMD Z616 we have on the framework is said to work much better on Linux, but in case it does not, well, you can always replace it with something else and a surely more supported Intel AX210. If you want to read more about my terrible experience with recent AMD Thinkpads on Linux, there are multiple links in the article in the video description. But what about another random laptop? Trouble idea. With how complex modern laptops are, with how widespread non-standard dynamic ACPI calls that require custom Windows drivers have become, getting a random laptop and installing Linux on it before waiting for the community to iron out most bugs in one, two, three years first is Trouble Idea. Is that pronounced a nectodal experience? But I am, again, not me, Luca. I am the unofficial Linux guy at my university and I get the pleasure or pain to install Linux on a lot of random laptops. I can assure you this is way more of a dice roll than it needs to be. I have nearly always been able to get Linux to boot, but I have run into caveats like. On-board audio not working, which means I have to get USB or Bluetooth earpods for audio output. Or on-board Wi-Fi not working, which means I have to get USB Wi-Fi adapter needs to be permanently plugged in to work. Or sleep not working at all, which turns into cooking hot laptops in the backpack or laptops that never wake up from sleep. Or with other issues that require to disable auto-suspend from the desktop settings and advise the user to always power off the laptop. NVIDIA GPU issues, the evergreen. NVIDIA issues are fun because depending on the laptop it's in, the NVIDIA GPU can give you anything from some annoying issues that aren't till breakers like the NVIDIA mix may stand by, resume failed once in a blue moon, but nothing too bad, to traumatic experience that you will make you wish you never decided to run Linux on NVIDIA card again. Once I had to work on this laptop that had it so bad it was straight up impossible to have any accelerated video output, only CPU based raster mode, LLVM pipe. Very much not ideal. Random frizzes, crashes and lookups that leave nothing into the logs, the most insidious part of them all and one I have to give a particular shame award to Huawei Honor laptops for, it's very often them. If you are serious about wanting to run Linux, don't cut this route, it's a bit of a roulette game. So, final part, who should not be buying the framework 16? Let's talk about the elephant in the room. Let's cut to the part where I think the criticism is founded. Here is who should not buy the framework 16 laptop. Firstly, anyone who requires to run, how is this pronounced? Is it CUDA or is it CUDA? I'm gonna say CUDA. If it's wrong, just don't tell me. Anyone who requires to run CUDA, DLSS, RTX or NVANC locally. Currently, there is an option for NVIDIA DGPU option for the framework 16, it is very much unknown whether this will change or not. I think this is the part that will determine most missed framework 16 sales. A ton of people find CUDA handy even just for things like running AI models locally either for university or personal research or for fun, things like running RVC to make your favorite artist or public figure think never gonna give you up. Also, there are certain pieces of software mostly related to the CAD and digital art that don't really like AMD graphics and you will absolutely want NVIDIA or make interest for them. If you run Windows, you shouldn't. But if you run Windows, it is also fair to notice that NVIDIA laptops drivers are so far more mature than AMDs. Anyone who wants to do high-end intensive gaming on Windows shouldn't buy this. The Radeon 7700S is probably going to be good enough for most people, however if you require the best of the best, maybe you are playing on an external 4K monitor, the currently available configuration for the framework 16 is not for you. You will be forced to lose some repairability, but you should consider something like a LEGEND 5 Pro, LEGEND Slim 7, ASUS ROG G16 M16, etc. My fellow Linux gamers should still pick the framework. While the GPU is weaker, the much better Linux support makes it superior to more powerful NVIDIA options for you. Anyone on a tight budget, the framework 16 is not a cheap laptop. I think it's worth it, but it's not cheap. If you are on a budget, here are some options to consider. People who like the framework 16 but don't need the best performances, go with the framework 13 inches Ryzen 5, which is about a thousand bucks. Window users go with the Lenovo IdeaPad 5 Pro Ryzen 7 7840HS at 35 watts, which is around 900 years. Linux users and people on extreme budgets, Lenovo ThinkPad E14 and E16 AMD Ryzen 7, not older than Gen 4, around 600 bucks. The cheapest window gaming laptop I can recommend with no reservation is the Lenovo LEGEND 5 Pro i7 plus RTX 4060, which is around 1600 euros. In places where it's configurable with more than 16GB of soldered memory, IdeaPad 5 Pro 16. However, this one breaks the 1000 euros barrier and I do not find 16GB of RAM not upgradable, acceptable at this price point. If you dislike these suggestions, feel free to insult Luca, I barely know any of those laptops and that was actually the end of the article, so again, all credits to him and I don't have anything to say myself.