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.
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.
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)
Why do so many computer manufacturers organize their websites around obscure names of model ranges that only they understand, or make you decide upfront whether you want a “home” or “business” or “creator” laptop? Why do they all make it as difficult as possible for you to browse what’s on offer? Is it just because they all suck at website design, or is there some other reason?
I can’t say for certain, but it screams “middle-management justifying their MBA salary” to me.
I hate how dell has restructured their product lines recently. It’s very unintelligible now.
Maybe they believe that most of their customers don’t really know much about computers beyond turning them on and “bigger numbers = better”. They might not be wrong.
HP is probably the worst offender in this regard - their website is almost unusable. Lenovo is a close second, and I say this as a compulsive ThinkPad buyer.
Edit: I think a lot of commenters here aren’t reading the article. This isn’t about your favourite laptop, it’s about why manufacturer websites suck.
I’ve used a bunch of HPs over the years. Some of them ProBook, mostly Elitebook. Either way, the keyboards were always awful. If you want to be 100% sure each key press registers, you have to press surprisingly hard.
If you’ve always used Dell and Lenovo, this kind of thing sounds completely absurd. It’s something that would never even occur to you. Why would you even think about whether the key presses register with 100% reliability? Of course they do. You press the button, a letter appears. That’s all there’s to it, right?
Wrong! HP thinks there should be an element of surprise if you type normally. Unless you hammer the keyboard like a wild animal, there’s no way to get to 100%. Even if you get the fanciest model, the keyboard still has this HP trademark suckiness.
I have had exactly one HP laptop in my life, which luckily was a hand-me-down so I didn’t spend any money on it, but it was enough to convince me to never get another HP product ever again.
20-odd years and the boycott is still going strong lol.
Framework. It’s framework.
Price aside, they apparently don’t even ship to where I live
If not for the price.
And the battery life
And the ugly and cumbersome ethernet expansion card.
To be fair though, if you’re hooking up an Ethernet cord you’ve already lost in the “ugly and cumbersome” department.
Fine, then “more ugly and cumbersome” than it needs to be. I frequently have to hook up laptops to devices that simply don’t have wifi (think unconfigured network devices like routers and the like), so connecting via cable is the only option. Having a gigantic, plastic, snag-prone wart sticking out of my laptop certainly wouldn’t help matters.
Makes sense!
And the poor firmware support
Really? I am considering Framwork. What is wrong with the firmware support?
It seems to be getting a little better lately, but historically they just didn’t give firmware updates. I went 3 years without a stable bios update for my 12th gen Intel mainboard on linux despite known vulnerabilities since launch (just got its first update last month).
I actually upgraded my mainboard within that time, so I went the full lifetime of the product with an insecure BIOS and none of the firmware improvements that were promised at launch like thunderbolt 4 certification. For all practical purposes, firmware support ended when it left the factory until just last month.
That said, my new ryzen ai 350 main board just got its first update to patch some vulns that were disclosed a month ago. So still not in time for the coordinated disclosure, but a month is way better than 3 years so I’ll take what I can get.
And not great high-end graphics performance
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Yeah I opted for the Framework 13, even with the less than perfect keyboard and lack of touch. My hope is that touch will be an option in the future. otherwise its a near perfect option.
Am I the only one that literally never uses the touchscreen on my laptop?
No but on my 3 in 1 I find the touch screen and pen very useful as a big tablet for consumption, laptop for productivity and gaming, and writing and drawing pad.
Anyone here have a StarLabs laptop (briefly mentioned in the article) and am opinion on it? I’m thinking about replacing my crappy System76 laptop and looking for something with good build quality.
I think it’s (one of) the best laptop brands in regards to coreboot support. The build quality of my starbook is great. The biggest + for me is how helpful, polite and friendly the support staff is.
Why crappy? I have System76’s laptop and the quality is amazing.
I have a Pangolin 12. While it has great specs and software support, the build quality is horrible, and over the course of two years now, I have had to screw it open and bend the laptop case in position more often then I’m comfortable with. It is the far, far opposite of rugged, which is the main reason I want to replace it. Twice now, it has just randomly decided to not boot for one or two weeks…
Hmm I have Serval WS which quality is top notch. The keyboard feels nice. The screen is 4K 144Hz. All of the elements are aluminium so there is no bending. (Except some parts like probably keycaps of the keyboard and so on).
Sorry to hear that you have this experience. However I think you can count on System76 because they give for their laptops lifetime support.
The Serval WS is also more than twice the price of my Pangolin… and I had a one year warranty, so I’m not sure what you mean with lifetime support. As for the specs (i.e. the screen etc.), yeah, they are great. But the case is very poorly designed on my pang12, and gets bent out of shape, which can cause mechanical failure in the hinge, quite frequently, despite the aluminum chassis. My complaint is just that it is far from rugged, which is problematic for me, as I travel a lot with it. But your mileage may vary.
PS: one more thing that really bothers me is the known problem with the touchepad on the pang12, which regularly fails. Mine also came with a faulty motherboard, which suggest bad quality control. Over all, these issues have caused me to lose faith in System76 hardware.
I understand.
Regrading warranty I meant lifetime support for problems related to your System76 laptop. The warranty for a hardware is gone I think but I guess when you describe your issues correctly and they won’t resolve it maybe they will suggest you something friendly.
And I get your point with the case. Tbh looked like it.
Hmm do you have up-to-date firmware? I had similar issue resolved by it.
Also faulty motherboard sounds like manufacturer issue not yours.
Most companies still change their laptops’ keyboard layouts in random negative ways every year; ship with stupid screen resolutions, woefully bad speakers, and disappointing touchpads; and stuff the most powerful processor and GPU in there and don’t focus enough on tuning the cooling, power usage, and fan profiles.
I don’t really get these nitpicks. If you’re planning to use the laptop as your daily driver, do what every other power user does and get a set of good peripherals.
Walk into class
Pull laptop out of bag, put it on the desk
Whip out mechanical keyboard
Mouse, small set of stereo speakers
Pull out a large object wrapped in a blanket
Everyone else watches confusedly
Take off blanket, unveiling a 28in monitor
Whip out power strip
Put power strip on the adjacent desk, no one is sitting there anyway
20ft extension cord
The outlet is on the far wall, run the extension cord between the desks
Apologize to everyone bumped into a long the way
Play World of Warcraft the entire time
What I really want is a place that has physical locations that sells linux laptops and will give you something like apple care used to be with apple in the middle aughts. They will take care of anything and you just don’t have to worry about it at all. I keep on thinking it would be great for microcenter to partner up with someone on this.
Companies usually handle this by using a hardware vendor with on-site support (like Dell) for hardware issues, and a Linux distro with corporate support (like RedHat) for software issues. Definitely more than a regular user would be willing to pay, though.
I have also been confounded by the situation.
It is even worse when you are on the secondary market. The company’s product pages are broken. Trying to compare across different release years is way harder.
I assumed the reason for this had to do with the production systems and supply chains. They can get a certain number of x parts at y price from a factory located in a given location. You get enough parts in proximity to each other and you make it a model.
Its one thing for a small company to have enough components to have only a few models but with the volume dell or HP moves, they would need to really invest in suppliers or actually make the components themselves.
I dont imagine the marketing people have come up with all the options, they’re just the ones who have to try to sell want they’re given.
Thankfully I have some requirements for laptops that very significantly narrow my options:
- It must have a good, ergonomic keyboard
- It must have a good pointing stick
That only leaves Thinkpads for me to consider.
Do Thinkpads have ergo?
It’s not what you would normally call an ergo keyboard with a curved / split key bed, but I think they’re superior to the majority of recent laptop keyboards, especially compared to the flat square chiclets of MacBooks and the others who blindly copied them. The keys are curved so you get tactile feedback of where your fingers are and the action also feels good to type on.
- Good keyboard with text navigation keys (Home, End, Page Up, and Page Down) and a sensible layout: delete at the top right, no stupid replacement of normal modifier keys with fingerprint readers or copilot keys, no tiny arrow keys, etc.
- Good touchpad that’s precise, doesn’t lag, and allows clicking on most or all of the total area
I don’t think these should be that important. Even if one uses a single device for every need in the form of a laptop, one can still attach a keyboard and mouse to it. The worst customizable keyboard and wireless mouse will still be better than whatever the laptop has built in.
Unless the point is to have a single device and not to carry a bunch of peripherals around? “Better” only if your criteria ignores the need to carry it around with the laptop.
The worst customizable keyboard and wireless mouse will still be better than whatever the laptop has built in.
Unless you have a laptop with a good trackpad and keyboard, then you don’t need to carry around a bunch of extra stuff.
It’s no wonder people gravitate towards apple, it’s almost impossible to find a good laptop amongst this mess.
I really like the MacBook Air, but I was dissuaded from it because the M4 isn’t supported by AsahiLinux yet.
Well I say it’s no wonder people gravitate towards it but I don’t actually like it myself. It sucks that they make it basically impossible to upgrade snything. And that there storage and RAM upgrades cost several times more than they should.
I have a Macbool air (not by choice) and I installed asahi linux a couple of weeks ago. Main take away is that it’s really good except for software support. I’ve had a bit of trouble finding programs that work well on arm even open source projects often don’t compile there programs to work on arm.
ThinkPad P14s G6 (AMD) with the 2880x1800 touch screen? Only 60Hz though and $$$
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