Framework Laptop 13 Reddit Verdict: Great Machine, One Big Flaw

Having recently gotten the 11th Gen variant, the fact that they are bringing upgrade modules out so quickly gives me hope that I could just keep this chassis for a LONG time, especially since it is a machine for me to use at work only (only does word processing and web browsing currently, but needs a fair bit of RAM for the many cloud-based products I need to use via browser tabs given today's browsers). Kudos to Frame.work, I'm loving mine so far.

I feel for the writer - the guy clearly is torn between wanting to gush about what FW has achieved - something no other current laptop maker offers. But at the same time, they need to write for a generic audience that probably doesn't care as much about repairability and the promise it holds. For that kind of an audience, they're going to look at FW and think 'eh, so what'.

I'm just glad that they're putting a real CPU in these things. I got so much hate for complaining about a 4c8t CPU in 2021/2022. You can't say 'it reduces ewaste' when the CPU is going to bottleneck you long before the rest of the laptop will. With this though, you can easily run that machine for several years and I'm happy to see it.

I've been daily driving one for a while now and I'm over all pretty happy with it. Purchased, primarily because of wanting to support the repairability cause, but obviously on a day to day basis, that isn't something I think about while using it. Of course, the repairability comes with a few compromises but the only one that is at all significant to me is the battery life. It gets me though my work but I do need to remember to charge it. It is a long way away from current Macbooks that you can just forget about charging.

Your current motherboard uses DDR4 RAM, the new one uses DDR5. You will need new SODIMM sticks, and remember to swap over your SSD and WiFi card.

I like the idea of the Framework Laptop, but I'm not completely sold for a few reasons: I think I need to see the company survive another 5 years or so before I put serious stock in the 'you can upgrade/repair it' benefit. Upgradability and repairability are only worth making tradeoffs in build quality and battery life if the company is still around to sell you new upgrades and spare parts well into the future.

I have daily driven a framework 13 since 2022, and I can say they are good laptops. The battery life is a little low, but the battery has aged OK and is still at 77% capacity. The only hardware issues I've had with my framework so far was the charger cable fraying (common issue with old gen chargers, not sure if still happening), and the keys on the keyboard starting to get bubbles in the coating and peel.

Prices are set to keep going up. I'd get in now, before they go any further. Especially if you don't need the power.

Have you actually tried playing any games on it? I'm a gamedev and I have used an 11th gen for testing an UE5 game.

A framework is more expensive up front, there's no denying that. It's cheaper and easier to repair than equivalents from normal manufacturers, and you'll be able to upgrade it a few years down the road for about half the price of a new laptop. But today you could get a machine with equivalent capabilities for a lot less money.

I use a Framework 13 (Ryzen 5 7640U) and I don't get the 1–2 hour battery people talk about. For schoolwork and light gaming, I get around 6+ hours consistently. $1200 for 16GB RAM and 500GB storage isn't crazy in 2026. You can find cheaper laptops with similar specs, but most aren't upgradeable or repairable. The upfront cost your paying right now will save you down the road.

Had mine for about 6 months and I agree with most everything you said. I'd argue that the speakers are pretty bad, along with the screen color accuracy. I'm running Ubuntu as well on a 7840 and I can get about 6-7 hours once I updated to Ubuntu 25.04. Before that I was getting closer to 5ish hours.

I'd like to suggest that people consider posting roughly when they purchase month/year and the board they installed because, as OP has pointed out, there are differences between the generations that I think are important to consider. As for myself: My Aug 2021/11th gen got about four hours initially, but averaged closer to three hours. I've since upgraded to AMD.

I strongly believe in the mission of Framework and bought a 13 with the i3th gen 1360p motherboard about 2-1/2 years ago. My experience hasn't been great and I'm not sure I'd do it again. Mainly because support hasn't made me feel supported, but also because I've had multiple parts fail, making an expensive computer even more expensive. The cooling was originally pretty bad.

I get about 2.5-3 hours on my Mint setup with the 7840U. I bought mine in June 2025, and didn't use it much for the first 3 months. I know that this is really bad, and I'm currently trying to figure out and I have contacted support.

How is editing 1080p video getting too slow? That's not something where resource demands change over time. The required resources will be the same as when you got the mainboard. Furthermore, local 1080p editing shouldn't be that big a deal performance wise right? 12th gen is still a modern iGPU that should be more than capable. Have you tried reinstalling Windows from scratch? That might help massively.

EGPU setup using the USB4 ports or use the m.2 drive bays with an adapter for EGPU setup.

My advice is always: don't wait for anything that isn't announced with a release date, buy for your needs today, and buy better than you think you need so it has a longer personal life.

I've been using my framework since 2023 and it's been solid. However, I'm extremely disappointed in the whole prospect of upgradability: the chips available now are 1-2 generations behind. Honestly had I known this, I wouldn't have bought a Framework.

7640u 55wh, 60hz matte screen, win10; 6-8 on light use, 2-4 heavy.

I purchased the original Framework 13 Laptop DIY edition 11th gen intel i5 with 16GB DDR4 and a 500GB SSD back in January 2022. Honestly, I can't ever see myself wanting to own another laptop for general purpose tasks. The great build quality and ability to quickly replace/repair parts with ease make this such an easy sell. I plan on keeping this laptop for many years to come.

Don't bother with Ryzen 340. Unless you absolutely need every second of internal battery life, can't use a power bank those times when you're nowhere near an outlet beyond ~5-6 hours... 7640U is a similar/better performing machine for less money. Ryzen 400 is effectively re-heated Ryzen 300. Nothing to worry about.

DDR5 over LPDDR5 is one possible way that modularity may affect battery life. DDR5 runs at 1.1V, whereas LPDDR5 has dynamic voltage scaling, so that may make a difference. But we are talking about a few watts of peak memory power consumption during full memory load. At idle (which is most important for battery life), the difference is much smaller.

For me the battery lasts about 6-8 hours on light office use and 3-4 hours on heavier use. The fw 13 comes with a 61 watt hour battery and a power draw max of about 28 watts. Anyway it's usb c rechargeable so I just keep it topped up with my 65W phone charger when I can.

Also 11th gen i5, but updated to AMD a year or two ago. Despite significant abuse the unit is still rock solid. I shredded the display cable in the hinge, and FW replaced my display with a matte version at no cost. I really like the keyboard, and find the trackpad fine. Just updated to the 61W battery, which has been a nice improvement.

If it's me: pick up a 7640U and get into the ecosystem for a discount. It's a very capable device, and if at some point you decide it's not enough for your needs and FW has come out with something better, just swap out the mainboard and either sell the 7640U (recover some of the investment) or slap it in a Cooler Master case (leverage the excess performance).

CanYouRunIt.com is almost always not correct in diagnosing an iGPU (the GPU built into your CPU); you should just have 8GB of VRAM available (assuming you're on Windows). Performance in most newer games likely won't be great, but you can still play a bit older ones like Portal (2), Minecraft, and GTA V pretty smoothly.

Bought the Framework in 2022, first motherboard was the intel 11 Gen, maybe 3h. Changed the main board in 2025 to 7840U, same battery, same screen and if I am lucky I get 3.5h. The main use case is coding, Docker, IntelliJ, Chrome, Terminal. Fedora. I honestly don't believe people say more than 4h, because in my friend group (all developers) we have 4 Frameworks and we all get more or less the same battery life.

~4hrs on an AMD 7840U with the 61W battery. Battery life and battery degradation is pretty bad. The battery is advertised to retain 80% capacity after 1000 cycles, but I'm at 90% with only 144 cycles.

This has been a frustration of mine as well. I get about 5-6 hours on my FW 12th Gen Intel i5. This is with a new battery, brightness on low, bluetooth off and TLP optimizations on fedora 42. I get about ~12W of power drain which seems high from all reports, but I can't seem to reduce.

Framework support is abysmal in my experience. They said they were being 'attacked as a support team' when I pointed out they didn't mention XMP compatibility in their product FAQ. I have an 11th Gen Intel, and it's the worst laptop I've ever owned. I love the mission, but it's always had problems.

Framework speakers are not good. If your use case is watching video another laptop may make sense. If you use Bluetooth ear buds then the speakers are not that important. I would not wait. Prices will be all over the place for a while.

I went with a 7640 that just arrived yesterday. I don't expect these are going to get any cheaper and honestly this is good enough for me for a long time (I'm not gaming or trying to run ai models on it). Installed Fedora last night and so far no complaints. I'm genuinely shocked at the quality of the keyboard and mouse, this is on part with MacBooks.

I have your laptop and I finished Death Stranding on it. It's not that bad!

5-6h on mint 22.2 with some light to moderate use on power saving mode, ryzen 5 7640u, 2.8k display at 60hz and 61Wh battery. Bought in September of last year and the battery is at 90% capacity after almost daily use.

I got mine at the end of 2022 with the i7-1260P and I'm running a somewhat optimized NixOS. I can get around 5-6 hours with regular browsing/office stuff, but when really pushing it (pretty much only terminal stuff, no heavy tasks, low screen light and no Bluetooth/wifi) I should get about 10-12 hours.

I did that about 2 weeks ago. I had a Batch 6 i3 (5-6 significant problems). I popped in a Ryzen, had to get new ram which wasn't cheap, and after fooling around with Boot protection it worked great.

The Intel 11th gen is the slowest of the Framework 13. If you upgrade to a newer AMD model, these have a much better GPU and you'll be able to play newer games like Factorio or Skyrim. Not on super high graphics settings and the fan will potentially be loud, but it will work. The Framework Laptops aren't gaming laptops, however.

Just try them. The iGPU in the 11th Gen Intel actually isn't bad for light gaming and will give you surprisingly good results. Obviously newer generation will perform better but it depends on how much of a budget you have. The iGPU should perform on-par with an NVidia GTX 950 or thereabouts so use that as your benchmark.

Intel iGPU is very weak. Really going to struggle even on low settings. AMD options that Framework offer are a lottery stronger. However even those are only going to give acceptable framerates on low for modern games.

My AMD 13 Ubuntu machine battery life is bad compared with my work MacBook, but I still do not regret my purchase as I don't like MacOs and I like the hardware a lot. I tend to end up running it in battery saver mode anyway, to stop fan noise, and it's fast enough for productivity work and gives a long battery life.

The FW13 laptops have always had below-average battery life in my experience. Some of it is the modularity that incurs extra energy costs like the RAM, specific displays that draw more power or don't support variable refresh, others is their selection of CPU wattages. On my Ryzen AI 370 I get 6-7 hours of regular web browsing/usage.

Beware, AI 5 340's iGPU has only 4 CUs, and 7640U has 8 CUs, which means older r5 cpu has substantially better integrated graphics. CPU performance per core is almost the same, but half of the cores on new AI r5 are less powerful/more power efficient. I would suggest getting an older one, especially as you will be able to update it later for cheaper.