I Could Cry Over the Framework Pro 13

In-depth review of the Framework Pro 13 laptop highlighting its modular design, performance, and repairability as a top-tier competitor.

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Key Takeaways

Framework Pro 13 is a mature, high-quality modular laptop competing with premium models like MacBook Pro.
It balances repairability, performance, and future-proofing with innovative design choices.
The laptop is designed for serious professional workloads rather than gaming.
Framework’s modular IO and upgrade options provide flexibility rarely seen in modern laptops.
The improved screen and battery make it highly usable in diverse environments, including direct sunlight.

What the video covers

The Framework Pro 13 is a highly modular, repairable laptop with official Linux support and Thunderbolt 4.
It improves on the original Framework 13 with better performance, build quality, battery life, and a custom low-glare HDR touchscreen.
Framework uses LPDDR5 memory, enabling outstanding performance and future upgradeability despite high DDR5 costs.
The CNC aluminum chassis enhances the laptop's feel and durability, with a one-finger hinge for easy deployment.
Expansion modules are versatile, support 4K+ displays, and have reduced idle power consumption with an improved locking mechanism.
Fan noise is minimal even under load, and cleaning the cooling system is quick and easy.
The keyboard offers satisfying travel and quiet operation, though it combines up/down arrow keys for design reasons.
Performance is strong with 12-16 core CPUs and up to 64GB LPDDR5 memory, targeting serious work rather than gaming.
The screen features a matte finish touchscreen with adaptive refresh rates and excellent usability in direct sunlight.
Battery life is improved with a new chemistry and larger capacity, and upgrades are possible for older Framework 13 models.

Chapters

Is the Framework Pro 13 suitable for gaming?

No, the Framework Pro 13 is designed primarily for serious work and professional workloads. While it has capable GPUs, it is not intended as a gaming machine.

Can I upgrade the battery on an older Framework 13 to the new Framework Pro 13 battery?

Yes, but upgrading to the new battery requires purchasing a new bottom chassis and input cover to fit the larger battery, making it a worthwhile but involved upgrade.

What makes the Framework Pro 13’s screen stand out compared to competitors?

The Framework Pro 13 offers a matte finish touchscreen with adaptive refresh rates from 30 to 120 Hz and excellent usability in direct sunlight due to retroreflective technology, making it highly practical for various environments.

Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown

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Some people assume that because I'm invested in Framework, I should be less critical of their products. But that couldn't be further from the truth. If anything, to avoid the appearance of bias, I actually find myself treating them as kind of like a coach's son. So,

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if every other kid's running one lap, I expect Framework to run two. Take this then for the inherently biased, yet also ruthless feedback that it is. The Framework Pro 13 is peak laptop. It took longer than I'd like, but here we are.

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Five years after I put my money into this absolute nothing company of nobody's, and Framework is all grown up.

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And they just handed me the laptop I would make if I had the money, the time, the vision, and the skills. It maintains everything that made the original Framework 13 great. Class-leading repairability, out-of-the-box official Linux support, and modular IO that has

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saved my bacon more times than I can count, and it nukes from orbit just about every nagging issue that persisted on the old Framework 13. Everything from performance to build quality to battery life to, yes, a spectacular custom low-glare HDR touchscreen.

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Thunderbolt 4 support is official, and thanks to Framework's use of LPDDR5 memory, we get the best of both worlds, outstanding performance and future upgradeability, which might be a bigger deal than anyone thought due to the current cost of DDR5 memory, which has

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prevented many folks from ordering as much memory as they'd like today. Truly, it is a dark time for the tech industry.

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But, true to their word, Framework has managed to stay a beacon of non-shininess, and the Framework Pro 13 is their declaration that they're ready to go toe-to-toe with the big boys.

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Now, I just got to like raise some more cash so I can invest more.

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Oh, maybe I could do a segue to our sponsor, App Control. App Control is kind of like Task Manager, but with more features. You can scroll back in time to see which apps spiked your CPU or drained your RAM or maxed out your GPU,

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even days later. It's free and you can grab it now at appcontrol.com. We'll have that link down below.

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If you missed the announcement, let's start with the basics. The Framework Pro 13 uses a CNC aluminum chassis that contributes to a surprisingly big difference in the feel. Both the screen and the input panel are adequately stiff and the one-finger hinge makes deploying

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this machine at the boardroom table as effortless as showing your boss what you really think of his ideas. Now that the machine's open, well, looks pretty much the same as the old Framework 13, doesn't it? But appearances can be

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deceiving because pretty much everything that you touch, click, or even look at has been replaced, starting with the expansion modules. As someone with particular needs when it comes to IO, the inclusion of a headphone jack and the ability to move my USB-A over to the

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left for a corded mouse or hack a high-speed networking module into my thin and light is a huge selling point and Framework's module system is better than ever. Their latest versions of their modules feature reduced idle power consumption, support for 4K displays or

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greater, and official support for Thunderbolt 4, something that took a lot of work and a couple of product generations to really get right. They're also available in a wide variety of accent colors now and they use the new

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and improved locking mechanism from the Framework 16. On my Intel configuration, any of the four slots can be used for any function I want, though AMD configs do still require a little bit of planning. Framework has this helpful

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chart. Since we're down here, a major bugbear of early Frameworks is fan noise and I am extremely pleased to report that, just for a lols, I left Cyberpunk running in the background just about the entire time I spent writing the script

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out. And while my thingies did get a little on the toasty side, more so on the right than the left, the fan never ramped up to a level that I would describe as bothersome and under normal conditions it is downright quiet. And if

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it ever does get loud due to crusted out thermal paste or dog hair or whatever, cleaning it out takes literally a couple of minutes. Framework things. Flipping things around past the adequate but unspecial speakers, I love this keyboard. It does commit the

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cardinal sin of combining the up and down arrows, but they did it for a very good reason that we'll get into later and everything else about it is basically S-tier. It manages to have a nice long satisfying travel while being

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quiet enough to work in bed while my wife sleeps next to me. It has an appropriately sized backspace and delete keys, which is great for people like me who sometimes type faster than they think. And while the backlight is not

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the brightest I've seen, it's also not the brightest I've seen. Like seriously, some of the ASUS laptops I've used lately it seems like their intent is to blind my seatmates when I'm working on the plane. Now, I've brought up working

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on this thing a couple of times so far. That's for good reason. While both the AMD and Intel configurations include capable GPUs, these are not gaming machines. With Framework positioning the Pro 13, it's more of a MacBook Pro competitor. It's

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for serious work. And in terms of performance, I'd say they get close enough. 12 to 16 cores is an obscene amount of compute for such a compact laptop and LPDDR5 2 enables configurations with up to 64 gigs of

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fast memory for heavy workloads and even decent-sized local AI models. But the trackpad is one area where Framework does fall a little bit short. It's not bad. In fact, it's really good.

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Glass-topped, check. Haptic feedback, also check. But Apple still has them beat on size, which won't matter to everyone. Thank goodness. Love you, Yvon. But, will matter to some. One area where Framework delivers a solid win over Apple, though, is the screen. Not

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because it's brighter. Apple actually manages about double the real world peak brightness. Uh not in terms of accuracy.

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Framework manages good accuracy and color gamut, especially after a bit of tuning. But, not as good as a MacBook Pro.

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And it actually doesn't win in terms of resolution, either. Apple gets the edge there.

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But, Framework still managed to deliver the more usable display with a nice tall aspect ratio that's great for development work, content editing, and reading long documents, and a matte finish and touchscreen combo that delivers just the best of both worlds.

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Anti-glare and the convenience of being able to poke at my screen like a caveman if I feel that that's more convenient at the moment. And the best part is they're using some kind of like retroreflective tomfoolery to make this one of the most

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usable devices, period, that I've ever seen in direct sunlight. Ever. And did I even mention yet that it's adaptive refresh rate from 30 to 120 Hz?

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None of which would matter if Framework hadn't improved the battery. Thankfully, they did just that. The new battery that they needed those awful arrow keys to make room for uses a new chemistry and is larger. So, any folks that want to

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use this new battery on an older machine are going to need a new bottom chassis and input cover in order to install it.

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But, that could [music] be a very worthwhile upgrade that Actually, no, wait. Before we look at the results, can I just take a second here and talk about the words that my mouth just made? A worthy upgrade for your laptop, the new

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battery. The sons of did it. I mean, sure, there's the caveats and asterisks. But, if you have an original Framework 13 from 5 years ago, you can grab a new chassis and a new battery and keep on trucking. Or if you don't care much

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about that, and you just want better performance, you can get one of the new Core Ultra Series 3 or Ryzen 300 series motherboards, and huck it in there. They freaking did it. Like, can we appreciate this for a minute? I thought it was

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impossible. Anyway, back to the battery upgrade. Uh the battery is mu

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you will comfortably make it through a whole day, maybe two, and you can fill it back full of juice in just over an hour and a half with the first-party 100 W charger. I don't know how to better

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summarize the experience of the Framework Pro 13 than comfortable. It just feels like the kind of product that anyone could have made if they spent their energy making things better [music] instead of buying them, but just didn't. Like, here's a perfect

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example. I want drivers for my new computer, right? Because maybe I bought the DIY version, where I bring my own RAM and storage. That's reasonable, right? With just about everybody else, I am looking down the barrel of at best a

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bloated management utility, and at worst intentional adware that is packed alongside my mandatory system drivers.

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On Framework? Well, they went and took a fraction of the time that they might have spent creating system control crate or whatever, and they bundled all the core system drivers into a single executable that you download, double-click, and

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then it does all the work in the background for you, and prompts you to restart. It's the very definition of working smarter, not harder, and I love it. There is one thing, though, and that's something nobody wants to talk

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about these days, pricing and availability. Framework handles pre-orders for new systems using a batch system, and they recently announced that they don't have enough high-capacity LP CAM 2 modules to fulfill all of the orders they took. So, they're offering customers who chose

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some of the higher capacity modules the option to downgrade at the original price or place a new order at the newer pricing. This is a sucky situation.

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But, what I can say is that from my dealings with Nirav, if he says, "Um yeah, so the new pricing that we got for our memory would have made our company not financially viable." I believe that. And if that's the

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situation, I don't think we want them to be not viable. So, this is probably the best possible response. So, I'll just leave you with these parting words.

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Please, AI winter, be over soon. Thank you. And while I'm appealing to the gods, please segue to our sponsor.

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App Control. App Control is like a task manager that doesn't just do more, but can also help just about anyone understand why their computer is behaving the way that it is. It was built by a small group of power users

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who were just sick of task manager failing to help them when they had PC problems. They'd hear their fan spin up and they'd try to catch the culprit, but by the time they got close, the problem was already gone. Only to start up again

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hours or days later. So, they built the tool that they wished existed, App Control. It gives you a scrollable history for CPU, GPU, RAM usage, temperatures. It can even show you which apps launched or tapped into your microphone, your camera, or your

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location. And it tells you in plain English what every weird dot exe actually does. You're even able to block entire publishers if you see patterns in your misbehaving apps. The folks over at App Control, by the way, love chatting

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with users on both their forum and their Discord server and are always open to feedback on how to improve their app.

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So, download it. Totally free at appcontrol.com. We'll have that links down below. If you guys enjoyed this video, maybe go back and check out the last Framework Event Announcement video we did. It had some information on the 13th, most of which

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you won't need. You've now seen the review, but they also launched some other really cool products.

Topics:Framework Pro 13modular laptoprepairabilityLinux supportThunderbolt 4LPDDR5 memoryCNC aluminum chassisHDR touchscreenlaptop reviewperformance

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