FRAMEWORK 16: an almost perfect Linux laptop
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Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
00:40 Sponsor: Proton Mail
01:38 Assembly
05:36 Design and builds quality
07:52 How Linux works, performance & battery
11:50 Display, speakers, webcam, keyboard...
14:56 Price & Final thoughts
18:41 Support the channel
As with most modular things, the more modules you have, the less "solid" a device feels. That's also the case with the framework 16, which feels less like a solid, one piece device than the 13 inch.
Not that it flexes or anything, because it's still a nice big block of aluminium, with very little bending or flexing, but you definitely feel the keyboard moving a tiny bit, the separator and sliders aren't "locked in place" 100%.
The laptop is also pretty big. The GPU module sticks out of the back, about 1.5 centimeters, and the display has massive bezels on top and at the bottom, so it's 16:10, but it could be 3:2.
I decided to go with Fedora 41, as it was just released and it's the most "vanilla" distro I could think of. And install went without a hitch, apart from the preinstalled Windows on the SSD that I had to set up so I could disable bitlocker.
After that I had nothing to do: every part of that laptop works as advertised, with the dedicated GPU being recognized, and used for the right programs automatically in hybrid graphics mode, the touchpad, audio, ports, everything just works.
In terms of performance, in Geekbench 6, the laptop got 2551 in single core, and 11314 in multi core. As per gaming, I ran a few benchmarks: Horizon Zero dawn, at the native 2560 x1600 resolution, and ultra settings, got 30 PS. At 1440p upscaled with FSR set to quality, on ultra settings, it reached 82 FPS, which is perfect.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider got an average of 72 FPS at the native resolution and ultra settings
In terms of battery life, you get an 85Wh battery in this thing, which, with the display brightness lowered to 50%, on wifi, playing youtube videos in a loop in Firefox, got me around 7h15 minutes. not too bad!
Now, let's talk hardware. The display is 2560 x 1600, up to 165hz, and it's fantastic. It's 16:10, which is fine, with big bezels, around it, which isn't great, but the display itself works really well, with 1500:1 contrast ratio, 100% of DCI-p3, variable refresh rate and freesync if your desktop supports that, and 500 nits of brightness. Great display.
I won't dwell on the webcam and onboard mic, they're bot the usual potato stuff, suitable for video conferencing and not much more**
You do have privacy switches here as well, for the webcam and the mic though, so that's nice.
The keyboard is excellent, the keys have more travel than you'd think, and they feel really nice with a little clicky muted sound that I really enjoy. I didn't expect a hot swappable keyboard to feel that good, but it's one of the best laptop keyboard I've used. really good. You also have the fingerprint reader in the power button, which works perfect on Linux, without any addition stuff to install.
The touchpad, though isn't as nice. The touchpad itself feels super smooth, it's glass, and clicks well, even though it's still a diveboard mechanism, so you can't click from the upper part of it. The issue is that the touchpad module wiggled just tiny bit in place, and you can feel it when moving around, doing gestures, and clicking, and that's not great.
Speakers are solid and won't disappoint, they don't reverberate in the chassis, which must have been tricky to pull off with such a modular ensemble of plates popped on top of the main laptop, and they have a decent amount of bass, really not bad at all. As per the sound the laptop makes under load, well, it is a laptop, so you'll hear the fan when gaming, but it's not the whiniest, highest pitched fan I've heard. Headphones will make that sound disappear, and I never heard the fan when just using the laptop to browse the web or type a script in a notes app.
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