- It is simply not possible
to build a device that is
both elegant and repairable.
Look at this beautiful MacBook,
your idiot hands couldn't repair it.
If it was easy to repair, it would be some thick flimsy,
2010 looking piece of crap.
Actually, no, those excuses no longer hold any water.
The team over at Framework has managed
to not just create a laptop
that is easily repairable and upgradable,
but it's also a thin, gorgeous, performant laptop.
So without further ado,
let's get to building this thing,
because it did not arrive in one piece.
By the way, casually I bought one.
Oh, what I also bought is
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(upbeat music)
The story behind how Framework started
is amazingly relatable.
The creators noticed that 10, 15 years ago,
consumers and manufacturers were all on the same page,
that a device that you purchased,
be it a desktop computer or a laptop,
should have some kind of upgrade path
so that you could extend its service lifetime.
Nowadays, through a combination of
glue, soldered, and non-standard components,
laptops are pretty much,
use until some little thing goes wrong with it,
and then toss in the trash.
Oh, not this one.
Most laptop manufacturers out there
are saying well in order to build something
that anyone would actually want to buy and use,
we have to have this level of tight integration.
Framework says well, on something as compact as a phone,
okay, maybe I kind of see your point.
On a laptop though?
You've got kind of a lot of room to work with.
So this is my first hands-on with this thing.
And I got to say, I see their point.
It's like ultra book, sexy, thin, and yet
what are all these modular doo-dad-a-ma-jigs here?
Ouu, it even comes with a screwdriver.
Can I take a moment to appreciate that the
one non-modular bit of IO is a headphone jack.
Heck yeah.
Wait, are these captive?
Only five screws required to pop the bottom off,
which means that compared to buying the preassembled one,
you are almost surely going to find it
worth it to assemble it yourself
for the $300 of savings.
Oh my God.
Not only do they have a camera shutter,
they've got a microphone hardware switch.
How cool is that?
Actually, let's talk about the design philosophy here.
So Framework is made up of ex-engineers
from Lenovo, HTC, and Apple predominantly
who had the basic concept of all right,
instead of trying to generate
proprietary solutions to everything,
why don't we just go around to component makers,
ask what are you guys super jazzed about?
And then find a way to integrate that
into a repairable, upgradable design.
There are so many things to love about this design,
that it's hard to know where to start,
but I'm going to settle on these QR codes.
Why open up a paper manual
when you can just put QR codes that
walk you through compatibility and how to
upgrade the various components inside your system,
you can see they're all over the place.
They even go out of their way to say
this battery is replaceable.
No kidding made with love by the Framework team.
That's freaking awesome.
There's also the fact that while many of the screws use
different threading or different lengths,
they're freaking color-coded.
How amazing is that?
It takes so much guesswork out of trying to
take something apart and put it back together,
when the screws are different colors.
So you won't accidentally put one in the wrong place,
and they actually include some extras here in the top,
just in case you misplaced one.
It costs them probably a fraction of a cent,
but it means so much to the end user's experience.
The philosophical difference between engineering things
to make them harder for the end user
because you don't trust them,
and documenting things to educate the end user
so that you know can trust them,
like, look at this, just little things,
unplug this connector before removing the battery,
helpful things. It's got a 180 degree hinge.
Look at this. Even the touch pad,
huge touch pad, screws, no glue.
The most mind-blowing thing about this
is that the team of engineers that designed this
did it in just a year and a half.
So was it actually impossible for a company like Apple
that spends literal billions of dollars a year on R and D?
No. The answer, just like anything,
is that they just didn't want to.
- [Alex] They also apparently are hiring and-
- [Linus] Yeah, it's all over the inside.
- [Alex] Yeah.
- Look at that. How beautiful is it?
I'm going to start with the thing I recognize nice least.
Ah, yes. This, this is one of their
little modular IO connectors.
Now the funny thing is that
this isn't even a new dream.
Razer showed off a concept PC way back
that wanted to use Thunderbolt,
which uses a USB type C connector,
as a way to allow anything from storage
to even graphics cards, to be just slotted in,
in a really consumer friendly way.
Well, as far as I can tell,
these are the first guys that have
actually managed to pull it off.
So no matter what it is you want to install,
you just plug it in and it'll interface
with the machine via USB 3.2.
That's not to say that you have to plug in IO.
The thing that I put in just now is actually
a one terabyte storage drive.
I wouldn't boot off of that one,
but hey, if you want a big fat Steam library
or something like that,
that is absolutely the way to do it.
Another thing traditional laptop manufacturers do
that Framework is changing is
maintain an unnecessary level of secrecy
about the actual components they're using
to build the device.
We did a video recently about how some laptop manufacturers
were changing the memory installed in their systems
in a way that significantly impacted performance.
Well Framework, without forcing me
to open this thing up and actually
check the product IDs of the chip says, okay,
well this is using a Phison controller.
It's got Micron NAND. It's capable of performance
of around one gigabyte per second.
And it's got support for self encryption.
One happy challenge right now is
I was concerned that these were going to
kind of come out too easily,
but the truth is I actually cannot
figure out how to get it out.
It looks like you're just supposed to press this button
and you should be able to slide it out.
There's even a little like,
oh yeah, no, you just gotta, you just gotta give her.
So why don't we pop out this USB-C
that Alex installed earlier.
So this is a simple USB-C expansion card,
and obviously you're going to need at least
one of these so that you can charge the device.
Oh, pfft. Oh, wow. You have got to be kidding me.
Hey, you know the laptop you like,
it's got everything you need except man,
I sure wish I had a full-size DisplayPort port,
Framework's got you covered. That's awesome.
Man, I am not a fan of having USB type A on the right.
I have a tendency to use a wired mouse
because, why do I use a wired mouse?
Whatever, I use a wired mouse, deal with it.
And I don't like having the cable sticking out on the right,
cause it interferes with my comfortable spacing here.
So I like my USB type A on the left
and with Framework, I can do that.
Now, the fit and finish, ain't perfect.
You know, there's a slight lip here.
- [Alex] Yeah, cry me a river, Linus.
Look, I have to acknowledge these things
because that's the justification that
traditional laptop manufacturers have had
for making everything so integrated
and so impossible to upgrade.
But it's also not a big deal.
It's on the bottom of the device.
Okay, what else do we have here in terms of expansion cards?
We've got lots of USB-Cs,
in case you're into that sort of thing.
You know what? I'm going to pop out that SSD
and I'm going to go HDMI- damn it.
I just realized I could carry around
a full freaking complement of these
and they would take up less space
than my stupid type C dongle that
I already have to carry anyway.
Of course, we gotta talk about the motherboard.
Now, like any other laptop,
the CPU is soldered directly to the board.
That's because laptop CPUs are simply
not available with pads on the bottom,
but that doesn't mean that when
this laptop has run its course,
you couldn't still continue to use it in some way.
Framework has specifically designed the motherboard
to be able to run outside of the laptop enclosure.
And they've even gone as far as to provide CAD drawings,
so if you wanted to design your own case for it, you could.
Meanwhile, other laptop manufacturers
have chassis intrusion, detection switches.
So the thing won't even turn on,
if you don't have it completely closed up.
What a diagnostic nightmare that is.
This puppy is going to go right here,
got a little mini PCI express right there.
Oh, look at that. Conveniently, the screw is already in-
Be really careful with these,
especially if for whatever reason
you have to take them off and put them back on,
cause you can actually rip them off,
the solder pads on there.
Oh man, I love all the little cable management.
Look at this. If I ever had to replace the display,
for example, this would be so easy to take out
and rerun because they got just these
little rubber grommet things right here.
Boom, I have now re cable managed it.
It took that long.
Like that's the thing that a lot of people
don't understand when you talk about right to repair,
it's not about telling you
you're not allowed to have your iPhone.
Go have your iPhone. I don't give a (beep).
There just should be other options.
That's all. Next up, memory.
Now they sent over three SODIMMs.
I guess the point they were trying to make is
that you can kind of do whatever you want.
You can mix and match.
You can put in one, you can put in two.
It holds a maximum of 64 gigs of
dual channel DDR4 memory though.
So that is what we are going to install.
I'm trying to figure out,
where I'm compromising here.
I mean maybe, maybe a more proprietary design
could have squeezed in a little bit more battery,
but it's just whether they make a conscious choice
to put glue on the bottom of it or not.
- [Alex] Yeah cause that's a 60 watt-hour battery.
- [Linus] Yeah.
- [Alex] That's a pretty similar size
to like a surface laptop that's 45 watt-hour.
- Very, very respectable in terms of the size of the device.
Like I don't, I don't see it.
Like now I want to invest.
Something that's nagging at me a little bit though,
is that while yeah, there's better support for maintenance,
like swapping out a speaker module if it fails,
or changing out the battery once it starts to degrade.
In terms of user upgrade ability,
we've got the IO, but most laptops out there
do have upgradable storage and
do have upgradable wireless modules, for example.
And there are still many that have swappable Ram.
So unless they're actually addressing
upgradable motherboards in some way,
they haven't changed that much.
- [Alex] They only have 11th gen right now, Intel,
but they say variety of x86, maybe ARM,
and possibly even RISC-V in the future.
- Of course, we've seen larger companies than Framework
promise this kind of upgradability
and fail to deliver, (cough) Dell.
But of course those companies weren't built
around openness, upgradability and repairability,
as a core pillar. Let's close it up, shall we?
[Alex] Sure. Which keyboard do you want?
- Oh, that's what this other box is, isn't it?
Wait, what is this? Oh my God.
I can have a light bezel if I want.
- [Alex] So also. - [Linus] Wait.
(beeping)
(distorted yelling)
- You can see the switches.
the highlight features of the keyboard include
a millimeter and a half of travel.
And as we mentioned before,
shocking rigidity considering
the thinness of the design,
and for the track pad,
it features a four millimeter separation between sensors,
so that's about as high end as you can get,
a glass top and of course uses Windows Precision drivers.
And that beauty is more than just skin deep.
These names might not mean a ton to the average consumer,
but when I hear that the keyboard was built by Lite-On
and the track pad was built by PixArt,
I'm going well, that's fantastic
because these are OEMs that have
decades of experience building these components.
And it gives me a ton of confidence.
Oh incidentally, the power button slash fingerprint sensor
was built by Goodix and features Linux drivers.
Convenient included pull,
in case you needed to take it off and swap it out.
Oh wow, wait.
They all use the same bit, don't they?
- [Alex] Yeah.
Every screw in the whole laptop. That's something.
Replacing the bezel for the white one
that we don't want to use is as simple as
pulling off this magnetic cover and
swapping it on a little something like that.
This also gives us access to the screws
that hold on the display panel.
Unfortunately at this time there only one option,
a 2256 by 1504 resolution, three by two display
that does not have any touch.
Touch support is built into the motherboard,
so there's no reason that that couldn't
be added in the future.
It does feature 400 nit peak brightness
as well as full coverage of the SRG color space.
But I personally would love to see a touch option.
This is so cool.
This also gives you access to change out
the camera and microphone module,
which appears to be all one piece here, yeah.
Why have little clips that can get broken
when you can have little magnets that won't get broken.
You know how one of the ways
that you can evaluate the build quality of a laptop
is like a kind of a twist test, right?
And a lot of the time,
that's the justification given
for these tightly integrated devices.
And yet here we are.
Yeah. There's some flex.
That is not an unreasonable amount to flex.
So here's an XPS 15,
which is basically gold standard, as far as flex goes.
There's still a little bit, okay, fine.
But this, it's configurable.
Where's my type A port Dell?
The Dell's not even (beep) thinner.
And the hits just keep on coming.
All the drivers install in unattended mode.
Why is it that every motherboard, for example,
doesn't have just an unattended driver installer,
so that I don't have to click next, next, next, next, next,
like some kind of monkey.
No doubt, this is better.
You've gotta be kidding me. The charger's modular too.
Would you look at that?
- But like you have your charger plugged into the wall,
someone comes along and they're like,
oh, I want to charge my phone. Here's a type C cable, yoink.
Yeah, basically I'm saying that
my girlfriend's a terrible person.
(laughter)
- Well.
- [Alex] Yeah. So it's gallium nitride.
We've only seen them in really high end laptops so far.
- Well that's awesome. It's so compact.
And this'll do up to 60 watts at 20 volts.
Not bad at all. Holy crap.
That's like actually not that bad.
- [Alex] So 1080p 60 FPS has a
one sixth of an inch ONI Vision sensor.
- How you doing?
- [Alex] And an F2 lens with four elements.
- Yeah, so, not a ton of dynamic range,
but it's doing, like it's respectable.
- [Alex] Yeah.
- Huh. You know how Apple and Microsoft are
the only ones that can do magnetic charging connectors
because of their stupid patents.
Well, now some little hacky guy somewhere
could just make a magnetic charging connector clone
that just slots into your thing.
Framework doesn't get in trouble,
cause they didn't make it.
It's like- I mean, I didn't say anything.
So it turboed to 4.2,
I think that's about as advertised, like 4.2, 4.3.
- [Alex] Yeah.
- Temporarily, it'll do around 3.5 all core.
I liked that their fan just ramps instead of
just letting the CPU go to a hundred degrees.
If you hear that, it has no (whining sound),
has no has no whine to it, which is really nice.
Like technically a hundred degrees is okay,
that doesn't mean that I have to be
comfortable with it though.
So all core, we ended up at about 3.3,
it looks like it's just going to hold there,
at around 80 degrees. This thing is cool.
I bet they even have like a configurable BIOS.
Battery disconnect. Oh, that's so cool.
If you know you're going to run the thing
plugged into the wall all the time,
which can cause your battery to swell
and be a potential fire hazard,
you can just go battery disconnect,
run it off wall power and just let it sit there latent.
Power on AC attach, like it just powers on
if you plug it in, I could see that being useful.
Like when do you plug in your laptop
when you don't actually no, well,
sometimes I plug it on in my bag,
cause I'd just want to charge it up
before I leave the house,
okay, I'm gonna leave that off.
(laughter)
I'm sold. I don't know if I've
actually ever done this before,
but I'm ordering one right now.
- [Alex] Damn.
- Bloody hell, hold on.
This is not in US dollars.
I'm surprised they even have a Canadian site.
How are these guys so together?
- [Man] They got a strong framework.
(laughter)
- So Alex actually brought up with these guys a concern.
This is affordable,
so how are you guys going to stay profitable
enough that I can trust that you will
still exist in two years?
And they basically said, well,
it comes down to the direct to consumer model
as well as just a more open-minded approach.
Framework is counting on people
coming back to them for upgrades over time.
Not because they build a shoddy product,
but because people want to invest
in improving the longevity of their device.
And obviously where else am I going to go?
Like if I want a different color bezel
or they do like a partnership
with some anime show that I love
for a keyboard scan or something like that,
I'm going to come back to Framework
for that kind of customization
and that kind of upgradability.
And I think that's really, really smart of them.
So here you go. They're only taking hundred dollar deposits.
They're shipping in the summer right now,
and I'm doing it.
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If you guys enjoyed this video,
you might also enjoy,
I mean, when's the last time someone made a real, like-
- [Alex] I was going to say-
- Effort at modular anything.
- [Alex] Well, our DIY switch build,
that's kind of why I was scared of this.
- Oh, that was fun.
- [Alex] Yeah, but-
- Sure, go watch that, it wasn't as good.
- [Alex] Yeah, the thing was terrible.
- But it was fun.
- [Alex] Yeah, video's good.