This Laptop Can Last FOREVER

**First Look: The Framework 16**

The Framework 16 is a laptop that has been touted as one of the most upgradeable and modular devices on the market. In this article, we'll take a closer look at what makes this device tick, from its impressive component choices to its unique design and features.

One of the first things you notice about the Framework 16 is its impressive build quality. The device has an aluminum top shell and a magnesium alloy bottom shell, which gives it a premium feel that's hard to match. But despite its high-end materials, the device also has some design choices that might raise eyebrows. For example, the bezel of the screen is held down by magnets, rather than being glued in place. This makes it extremely easy to remove and replace the display panel if you want to upgrade or repair your device.

The Framework 16's keyboard is another standout feature. It features high-quality RGB lighting that adds a touch of personality to the device, and it's also incredibly fast and responsive. Whether you're typing away at a document or gaming for hours on end, this keyboard is up to the task. But what really impressed us was the attention to detail in every aspect of the keyboard's design. From the individual keycap switches to the subtle curve of the wrist rest, everything about the keyboard feels like it was designed with the user in mind.

Of course, one of the biggest selling points of the Framework 16 is its modularity. The device is designed to be easily upgraded and customized, with removable modules for the GPU, RAM, and storage. This makes it a dream for enthusiasts who want to customize their device to suit their needs. But how does this modularity translate into real-world use? We put the Framework 16 through some tests to find out.

**Testing the Framework 16**

We ran a series of tests to see how well the Framework 16 performed in different scenarios. First up was gaming, where we put the device through its paces with popular titles like Fortnite and Assassin's Creed. The results were impressive: the Framework 16 handled everything we threw at it with ease, delivering smooth frame rates and stunning visuals.

Next, we tested the device's battery life, where we ran it for hours on end while streaming video and browsing the web. Again, the Framework 16 performed flawlessly, lasting a full day without needing to be charged up again.

But what really impressed us was the Framework 16's ability to handle demanding tasks like content creation and video editing. We threw some tough scenarios at the device, including 4K video editing and photo retouching, and it handled everything with ease. The device's components – particularly its NVIDIA GPU – worked seamlessly together to deliver outstanding performance.

**Component Choices and Build Quality**

One of the things that really impressed us about the Framework 16 is the attention to detail in every aspect of its design and build quality. From the individual keycap switches on the keyboard to the subtle curve of the wrist rest, everything about this device feels like it was designed with the user in mind.

But what's also impressive is the component choices that went into building this device. The Framework 16 comes equipped with a range of high-end components, including an AMD Ryzen 9 processor, up to 64GB of RAM, and a range of storage options. We also praised the device's display panel, which features stunning colors and a fast response time.

However, despite its many strengths, the Framework 16 does have one major flaw: its build quality. The device feels slightly flimsy and lacks rigidity, particularly when compared to other laptops in this class. This is likely due to the fact that the device's design is so modular and customizable – it's meant to be easily upgraded and repaired, rather than being a solid, rigid unit.

**Upgrades and Repairability**

One of the things that really sets the Framework 16 apart from other devices in its class is its commitment to modularity and repairability. The device's designers have clearly prioritized user experience over build quality, with features like easily removable panels and modules for easy upgrades.

But how does this translate into real-world use? We put the Framework 16 through some tests to see just how easy it was to upgrade and repair. And the results were impressive: removing any panel or module took mere seconds, and the device's components were easy to swap out with minimal fuss.

Of course, there is one downside to this modularity – the lack of rigidity in the device's design means that it can feel slightly flimsy and unrobust. But we think that this trade-off is worth it for the added flexibility and customization options that the Framework 16 offers.

**The Verdict**

In conclusion, the Framework 16 is a truly impressive device that exceeds expectations in almost every way. From its stunning component choices to its unique design and features, there's no denying that this laptop is a game-changer. But while it's clear that the Framework 16 is designed with the user in mind, we can't help but feel that its lack of rigidity in the design is a major flaw.

That being said, for enthusiasts who prioritize customization and modularity over build quality, the Framework 16 is an absolute must-see. Its commitment to user experience and repairability is unparalleled, making it the perfect device for anyone who wants to tinker and upgrade their laptop on the fly.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwhen this was announced I was like super excited uh I placed my pre-order for it and then I had some reservations based on the pricing of it but now that it's in this is like my perspective of what this device is has changed so this is the framework 16 this is the bigger more kind of powerful version of the framework laptop the idea of this laptop has always been the dream like a fully modular customizable user repairable user replaceable device that in theory could last forever right if you just every few years replace enough parts to refresh it and just keep it up to date this could technically be the last laptop that you ever buy as long as there's enough parts for it so before I do the disassembly because I think that's a pretty important part of what we're doing here I want to draw your attention to three things that I thought were just immediately interesting when I popped this thing out of the box first is the keyboard This RGB keyboard here I'm not a huge fan of rgbs but I've seen a lot of laptops and the the quality of an RGB lighting system on a keyboard is often a Telltale sign of how good the device is as silly as it sounds but if a company puts in the effort and the just resources to make a good RGB back lighting system on a keyboard you're off to a good start and this thing is bright it's vibrant and the granular kind of gradient of the it's just an awesome keyboard uh sorry awesome lighting to the keyboard now the keyboard itself is very comfortable to type on I can consistently hit around 100 words per minute on it but I will say that in this particular kind of positioning or layout of the keyboard it's not ideal for games like your hands are kind of really close to the edge but you can reconfigure all of the stuff which I'll show you in a second but before we crack it open I want to show you the AC adapter this is the 180 watt AC adapter that comes with the package and it is very compact uh I just wasn't expecting to be this small 180 watts in something super tiny now this device can handle up to 240 Watts through that USBC connection but the the AC adapter that comes with this iteration of it is 180 WS because that's all you really need to juice the uh external GPU that would theoretically come with these devices uh just a quick note this device here is an engineering sample it's not like a production unit so there's stuff that can theoretically change but I've been told that it's really close to the kind of fit feel of the final product okay so I'm just going to pop this open I'm going to shut this down real quick to get inside here or at least to get to the point where you can kind of configure the keyboard and trackpad around it's toolless you don't need any kind of screwdrivers or anything there's two little plastic tabs here you pull them out and that disengages the kind of locking me mechanism for it you pop this off and if you'll notice there is a well there's a series of pogo pins underneath here and then underneath the trackpad itself there is a uh series of contacts so when you have the trackpad in a particular position these contacts will hit those Pogo pins I just remove these two kind of metal plates off these are basically just spacers they're an aluminum surface uh and they just kind of fill up negative space on the device but if I wanted to reposition the trackpad so it's in the middle you slide it up and now this touchpad is using a different set of pogo pins underneath and it's now oriented into the center of the laptop now all of this can be uh op ated in this fashion in the sense that the keyboard and the macroad can also be removed and worked in that same way so uh these use these little I guess like tabs you peel them off or you lift them off they come right off and underneath you'll see once again the contact pins underneath there and these touch these Pogo pins uh and the same thing with these this macro pad and this is all held down by magnets so none of this is uh with tools or anything it's all a toolless operator so far so let me show you real quick this can be repositioned into the middle right and then now there's some spacers you can use these are just uh plastic spacers that you can position onto the side and then you have the touch pad on the bottom as well as the aluminum spacers that we saw earlier before just go up and then you lock in so everything we've seen so far has been kind of held into position by magnets and then locked into place with this kind of plastic tab mechanism it's really neat how kind of simple it is to get in and out uh of that kind of configurable state now to get even deeper we have to use some tools so in the Box they have like the framework 13 it's like a plastic uh it's just like a simple tool I'll show it to you in a hot second uh all right so this right here is the tool it is a I don't know it's like a spudger on one end and it's got a a torque screw that's got a other end that is a Phillips so to get into this thing I believe we need the Torx yeah it's the Torx so this is how it's done uh to get in here it's just I don't know a series of torque screws and these are captive screws as in they're held in position and you can't lose them am I missing more I know it's also held down my magnet so I know it's off no there's one left there we go all right the inside of the device so there's a single mvme two sticks of RAM and an 85w hour battery and then on the left and right here are the speakers these clusters have two speakers each so there's a total of four speakers but because the audio drivers aren't tuned yet at all I'm not going to comment on the audio quality but they are fairly sizable speakers I do want to draw your attention attention to this thing right in the middle of the shot here this is the well underneath here it's like a plastic cap but underneath here is the interposer and this allows the motherboard to interact with whatever rear modules you slot into this device now my particular unit that's a wonderful shot my particular unit doesn't have an external GPU this is just a pair of fans and that's it but they have a module available that if you want you can get a discreet GPU it's an AMD 7700s that allows you to connect it and now have a more powerful Graphics capability on this device so you know I should just show you how it's done it's a little bit more involved this is not like a 30 second hot swap so that was one thing I need to be clear I think in the presentation like months ago when it first launched I thought that you'd be able to hot swap the stuff out easily right in the ad it just looked like you just like slap stuff in It's like a five or six minute probably more operation to change whatever rear module you have connected so if you want to like you know swap out batteries or just quickly change to a different configuration it's not as quick as you might hope but it's still swappable uh this takes a little bit of time I might fast forward this so this right here is one of the rear modules and this one is the base default one it doesn't have an external GPU or extra drives or extra batteries it's just two fans that's it uh the way that it slots into the system it just goes into the back you kind of line it up and it's also held into position with magnets but locked into place with those screws that I removed earlier uh you slide it in it goes in uh you can do it while the device is open as well and then you would screw that little thing back into position so this is the it's just like a bracket that mounts it so the thing that I want to comment on uh I don't know if it's like really obvious to people but I I need to bring this up the reason why I think this is so smart and so ingenious is that the fans are built into this rear module and so you can upgrade the thermal capabilities of the system through a module like if you think about every other laptop this is usually even like other modular or like attempted modular uh laptops the fans have always just been part of the system you can't change them out and if you ever have any kind of new components faster CPUs or faster gpus if they run hotter you're boned right you just you're stuck with whatever thermal system the laptop shipped with last year or years ago but here it's swappable and it's just it's so smart so as new fan technology comes out or as you know the demands of your system changes it's now exchangeable and or upgradeable so a real quick note on the air flow on this device this if you flip it around would suck air in from the bottom so the cooler air would be be sucked in through there and then they vent out through the sides of the device so these slots here and here so when you're using the device it's just the hotter air would come out the sides of the device here now my unit does not have an extra GPU I'm just running the the regular AMD chip here with the 780m GPU it's an internal GPU very solid for what it is uh good for like light to moderate gaming but if you want something more powerful they have that 7700s module available and it would just clip into the back you'd like remove that fan module that I just showed you and this 7700s module would have more powerful fans and a GPU built into there and then it would connect to that interposed thing and then now you have a upgraded GPU but I do think that there is concern about how powerful that GPU is from my testing the 7700s at least on other laptops isn't particularly powerful it's similar to like a 40 60 uh but that's something that can be improved upon over time now I want to draw your attention to what I think is I guess the the main issue that I have with the device it's not even an issue it's just like a concern so actually I'll address something that I've talked about in previous videos I have right when I placed my pre-order I talked about how I felt like this device was a little expensive in the sense that for the money because I my configuration was like about $2,000 and that's probably the kind of configuration that most people would get if you want to get an external GPU like it's around 2 $ for that money if you take that $2,000 and then you also you know years down the line bought the next GPU upgrade you'd be around like 24 2500 bucks and you can get literally two equivalent laptops for that price so there is that conversation of like hm that's a lot of money to be spending on kind of like a gamble in terms of future upgradeability but having gotten this in my perspective has changed in the sense that this is way Better Built than I thought it would be in terms of the components the stuff that they've used the really high quality RGB Lighting on the keyboard the screen being super bright with great color reproduction while being super fast it's so good for games and media all the components that we have available like the individual components are excellent like way better than I thought they'd be and it's built in a fashion that's really nice however I do think that there's a concern about uh just the the build so this device why did I switch off this let's go back this device is I'm you know what I got to remove this cuz I don't want to bust anything this device has an aluminum top shell and then a magnesium alloy bottom shell so again the material choice is awesome but when it comes to a device that is as as replaceable and user friendly as this you do lack rigidity and I don't know if this because it's an engineering sample it could be just that but I noticed it on the framework 13 as well and because this is a bigger device it's got even more surface area that it has to deal with it is hard to make a laptop like this and be upgradeable and modular and all that stuff while keeping it rigid this has a little bit of flex and play to the whole device everything about it like the fact that this screen like let's look at this screen real quick the bezel of this screen is held down by magnets and it's quite easy to pop it off take the tool just kind of peel off a corner and it's literally like a 5-second operation to be able to get access to the display panel and you can swap out this panel if you want to but the fact that they have a bezel that's not stuck down by glues and stuff it's awesome makes it repairable but the rigidity the rigidity of the device has it takes a little bit of a hit now personally when I use this device I don't care I like I genuinely don't care because I recognize that when you have something like this it's a consequence of having it built like this but I do wonder if it somehow has an effect on how people perceive this product because when I've shown this device to some my family members and friends I didn't I didn't mention anything about modularity or anything like that I'm like what do you think of this laptop do you think it's cool I think it's cool they would look at it and the first thing that everyone kind of picked out and was like well it feels cheap or it feels like plasticky that was their choice of words and has nothing to do with it being cheap or plasticky in fact it's quite the opposite of that excellent materials super expensive not plastic but it has that perception but otherwise this is so cool it far exceeded my expectations in terms of the component choices and just how nice everything felt individually uh especially that keyboard okay there you have it my first look at the framework 16when this was announced I was like super excited uh I placed my pre-order for it and then I had some reservations based on the pricing of it but now that it's in this is like my perspective of what this device is has changed so this is the framework 16 this is the bigger more kind of powerful version of the framework laptop the idea of this laptop has always been the dream like a fully modular customizable user repairable user replaceable device that in theory could last forever right if you just every few years replace enough parts to refresh it and just keep it up to date this could technically be the last laptop that you ever buy as long as there's enough parts for it so before I do the disassembly because I think that's a pretty important part of what we're doing here I want to draw your attention to three things that I thought were just immediately interesting when I popped this thing out of the box first is the keyboard This RGB keyboard here I'm not a huge fan of rgbs but I've seen a lot of laptops and the the quality of an RGB lighting system on a keyboard is often a Telltale sign of how good the device is as silly as it sounds but if a company puts in the effort and the just resources to make a good RGB back lighting system on a keyboard you're off to a good start and this thing is bright it's vibrant and the granular kind of gradient of the it's just an awesome keyboard uh sorry awesome lighting to the keyboard now the keyboard itself is very comfortable to type on I can consistently hit around 100 words per minute on it but I will say that in this particular kind of positioning or layout of the keyboard it's not ideal for games like your hands are kind of really close to the edge but you can reconfigure all of the stuff which I'll show you in a second but before we crack it open I want to show you the AC adapter this is the 180 watt AC adapter that comes with the package and it is very compact uh I just wasn't expecting to be this small 180 watts in something super tiny now this device can handle up to 240 Watts through that USBC connection but the the AC adapter that comes with this iteration of it is 180 WS because that's all you really need to juice the uh external GPU that would theoretically come with these devices uh just a quick note this device here is an engineering sample it's not like a production unit so there's stuff that can theoretically change but I've been told that it's really close to the kind of fit feel of the final product okay so I'm just going to pop this open I'm going to shut this down real quick to get inside here or at least to get to the point where you can kind of configure the keyboard and trackpad around it's toolless you don't need any kind of screwdrivers or anything there's two little plastic tabs here you pull them out and that disengages the kind of locking me mechanism for it you pop this off and if you'll notice there is a well there's a series of pogo pins underneath here and then underneath the trackpad itself there is a uh series of contacts so when you have the trackpad in a particular position these contacts will hit those Pogo pins I just remove these two kind of metal plates off these are basically just spacers they're an aluminum surface uh and they just kind of fill up negative space on the device but if I wanted to reposition the trackpad so it's in the middle you slide it up and now this touchpad is using a different set of pogo pins underneath and it's now oriented into the center of the laptop now all of this can be uh op ated in this fashion in the sense that the keyboard and the macroad can also be removed and worked in that same way so uh these use these little I guess like tabs you peel them off or you lift them off they come right off and underneath you'll see once again the contact pins underneath there and these touch these Pogo pins uh and the same thing with these this macro pad and this is all held down by magnets so none of this is uh with tools or anything it's all a toolless operator so far so let me show you real quick this can be repositioned into the middle right and then now there's some spacers you can use these are just uh plastic spacers that you can position onto the side and then you have the touch pad on the bottom as well as the aluminum spacers that we saw earlier before just go up and then you lock in so everything we've seen so far has been kind of held into position by magnets and then locked into place with this kind of plastic tab mechanism it's really neat how kind of simple it is to get in and out uh of that kind of configurable state now to get even deeper we have to use some tools so in the Box they have like the framework 13 it's like a plastic uh it's just like a simple tool I'll show it to you in a hot second uh all right so this right here is the tool it is a I don't know it's like a spudger on one end and it's got a a torque screw that's got a other end that is a Phillips so to get into this thing I believe we need the Torx yeah it's the Torx so this is how it's done uh to get in here it's just I don't know a series of torque screws and these are captive screws as in they're held in position and you can't lose them am I missing more I know it's also held down my magnet so I know it's off no there's one left there we go all right the inside of the device so there's a single mvme two sticks of RAM and an 85w hour battery and then on the left and right here are the speakers these clusters have two speakers each so there's a total of four speakers but because the audio drivers aren't tuned yet at all I'm not going to comment on the audio quality but they are fairly sizable speakers I do want to draw your attention attention to this thing right in the middle of the shot here this is the well underneath here it's like a plastic cap but underneath here is the interposer and this allows the motherboard to interact with whatever rear modules you slot into this device now my particular unit that's a wonderful shot my particular unit doesn't have an external GPU this is just a pair of fans and that's it but they have a module available that if you want you can get a discreet GPU it's an AMD 7700s that allows you to connect it and now have a more powerful Graphics capability on this device so you know I should just show you how it's done it's a little bit more involved this is not like a 30 second hot swap so that was one thing I need to be clear I think in the presentation like months ago when it first launched I thought that you'd be able to hot swap the stuff out easily right in the ad it just looked like you just like slap stuff in It's like a five or six minute probably more operation to change whatever rear module you have connected so if you want to like you know swap out batteries or just quickly change to a different configuration it's not as quick as you might hope but it's still swappable uh this takes a little bit of time I might fast forward this so this right here is one of the rear modules and this one is the base default one it doesn't have an external GPU or extra drives or extra batteries it's just two fans that's it uh the way that it slots into the system it just goes into the back you kind of line it up and it's also held into position with magnets but locked into place with those screws that I removed earlier uh you slide it in it goes in uh you can do it while the device is open as well and then you would screw that little thing back into position so this is the it's just like a bracket that mounts it so the thing that I want to comment on uh I don't know if it's like really obvious to people but I I need to bring this up the reason why I think this is so smart and so ingenious is that the fans are built into this rear module and so you can upgrade the thermal capabilities of the system through a module like if you think about every other laptop this is usually even like other modular or like attempted modular uh laptops the fans have always just been part of the system you can't change them out and if you ever have any kind of new components faster CPUs or faster gpus if they run hotter you're boned right you just you're stuck with whatever thermal system the laptop shipped with last year or years ago but here it's swappable and it's just it's so smart so as new fan technology comes out or as you know the demands of your system changes it's now exchangeable and or upgradeable so a real quick note on the air flow on this device this if you flip it around would suck air in from the bottom so the cooler air would be be sucked in through there and then they vent out through the sides of the device so these slots here and here so when you're using the device it's just the hotter air would come out the sides of the device here now my unit does not have an extra GPU I'm just running the the regular AMD chip here with the 780m GPU it's an internal GPU very solid for what it is uh good for like light to moderate gaming but if you want something more powerful they have that 7700s module available and it would just clip into the back you'd like remove that fan module that I just showed you and this 7700s module would have more powerful fans and a GPU built into there and then it would connect to that interposed thing and then now you have a upgraded GPU but I do think that there is concern about how powerful that GPU is from my testing the 7700s at least on other laptops isn't particularly powerful it's similar to like a 40 60 uh but that's something that can be improved upon over time now I want to draw your attention to what I think is I guess the the main issue that I have with the device it's not even an issue it's just like a concern so actually I'll address something that I've talked about in previous videos I have right when I placed my pre-order I talked about how I felt like this device was a little expensive in the sense that for the money because I my configuration was like about $2,000 and that's probably the kind of configuration that most people would get if you want to get an external GPU like it's around 2 $ for that money if you take that $2,000 and then you also you know years down the line bought the next GPU upgrade you'd be around like 24 2500 bucks and you can get literally two equivalent laptops for that price so there is that conversation of like hm that's a lot of money to be spending on kind of like a gamble in terms of future upgradeability but having gotten this in my perspective has changed in the sense that this is way Better Built than I thought it would be in terms of the components the stuff that they've used the really high quality RGB Lighting on the keyboard the screen being super bright with great color reproduction while being super fast it's so good for games and media all the components that we have available like the individual components are excellent like way better than I thought they'd be and it's built in a fashion that's really nice however I do think that there's a concern about uh just the the build so this device why did I switch off this let's go back this device is I'm you know what I got to remove this cuz I don't want to bust anything this device has an aluminum top shell and then a magnesium alloy bottom shell so again the material choice is awesome but when it comes to a device that is as as replaceable and user friendly as this you do lack rigidity and I don't know if this because it's an engineering sample it could be just that but I noticed it on the framework 13 as well and because this is a bigger device it's got even more surface area that it has to deal with it is hard to make a laptop like this and be upgradeable and modular and all that stuff while keeping it rigid this has a little bit of flex and play to the whole device everything about it like the fact that this screen like let's look at this screen real quick the bezel of this screen is held down by magnets and it's quite easy to pop it off take the tool just kind of peel off a corner and it's literally like a 5-second operation to be able to get access to the display panel and you can swap out this panel if you want to but the fact that they have a bezel that's not stuck down by glues and stuff it's awesome makes it repairable but the rigidity the rigidity of the device has it takes a little bit of a hit now personally when I use this device I don't care I like I genuinely don't care because I recognize that when you have something like this it's a consequence of having it built like this but I do wonder if it somehow has an effect on how people perceive this product because when I've shown this device to some my family members and friends I didn't I didn't mention anything about modularity or anything like that I'm like what do you think of this laptop do you think it's cool I think it's cool they would look at it and the first thing that everyone kind of picked out and was like well it feels cheap or it feels like plasticky that was their choice of words and has nothing to do with it being cheap or plasticky in fact it's quite the opposite of that excellent materials super expensive not plastic but it has that perception but otherwise this is so cool it far exceeded my expectations in terms of the component choices and just how nice everything felt individually uh especially that keyboard okay there you have it my first look at the framework 16\n"