Framework 13" Laptop: Saving the planet, one sustainable laptop at a time

Framework Laptop with some extra parts

[Updated to refer to the new motherboards and the new 16" model].

Tens of thousands of people will buy laptops in the next few months, and if we can persuade even a few to wait for this sustainable laptop, well, that’s our good deed for the day.

I do try to reduce my impact on the planet’s environment and climate. Electronic waste is a serious problem: forty to fifty megatons of e-scrap containing valuable minerals (gold, silver, lithium) along with toxic material go into landfills every year. From there, the toxins will probably leach out for centuries. There are several companies claiming to make “sustainable” laptops, and it isn’t totally clear exactly what each means by the term. One company I have come across that’s soon to be shipping a sustainable laptop is Framework Computers. Their foray into this product space, the Framework Laptop, like the Teracube 2e sustainable smartphone I reviewed recently, is:

• modular — designed from the ground up to last a long time;
• built to be easily repairable and upgradable in the field; Framework even ships you a screwdriver with every laptop, and
• manufactured to minimize environmental impact by using recycled materials.

And they’ve been working on the laptop in mostly stealth mode for a couple of years to get the details right.

I emphasize the term “modular”, because it’s one of the primary paths to sustainability — “replace the part, not the whole”. This laptop shares that with the Teracube 2e phone that was reviewed here. The road to modularity is, alas, littered with corpses. The most ambitious “modular phone” plan was Google’s Project Ara. Announced amid some fanfare, Ara died slowly and quietly, choked off for many and complex reasons. You might think that “If Google couldn’t build a modular phone or laptop, nobody can.” But I disagree. I suspect it was a distraction for Google, and their unwillingness to offend the big phone carriers — part of whose cash cow consists of selling supersized, overpriced, disposable phones to consumers — was too big a risk. Framework’s team, on the other hand, has nothing to distract it but the “video game” of answering posts on their community site, and has no fear of offending the big laptop manufacturers; heck, they’re aiming David’s slingshot squarely at those guys’ heads! While there are always risks to startups, I think that Framework is in good hands and has a good shot at success with this laptop. The team members have been involved in startups like the VR company Oculus and other successful enterprises.

Framework’s web site has a lot of information about the laptop, but it was (until recently) a bit spread out. For those like their info in summary form, see the list below. Remember that the electronics part of this applies to the original “main board”, and there are more powerful motherboards available now, probably with different processors (powered initially by AMD, though Arm64, RISC-V, or whatever CPU comes next are all possible).

• Built-in screen: 13.5" 2256x1504 (3:2 ratio)
• Weight: ~1.3kg
• Thickness: 15.85mm (thin!)
• Hinge range: 180 degrees (can lie flat, but not flip over)
• CPU: Intel i5 or i7 (i5–1135G7, i7–1165G7, or i7–1185G7, “Tiger Lake”)
• Integrated GPU: Intel Xe graphics
• RAM: two dual-channel DDR4–3200 SO-DIMMs, up to 64GB
• SSD: one NVMe PCIe Gen4 x4 M.2 2280 slot, up to 8GB tested
• HD, DVD: None. This is 2021. Use external drive if needed
• WebCam: 1080p@60fps integrated, with hard power switch
• Expansion via Side connectors: 4 swappable “expansion cards” (USB, HDMI, etc.; two on each side; see below)
• Charging: Via USB-C (uses one of the 4 expansion slots)
• WiFi: WiFi 6 on standard NGFF board
• BlueTooth: on same board as WiFi
• Operating system: In theory, anything that runs on AMD64/Intel x64. Can be ordered with MS-Windows 10 or Linux.
• Assembly: Can be ordered assembled (for normal users) or in “DIY” kit form without an OS for geeks who want to assemble it themselves.

Everything about the laptop has been carefully chosen. The body is “a precision formed and milled aluminum housing” that is made with a large percentage of recycled aluminum (a metal that recycles quite easily and well). The plastic bezel around the laptop screen attaches magnetically, and you can swap it out for a different colored one depending on your mood. I quite like the orange one, but that’s obviously a matter of taste.

Build Quality: It’s in your hands

This is also one of the only laptops you can buy in kit form. The DIY (do it yourself) edition “arrives at your doorstep as a kit of modules you can assemble yourself.” In ordering it this way you can make many choices and combinations, including RAM, SSD, and OS (all optional), CPU speed, bezel color, and other options. I’m a computer geek at heart, so I of course opted for the DIY Edition. Unlike the first computer I built, at least all the integrated circuits (ICs, “chips”) are factory-soldered onto the main board!

The main pieces include:

• the cabinet/chassis;
• the main board;
• the keyboard, and the top cover that surrounds it;
• the battery;
• the screen;
• the magnetically attached bezel;
• miscellaneous hardware;
• USB-C external charger (optional in DIY configuration);
• assembly instructions (but if you buy the DIY you probably won’t read them).

Since I like to mix things up (and to support my local computer dealer), I ordered RAM and SSD locally, and everything else in kit form. Nowadays you can buy most parts individually, but the kit is your best bet.

Details of assembly? It all went together by the book. The WiFi antenna cable routing took a bit of figuring, but everything else was a no-brainer if you’ve worked on PC hardware.

Operating System

For software, I wanted to test out the claimed openness of this computer. I’ve run MS-Windows as well as the following:

• QubesOS, (secure system that runs multiple OSes in separately-mapped VMs)
• OpenBSD — “secure by default” OS, done last so it would be left on my SSD at the end of testing.

I was going to play with a few more but this quickly became my main “daily driver” so I’ve not had time or motivation to try other OSes.

Connectivity/Ports

The typical laptop has a series of connectors on the sides (and sometimes the back) for USB, audio, video, charging, etc. If you find the selection of ports fails to meet your needs, or you even don’t like which side a given port is on, your only option (other than walking around with adapters dangling off the side) is to buy a new laptop, or buy a different one in the first place. Framework has a better idea. There are two “expansion card” slots on each side, and you can plug in any of a range of “cards” to provide any mix of USB-A, USB-C, HDMI, Displayport, MicroSD, or even a second SSD module (initially offered in 256G and 1TB sizes). Any module can go on either side. And since they talk USB to the laptop, they are all hot-swappable. You can order zero or more of these cards when you buy your unit, and/or order them individually later.

I’ve bought two USB-C, one for accessories and one for concurrent charging, one USB-A to plug in my USB Hub of miscellaneous accessories, a microSD card slot, an HDMI card to plug into our dumb TV with a longer cable. Dumb TV? Yes, we bought a dumb TV for sustainable reasons — the LCD panel can last for many more years than the support on either “smart TVs” or third-party dongles like Google Chromecast, Apple TV, Roku, etc. Better to recycle a small bit of electronics than an entire large-screen TV when the manufacturer stops providing security updates, as they always do because, of course, they want you to buy a new one. Buying “smart TVs” is what seems dumb to me. With that “expansion card” in place, I can work upstairs with the laptop and have a large monitor whenever I fancy that, instead of working down in my “computer dungeon”.

Framework did not initially list either a “USB Hub” expansion card nor a wired-ethernet card. They did do a survey on what cards people wanted, and wired (gigabit) ethernet came out on top. So that was made available and mine just works — it’s good to 2.5GBs, which my switch and another computer support. As well, the details on how to build cards is available to manufacturers to make compatible cards, so maybe somebody will make your dream card if Framework does not.

Charging is via USB-C. You can thus charge via the USB-C extension card. You could also get a third-party USB hub with PD Power passthrough; these are available at computer stores and online. These allow charging at the same time as other devices are operating normally; I got one that has some USB-C and USB-A sockets so I run almost anything on it. I leave the only-at-home devices on that hub so I have less un-cabling to do when taking the laptop on the road.

Kill the hardware?

The Framework laptop is completely open — as mentioned earlier, you can run any PC-compatible operating system you like on it, including some that are widely used but which have inferior security reputations. To help protect your privacy, Framework has incorporated hardware kill switches that completely isolate the built-in microphone and the built-in camera. Plus, a single power source powers both the camera and the camera-on LED, making it impossible for remote bad actors to spy on you via software viruses without the camera LED coming on. Of course, if you’re the target of state-scale actors and they can get unattended access to your hardware, they could wire around this. But such organizations surely could find easier ways to spy on you.

Since this laptop came to life during the pandemic, when air travel was off the plate for most of us, it was designed without a WiFi kill switch, better known as “airplane mode”, which many modern laptops have. If this were a real problem, you could remove the WiFi card and use an external USB WiFi dongle. But it’s not a real problem. Assuming the operating system powers off all peripherals when closed/suspended, you should be good.

The Keys to “Thin Is In”

This laptop really is thin — like a Macbook Air. Thinness has been one of the main slightly-elusive design elements ever since the first Macbook Air. Despite that, the Framework’s keyboard keys have a full 1.5mm travel for much better touch/feel than most laptops. And yet, they’re very quiet too — no clicking and clunking. It’s obvious that Framework spent a lot of time with their keyboard supplier working on this. You can buy several different keyboard layouts, including a blank one for DIY purposes.

The only concession I can see that was made to this “thinness” — is that the CPU chip is soldered to the motherboard (a socketed CPU adds a couple of mm of thickness). Thus, upgrading your CPU requires a new motherboard, and leaves you with…​ tadaa! A used but servicable motherboard that can be re-used in other projects. Yup, the MB connections were deliberately kept simple to encourage re-use of replaced motherboards in other projects. There is a section on the community forum for sharing projects using these boards. There are several cases to turn the replaced motherboard into another portable computer; one you can 3D print yourself, another you can buy from Cooler Master.

Now Bigger

In 2023 Framework announced at 16" model, using a bigger mainboard and with three expansion card slots on each side. Otherwise it looks similar. They didn’t send me one for testing (hint hint) and I’ve used my hardware budget, so there’s no writeup of it here.

Sustainable Redux

The Framework mainboard compares very favorably to other laptops. My years-old Apple MacBook Pro, for example, has several handsful of boards inside, most of which are custom-made “daughter boards” (if the main board has to be feminine, I guess the offshoot boards do too?). For example, the Macbook’s WiFi and Bluetooth are on a custom board. Framework‘s WiFi-Bluetooth unit is an industry-standard NGFF card that could be replaced by a unit providing WiFi7 in the future, or replaced with something totally different. And the laptop’s SSD drive socket takes a standard NVME 2280 card, so your main drive can be anything from 128MB to 4GB and probably more.

Summary

Is the sustainable equipment business model sustainable? Well, Tesla (which makes long-lasting electric cars) and FairPhone (sustainable cell phones) have both been around for years (founded 2003, 2013 respectively). So, yes. I look forward to keeping my Framework laptop in use for many years to come.