The Framework Laptop 16 is almost the machine I've wanted for a decade
The hinge is too loose. The speakers are thin. The idea is still the best one in the industry.
I have an embarrassing confession for someone who reviews laptops: the reason I started this magazine is that I wanted to own a computer I could actually fix.
For a decade, I bought the same kind of laptop everyone else bought — the thin, silver kind, with the keyboard that died eight months in and the battery that started panting at eighteen. I replaced them on a three-year rhythm. Each time I did, I felt worse. Not because the new one wasn’t good; they’re all good now. Because I knew, with perfect certainty, that the last one had gone in a box, and the box had gone on a truck, and the truck had gone somewhere I’d rather not think about.
The Framework Laptop 16 is the first laptop I’ve owned that I believe I could actually keep. Not because I want to be a monk about computers, but because this machine was designed, from the hinge to the ports, by people who believe the same thing I do: that a laptop is a tool, and tools should last.
Over the last month, I’ve used it as my only computer. Here’s what I think.
The case for it
The Framework 16 is a 16-inch aluminum laptop that looks, at first glance, like any other 16-inch aluminum laptop. You’d put it in the same bag as a MacBook Pro or a Lenovo Yoga and nobody would blink.
Pick it up, though, and the illusion breaks. The keyboard and trackpad lift out. The six ports on the sides are modules you can swap — HDMI today, a second SD reader tomorrow, four USB-C if you’re tired of dongles. The back is a graphics module you can pop off with a magnet, replace in ninety seconds, and sell back to Framework when you’re done with it.
There is a screwdriver in the box. There is a QR code on the underside of the motherboard that takes you to the repair guide.
This is what I want from a computer.
The case against it
The hinge is too loose.
I don’t mean a little loose. I mean that if you carry the laptop by the base, open, the screen flops back. If you carry it closed and walk briskly, the lid unlatches itself and thwaps shut again when you stop. I’ve lived with this for a month and I’ve stopped noticing, which is its own kind of problem.
The speakers sound like they’ve been tuned by someone who thinks “bass” means “frequencies below 500 Hz.” They’re fine for a meeting. They’re unlistenable for music. I plug in headphones, like a person, and move on.
The fans are loud under load. Not loud like a ThinkPad of yore, but loud enough that I noticed the first time I ran a build and thought something was wrong.
The things Framework gets wrong are the things you could, in theory, fix in a year. The things Framework gets right are things most companies can’t fix at all.
I type that sentence and I realize it’s the whole review.
The keyboard is great
Framework lets you choose your keyboard. I got the one with clicky switches. It is the nicest laptop keyboard I’ve typed on since the pre-butterfly MacBook Pro, and the fact that I can say that about a product from a company that didn’t exist seven years ago should embarrass every other laptop manufacturer on earth.
Travel is 1.5mm. Actuation is crisp. The layout is the layout. There are no mystery gestures. Function keys work like function keys.
I am writing this review on it. I’ve typed faster than I’ve typed on any other laptop this year.
The expansion cards are the whole point
Framework’s core idea is that ports are opinions, and opinions shouldn’t be soldered to your motherboard.
You buy the laptop. You slot in the ports you want, in the arrangement you want, on whichever sides you want. You want HDMI on the right because your home office monitor is on the right? Put it on the right. You’re traveling and need four USB-C and an SD card? Swap it in the airport.
This sounds like a party trick until you use it, and then it sounds like the only way ports should have ever worked. I moved mine around three times in the first week. Then I settled on a layout and stopped thinking about ports, for the first time since 2012.
What happens in year three
This is the part I can’t review yet. The promise of Framework isn’t that the laptop is better than a MacBook today. The promise is that in three years, when the battery is tired and the CPU feels slow, I’ll replace the battery for $60 and drop in a new motherboard for the cost of a decent phone, and the laptop will be new again.
Nobody else is promising that. A few are promising something close — Dell with some of their business lines, Lenovo with the ThinkPad — but nobody at this price, with this clarity, with this much of the company riding on it.
If Framework is still around in three years, this laptop is the best I can buy. If they aren’t, it’s still a good laptop with a weird hinge.
The verdict
I’m keeping it. I sold the MacBook.
If you make your living on a laptop and you want the best-feeling, fastest-opening, most polished-at-the-edges machine available, get a MacBook. Nobody will think less of you.
If you want the first laptop of the next era — the one where the thing in your bag isn’t a disposable — get this one. Accept the hinge. Make peace with the speakers. Find joy in the fact that, for the first time in a long time, there is a computer in the world that was designed to grow old with you.
We’ve made a video about the Framework 16 over on the YouTube channel. Go say hi.
Framework sent us a review unit for the original Framework 13 two years ago. We bought this Framework 16 with our own money, a week after launch. Nobody at Framework saw this review before it was published.
“You are buying a promise. And right now, Framework is the only one making the promise out loud.”