Not saying the framework laptop isn't a great laptop, but reddot awards seem like a meaningless pay to win scam. Pay to enter, pay more if you win. Is it really an award if you bought it? For context, there were 70+ laptop models listed as "winners" last year.
Yup, I worked on a device that got a reddot award, and this is exactly how it works. IMHO it's a red flag (pun intended). I wouldn't be surprised if iF was exactly the same.
I get that someone has to pay for the system, somehow.
But, just be honest, call it the Red Dot showcase, and let the "credibility" come from showing off the product among products that the designers consider to be peers of each other.
This award could become meaningful if they consistently chose good things, especially if they called really good products really early and where alone in doing so.
You know what else has that cost structure? Colleges diplomas. $100 application, then if you win you pay a lot more.
Yea, we're not fans of these types of awards in general, so we apply to only the few that we feel have meaningful competitive categories. In the case of Red Dot, getting a Red Dot award isn't particularly meaningful, but the "Best of the Best" designation is truly a competitive award.
Framework laptop is certainly cool if you like to change out ports and want to repair your own laptop, but you are currently giving up quite a bit if you choose to get one:
* No AMD offerings, at all. The AMD 5900 processors have been available since EOY 2019 and dominate this 11 series processor on performance/battery life
* No dedicated GPU options, period.
* Even if you stay with intel, the processors are basically 2 revisions behind now.
* Form factor is quite a bit more bulky than its competitors, even considering the fact parts are removable.
* No guarantee of companies longevity for future bios updates / repair parts
I love the reparability of the framework, but I just cant get around the drawbacks if you choose to go with them. Its not even a issue of money. You cant pay more to match features of other 'non repairable' laptops. You just have to accept a inferior product compared to other options.
I think this is all totally fair. You are getting less laptop for the same price.
I will put a couple of nits here:
> * No dedicated GPU options, period.
It supports thunderbolt, so you can have an eGPU! That said, while eGPUs are pretty cool, they're expensive an inefficient.
> * Form factor is quite a bit more bulky than its competitors, even considering the fact parts are removable.
I would revise "quite a bit" down to "slightly." The Dell XPS is 15.28 mm thick. The Framework is 15.85mm thick. That's 0.57mm. It is on-par with the slimmer ultrabooks out there. I'm totally happy with the form factor.
Almost every point is ignoring THE main goal of framework, which is to reduce cost and waste over the LONG TERM.
> No AMD offerings, at all.
Not yet. At $400 or less, you'll be able to upgrade in the future.
> No dedicated GPU options, period.
Not yet. Nothing in the mainboard design precludes a future board with dedicated GPU.
> Even if you stay with intel, the processors are basically 2 revisions behind now.
For now.
> Form factor is quite a bit more bulky than its competitors, even considering the fact parts are removable.
Fair.
> No guarantee of companies longevity for future bios updates / repair parts
Margin and demand is what predicts longevity. Framework has both at the moment and it can only get better going forward. I haven't heard any slow downs to date. If anything, they are planning to expand to ever more markets as soon as they, and they managed to bring down their wait times in the peak of supply chain shortages while demand was on the rise. That is as good a sign as you can see.
> Price is quite a bit more expensive for what you get, compared to its competitors. For instance, This dell will be more powerful, slimmer and cost less
Again, long term cost is what matters. The economies of that remains to be seen.
This. I own a Frame.Work laptop, and unless you're repairing it, it's underwhelming. It's not bad but in retrospect I should have spent the money on a new macbook pro with the good keyboard and nice ports. Because, I mean, how often does a laptop break? My last macbook has gone almost 10 years now with only a screen replacement.
It's also a question of where you want your money to go. Do you want to support Apple, or would you rather support a relatively small independent company that promotes repairability?
From my perspective, besides modularity and repairability and all that, Framework succeeded in doing something that no other laptop manufacturer has succeeded at: it has produced a laptop that fails to do anything that I hate.
Every other laptop manufacturer has something about it that drives me batty or that I just plain don't like:
* pg-up and pg-dn keys immediately to the right of the up arrow / immediately above left and right
* fn-left / fn-right doing something other than home and end
* fn key as the left-most key instead of ctrl
* webcam at the bottom of the screen
* is a mac
* keyboard is not backlit
* only has usb-c ports
* only has one usb-c port
* no headphone jack
* touchscreen monitor
* clips, or otherwise needlessly difficult to open
* 16:9 monitor (I didn't realize how much I hated these until I started using 3:2)
* difficult-to-replace battery
Each of these are small and seemingly insignificant things, but have a profound effect on how annoyed I am when while using the device. That last one is a huge win for me. You can brag all you want about your 16 hour battery runtime, that lasts for what, a month, maybe two? Then a year later you're down to 4 hours. And six months later you're down to an hour.
Somehow the Framework laptop is the only laptop on the market that fails to have any of my laptop pet peeves. This is the first laptop I've had in many years that I don't think "if only..." every time I use it. It's like they made this laptop specifically for me, and I love them for it.
If I had to complain about something, the three things that I wish were different about are:
1. the red background behind the hardware switches on the "disconnected" side of the webcam and microphone (yes, it has a separate hardware switch for the microphone) is not particularly bright and can be difficult to see in dim light.
2. the rubber pads under the laptop aren't as frictiony as I would like, meaning that if you've got it on a tilted surface it may or may not stay put, depending on the angle.
3. the monitor hinges don't have as much friction as I would like, though I wonder if that's just mine. At some point I'll just buy a set of replacement hinges and see if that fixes the problem for me.
Those are the only things I can think of to whine about.
Edit: seems that the usb-c ports are in fact thunderbolt-capable, per the responses below, just not certified by Intel (yet). That makes the modules a little more interesting though I still think the current offerings for the cards is very lackluster.
I can only suppose it is getting design awards because it was designed to be modular rather than looking at it from a pure aesthetic point. It looks fine to me, it's almost reaching the perfectly boring laptop aesthetic. This isn't a denigration, I like unbranded simple clothing like uniqlo and the like as well. I personally do not own one, but my impression from the videos I've seen is bifurcated between appreciating the modularity and hating the implementation.
A framework owner might be able to enlighten me on this, but the display bezel being attached by magnets just seems a bit flimsy to me. I like the idea of the different expansion cards, but it does mean that there is no thunderbolt which is a miss for me. The full sized display port expansion card is definitely a win, but the rest seem unremarkable and frankly does the same or less than a usb hub. This could of course change depending on your own inclination to build expansion cards or third party/future first party cards, but right now the offerings aren't exceptional.
I do hope they are making enough money to see a second generation and see just how flexible their current chassis is. The new 12th gen intel chips or a ryzen version would be very welcome to see.
* The magnetic bezel works great and I've had no problems with it at all. It's completely secure and you pretty much need to lever it off with your fingernail if you want to change it for a different color, or clean around the edge of your screen. The lid spring is slightly wobbly as others have reported, but not too bad.
* It does have thunderbolt and it works great. I've use mine with a Razer core x for gaming without issue. It also works with my Kensington dock.
Thanks for the clarification! It's good to know that it does support thunderbolt, that does assuage some of my concerns regarding the expansion cards, though it does still make me question why you have something like a single usb type a slot as one of the options.
To me the 'plainness' of the design is a feature, not a bug, because I plan to own the case for a long time and that means I can make it my own however I want. Other laptops are essentially disposable, so there's no point in putting any of your own effort into their aesthetics.
Also, the ports are TB4 ports. I use mine with a TB4 hub.
I think the Framework laptop is awesome and is very unique with some awesome features. I am left with one question, why does the industrial design on every premium laptop look like a MacBook pro? Basically the only premium laptop that looks different is the X1 carbon.
I asked my company to get me one instead of a MacBook after many years on mac. I gotta say in person it feels and looks very different - magnesium, sharper corners, smaller edge radii, more key travel, with the OS (in my case Fedora) rounding it out. Nice!
I really loved my previous Mac laptops (still use my 2014 Air) because I got functioning hibernate on lid close (still magical even now), the screen dimmed to ambient light levels, I got a nice sweet spot of Unix and GUI software, they had MagSafe, their track pads are consistently great.
My daily driver is a Dell XPS running Pop and frankly it’s simply not as good.
I’d suggest that it’s not what “everybody wants”, but that people love their Macs and talk about it. And manufacturers are simply trying to copy what they can. Which is only the outside.
That may be part of it, but that "MacBook" look is not particularly bad either. Now as to how much it should have evolved over time vs how much it actually has... that's a different story.
Astronaut 1: You mean, all the laptops on the market are just shitty Mac ripoffs?
Astronaut 2: Always were...
Industrial design in the computer industry has been chasing Apple's taillights since forever ago, laptops especially so. Look at 90s laptops: almost all of the tropes associated with a 90s laptop, including the trackpad front and center with the case forming "armrests" on either side, were introduced with Apple's PowerBook series. When Apple showed with the first MacBook Air how thin and light a full-sized laptop could be, Intel countered with "Ultrabooks". And on and on. Basically if you get a laptop, you're either buying Apple or an Apple ripoff. Even Lenovo have incorporated Apple-isms into ThinkPads (mainly the keyboard and thinness).
That was my biggest potential concern before getting one. Now that I've been using one for a while I can confidently say: I strongly prefer 3:2, and I will never get another laptop with a 16:9 monitor.
While I like what Framework is doing and I'm glad the product exists, I find it to be a physically unattractive laptop. There's more to design than just aesthetics but I think it gives off cheap mid-2000s netbook vibes.
Happy they're getting recognition and I hope they keep iterating on the design.
Funny, I felt that way about the new Macbook Pros. When they unveiled them at the event, I was laughing my ass off since I was joking with my friends earlier about how funny it would be if they used the old 2007 MBP design. Then the laughing wore off when I saw the notch... different strokes for different folks, I suppose.
The new M1 MBPs look amazing, like the TiBooks of old. I'm not fond of the curved "pretending to be super thin" MacBooks of the generation immediately previous.
ahh the notch sensitive cohort.. i never understood the massive focus on removing the notch on smartphones.. it's of trivial significance to millions of ppl I would assume
The organizations behind both of these awards appear to be German. I do wonder if this is purely coincidental (not unlikely with N=2) or if there's some cultural factor at play.
Or is it as simple as there not being too many design awards from varying countries? Genuine question, I don't follow the design space.
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https://www.red-dot.org/search?tx_solr%5Bfilter%5D%5B0%5D=re...
Many of these award-winning laptops are abominations.
$6000+ pay "if" win is ridiculous.
https://www.red-dot.org/pd/dates-fees
I get that someone has to pay for the system, somehow.
But, just be honest, call it the Red Dot showcase, and let the "credibility" come from showing off the product among products that the designers consider to be peers of each other.
You know what else has that cost structure? Colleges diplomas. $100 application, then if you win you pay a lot more.
* No AMD offerings, at all. The AMD 5900 processors have been available since EOY 2019 and dominate this 11 series processor on performance/battery life
* No dedicated GPU options, period.
* Even if you stay with intel, the processors are basically 2 revisions behind now.
* Form factor is quite a bit more bulky than its competitors, even considering the fact parts are removable.
* No guarantee of companies longevity for future bios updates / repair parts
* Price is quite a bit more expensive for what you get, compared to its competitors. For instance, This dell will be more powerful, slimmer and cost less ( https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-laptops/xps-13-plus-lap...)
I love the reparability of the framework, but I just cant get around the drawbacks if you choose to go with them. Its not even a issue of money. You cant pay more to match features of other 'non repairable' laptops. You just have to accept a inferior product compared to other options.
I think this is all totally fair. You are getting less laptop for the same price.
I will put a couple of nits here:
> * No dedicated GPU options, period.
It supports thunderbolt, so you can have an eGPU! That said, while eGPUs are pretty cool, they're expensive an inefficient.
> * Form factor is quite a bit more bulky than its competitors, even considering the fact parts are removable.
I would revise "quite a bit" down to "slightly." The Dell XPS is 15.28 mm thick. The Framework is 15.85mm thick. That's 0.57mm. It is on-par with the slimmer ultrabooks out there. I'm totally happy with the form factor.
The Dell you link is half a mm thinner. Half a mm hardly seems "quite a bit more bulky".
> * Price is quite a bit more expensive for what you get, compared to its competitors.
The price difference also doesn't seem all that large? It's hard to compare due to the differences, but seems to be up to maybe 10%.
> No AMD offerings, at all.
Not yet. At $400 or less, you'll be able to upgrade in the future.
> No dedicated GPU options, period.
Not yet. Nothing in the mainboard design precludes a future board with dedicated GPU.
> Even if you stay with intel, the processors are basically 2 revisions behind now.
For now.
> Form factor is quite a bit more bulky than its competitors, even considering the fact parts are removable.
Fair.
> No guarantee of companies longevity for future bios updates / repair parts
Margin and demand is what predicts longevity. Framework has both at the moment and it can only get better going forward. I haven't heard any slow downs to date. If anything, they are planning to expand to ever more markets as soon as they, and they managed to bring down their wait times in the peak of supply chain shortages while demand was on the rise. That is as good a sign as you can see.
> Price is quite a bit more expensive for what you get, compared to its competitors. For instance, This dell will be more powerful, slimmer and cost less
Again, long term cost is what matters. The economies of that remains to be seen.
Every other laptop manufacturer has something about it that drives me batty or that I just plain don't like:
* pg-up and pg-dn keys immediately to the right of the up arrow / immediately above left and right
* fn-left / fn-right doing something other than home and end
* fn key as the left-most key instead of ctrl
* webcam at the bottom of the screen
* is a mac
* keyboard is not backlit
* only has usb-c ports
* only has one usb-c port
* no headphone jack
* touchscreen monitor
* clips, or otherwise needlessly difficult to open
* 16:9 monitor (I didn't realize how much I hated these until I started using 3:2)
* difficult-to-replace battery
Each of these are small and seemingly insignificant things, but have a profound effect on how annoyed I am when while using the device. That last one is a huge win for me. You can brag all you want about your 16 hour battery runtime, that lasts for what, a month, maybe two? Then a year later you're down to 4 hours. And six months later you're down to an hour.
Somehow the Framework laptop is the only laptop on the market that fails to have any of my laptop pet peeves. This is the first laptop I've had in many years that I don't think "if only..." every time I use it. It's like they made this laptop specifically for me, and I love them for it.
1. the red background behind the hardware switches on the "disconnected" side of the webcam and microphone (yes, it has a separate hardware switch for the microphone) is not particularly bright and can be difficult to see in dim light.
2. the rubber pads under the laptop aren't as frictiony as I would like, meaning that if you've got it on a tilted surface it may or may not stay put, depending on the angle.
3. the monitor hinges don't have as much friction as I would like, though I wonder if that's just mine. At some point I'll just buy a set of replacement hinges and see if that fixes the problem for me.
Those are the only things I can think of to whine about.
> At some point I'll just buy a set of replacement hinges
be such a casual mention is the real point behind the framework laptop. No more tossing devices because some small-but-crucial part of them fails.
I can only suppose it is getting design awards because it was designed to be modular rather than looking at it from a pure aesthetic point. It looks fine to me, it's almost reaching the perfectly boring laptop aesthetic. This isn't a denigration, I like unbranded simple clothing like uniqlo and the like as well. I personally do not own one, but my impression from the videos I've seen is bifurcated between appreciating the modularity and hating the implementation.
A framework owner might be able to enlighten me on this, but the display bezel being attached by magnets just seems a bit flimsy to me. I like the idea of the different expansion cards, but it does mean that there is no thunderbolt which is a miss for me. The full sized display port expansion card is definitely a win, but the rest seem unremarkable and frankly does the same or less than a usb hub. This could of course change depending on your own inclination to build expansion cards or third party/future first party cards, but right now the offerings aren't exceptional.
I do hope they are making enough money to see a second generation and see just how flexible their current chassis is. The new 12th gen intel chips or a ryzen version would be very welcome to see.
* The magnetic bezel works great and I've had no problems with it at all. It's completely secure and you pretty much need to lever it off with your fingernail if you want to change it for a different color, or clean around the edge of your screen. The lid spring is slightly wobbly as others have reported, but not too bad.
* It does have thunderbolt and it works great. I've use mine with a Razer core x for gaming without issue. It also works with my Kensington dock.
Also, the ports are TB4 ports. I use mine with a TB4 hub.
My daily driver is a Dell XPS running Pop and frankly it’s simply not as good.
I’d suggest that it’s not what “everybody wants”, but that people love their Macs and talk about it. And manufacturers are simply trying to copy what they can. Which is only the outside.
Astronaut 2: Always were...
Industrial design in the computer industry has been chasing Apple's taillights since forever ago, laptops especially so. Look at 90s laptops: almost all of the tropes associated with a 90s laptop, including the trackpad front and center with the case forming "armrests" on either side, were introduced with Apple's PowerBook series. When Apple showed with the first MacBook Air how thin and light a full-sized laptop could be, Intel countered with "Ultrabooks". And on and on. Basically if you get a laptop, you're either buying Apple or an Apple ripoff. Even Lenovo have incorporated Apple-isms into ThinkPads (mainly the keyboard and thinness).
Deleted Comment
Why do all phones look the same?
Sometimes, there is one clearly best option.
Happy they're getting recognition and I hope they keep iterating on the design.
Or is it as simple as there not being too many design awards from varying countries? Genuine question, I don't follow the design space.