Framework Laptop Intel 12th gen

7owners with an opinion

50%of verdicts positive

2/3positive/negative since 2024

2 yrslongest happy owner

0happy after 3+ years

Criticized for reliability and repairability.

What owners wrote

Doesn’t like itOwned 2 years

Not Linux specific, but the thermal paste is pretty poor. Mine disintegrated in two years of heavy use. (13", Intel 12th gen) Popping off the heat sink to apply a fresh dab is no big deal, but I didn't find out until the top-center keys (y, 6) began failing. Replacing the keyboard is $50 and about a hundred tiny screws.

Likes itOwned 2 yearsStill going

I've been using mine (13-inch) for a couple years now. Like others, I would've got the AMD mainboard but it wasn't out yet, so I settled for the Intel 12th gen. When I first got it, the touchpad didn't click properly. There was a bit of back and forth with support (they wanted to see video of the issue) but all in all, they shipped the replacement part within 3 days of the report. That's acceptable, in my book. Then there was a very strange issue where the machine would randomly shut down while sleeping, seemingly related to using Windows 11 with the 12th gen CPU. Turns out you need to disable 'connectivity in modern standby' if this is the case: POWERCFG -SETDCVALUEINDEX SCHEME_CURRENT SUB_NONE CONNECTIVITYINSTANDBY no 0 POWERCFG -SETACVALUEINDEX SCHEME_CURRENT SUB_NONE CONNECTIVITYINSTANDBY 0 Anyway, aside from that, I've had no issues. The main benefit in my view is that you don't need to worry about 'timing', in terms of generational improvements in the hardware. In my case, I didn't get the AMD CPU I wanted, but when I decide to upgrade, I can do so for a pretty reasonable price: https://frame.work/gb/en/products/mainboard-kit-amd-ryzen-70... . Likewise, if any component breaks, I can be confident it's not going to cost me the whole machine, and I can do all the servicing myself. This would be inconceivable in any other laptop, especially one of this form factor.

NeutralOwned 2 years

I didn't seem to have this problem yet so took a look at my recent machines: cat /sys/power/mem_sleep starlite mkv 0yo Intel(R) N200, has deep. framework0 2yo Intel 12th gen, has deep. framework1 1yo AMD Ryzen 5, lacking deep! That explains it—I haven't really taken the last one out of the house yet. So what can we do about this? Can we start a class action lawsuit for breaking the PC? Probably too late to return the AMD. Finally I recommend calling S0ix/s2idle nap, and leave s3 as sleep.

Likes itOwned 2 years

I've had a Framework 13" Intel 12th Gen for about two years now. It's my personal machine, so it doesn't get a ton of use. It's been quiet as a web surfing and desktop syncing machine. I use it to administer my other computer around the house. I even used it to host a steam game trivia night and some light gaming without issue. I've switched out the hinges and will probably switch mainboards and displays at some point in the future. Does it have battery life like the macbook or those new arm machines? No. Does it have the same performance for RAM as soldered options? Probably not. But if they introduce an LPCAMM2 variant, it will be more competitive.

Doesn’t like itOwned 1 year

We bulk bought a lot of Framework Intel 12th gen laptops to kit out our engineering team. Within a year many of these (>20%) started experiencing the "400 MHz bug" where the CPU is either intermittently or constantly stuck at 400 MHz, and the laptop starts to heat up like an oven. As far as I know there has never been any conclusive fix for this issue from Framework, or even an official debugging guide. It really soured me on the idea of repairable laptops - what's the point of it being "repairable" if you have huge fundamental flaws in the hardware that go unfixed?

Doesn’t like it

I had a Framework 13 (Intel, 11th gen) running Windows, the battery lasted 3.5h – streaming a movie (reproducible). The other major issue was the fan constantly running on max, I didn't have a laptop fan that loud for 15 years. Before having several loops with customer support, I tried ever forum post, all options, settings, tricks etc. Then I end it in for repair, the final summary: Everything works as expected. So I returned it. I tried another time with Framework 13 (Intel, 12th gen) and that showed exactly the same behaviour, so I again returned it :( I want to love Framework, for me I clearly see a huge value in repairability: I'm having a Lenovo Ideapad for 5 years now, there was some dirt under the keys, so I tried (by documentation) to remove the key cap and destroyed it by doing so. Then I wanted to replace the keyboard, and by doing so I destroyed the connector to the keypad. I'm clearly not a hardware guy, but I've been repairing my devices (PC, phone) for decades now, and I never struggled as much as I did with the Ideapad. I plan to give Framework 13 (Intel, Ultra) another shot, because they finally have the 61Wh battery in the first CPU tier. But I fear it won't make a difference as Framework remains ignorant about their broken power management (horrible battery, fan noise, heating up).

Likes it

I disagree with this characterization, in two ways: 1. This is a Linux-friendly laptop for the most part, but it's still built with Windows as the primary OS (and the only one you can get preinstalled). When you're building things with Linux kernels in mind, it's easy to pick current hardware that supports Linux optimally (see also: every Chromebook). 2. The places where this laptop isn't perfect are _nothing_ like the problems Linux laptops had twenty, or even ten, years ago. I used a Thinkpad with Ubuntu in 2012, and it worked pretty well... but also ran super-hot and burned through battery ridiculously quickly. The Framework doesn't do that. Sure, it doesn't have amazing battery life (around 5-6 hours), but it also doesn't have amazing battery life in Windows; it's just the nature of the hardware. The automatic-brightness thing is real, but relatively minor compared to all the rest of the hardware (Wifi, fingerprint reader, etc) working smoothly.