After a little gentle wiggling, the magnets in the chassis pull the top plate firmly into position with an audible click-and the only thing left is re-tightening the five Torx T5 screws on the bottom, again with the included driver. Gently press the connector for the keyboard/touchpad cable straight down into its socket, then place the top plate on the motherboard.
We routinely work on large mid-tower machines that are more difficult than this travel-size laptop!Īfter inserting RAM, SSD, and Wi-Fi, it's time to close the Framework back up again-a process just as pleasant as disassembly was. Even attaching the fiddly little antenna leads to the AX210 Wi-Fi card wasn't as much of a chore as it typically would be, due to the wide-open design of the laptop.
With the motherboard fully exposed, sockets for two RAM DIMMs, an M.2 NVMe SSD, and an M.2 Wi-Fi card are boldly labeled, free of obstructions and easy to fill. Next, stick a finger in the loop on the single ribbon cable connecting keyboard and touchpad to the motherboard and lift straight up-then put the top plate, with keyboard and mouse still attached, aside for later. With the bottom Torx screws loosened, the only thing holding the top plate in position is a bunch of small magnets there are no plastic latches or tabs to tease loose. The next step is simply lifting the entire top plate of the laptop-including keyboard and touchpad-straight up. Once the screws are fully loosened, the next step is turning the laptop upright again and opening it up as though for normal use. All five screws are captive, meaning they stay attached to the laptop even after fully unscrewed. The first step is removing five Torx T5 screws from the bottom of the laptop, using an included driver. We measured the display's maximum brightness at 418nits we were not able to scientifically test the sRGB gamut.Īlthough we weren't able to directly measure sRGB gamut, we can say that deadmau5's psychedelically colorful video Pomegranate was obviously more vibrant on the Framework's display than on a 24-inch HP VH240a monitor, which itself claims only 72 percent sRGB gamut. One component you don't have any options with is the display-it's a 3:2 aspect ratio 2.5k design, glossy and non-touch, featuring 400+ nits brightness and claimed 100 percent sRGB color gamut.
If you want the same build including a copy of Windows at a lower total price, the Professional trim features all the same hardware and a Windows 10 Pro license for $2,000-or Linux users can do what we did, skip the Windows license entirely, and save $100 off the Professional package's cost. Checking almost every box (we opted not to buy a Windows 10 license or the maximum 64GiB RAM the laptop can handle) resulted in a $1,900 price tag-although we're listing the system above as $2,100 retail, since we used Windows 10 for the majority of testing. Our DIY build basically shot for the moon-it features the company's fastest CPU offering (Intel i7-1185G7), 32GiB of fast RAM, a 1TB SSD, and even Intel Wi-Fi 6E. Our biggest questions about Framework revolved around the physical design and its promised repairability, so of course we went DIY. When buying a Framework laptop, a new customer can select one of three pre-built configurations or go "DIY" and select each individual part themselves-although the DIY build also requires assembly on arrival.