Since August 2022 I was using a FW13 12th Gen Intel as my primary laptop. I didn't strictly need a new one, as it was still working perfectly fine. But upgrading after 4 years doesn't seem crazy or too excessive, and I'm worried about the global economy and supply chains going forward, so I decided to get a new one a bit earlier than I usually would.
The old one will serve as a family device, and if need be, a spare part donor for the new one. One of the advantages of an upgradable laptop like this. I might get it a case and convert it to a headless/desktop device eventually. Would make a nice low-power home server.
I just recently got the new FW13 with Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 delivered, set it up, used it for a few days, and I figured it's a good time to write some thoughts about both and my Framework Laptop experience overall.
The old one
The old one served me well for almost 4 years, which is appreciated. After all this time it looks close to brand new. Not much visible wear.
It has enough power to compile Rust projects without being painfully slow, though I typically work over ssh on a desktop machine, which is 3x-6x faster at heavy tasks like that. I'll post some benchmarks at the end.
It always worked well with Linux and had good support in the Open Source community wherever it matters, e.g. pre-made modules for nixos-hardware early on. All the devices I cared about worked well.
I loved (and still do) the ease of being able to open, inspect, dedust, replace parts, etc. E.g. I added an NVMe radiator because I had a spare one around, and it fits, so why not?
I had to replace the input cover though, as I was affected by keys intermittently not working. Replacement was super easy, the part was about $100. But it was quite an annoying problem to debug until the FW Team published their findings.
The second complaint would be the BIOS update situation for 12th Gen Intel, which turned out to be hopeless. I personally didn't care much, but between 3rd party BIOS vendors and other complications, the BIOS update story went quite wrong for this model.
The last complaint would be the wobbly lid hinge. It was annoying sometimes: at steep angles the lid would not hold position and when unstable or moved it would wobble a little.
The battery life was mid. It did improve due to some firmware fixes, etc. but it was never good. I'm not much of a traveler, and mostly need the battery to move the laptop from the dock to the dinner table or a couch, so I was aware of that before buying and didn't care.
I was very happy about the hardware battery charge limit. Except when traveling, I kept it set to 60%, and didn't notice any battery degradation over the years, despite having it plugged in 99% of the time.
I love the physical toggles for microphone and camera. That feature alone always made FW13 feel like a laptop for people like me — the kind who join morning calls in their underwear. Just kidding (or am I?). People who care about cybersecurity, privacy, etc.
The new
It might sound weird, but I really appreciate that the new laptop... is in the form factor exactly the same as the old one. Maybe I'm too much on the spectrum, heh. No need to adjust to a new key layout, everything feels familiar, the microphone and camera physical switches are still there. No negative surprises.
The new higher DPI screen is soo nice. Immediately noticeable improvement.
The hinge is fixed. Now it is very high-force, maybe even a bit too much. Does opening the lid count as exercise?
The specs are a significant improvement, at least for my needs (compiling Rust code).
The desktop UI feels even smoother than before, especially with an external monitor attached. Overall, probably a combination of the improved built-in screen at 120Hz (60Hz on the old one) and better specs.
The old laptop under load ran quite hot and spun the CPU fan like a lawn mower. So far, the new one handles the load much more gracefully: cooler and quieter.
Looks to me like the fwupdmgr dealt well with firmware updates right away, so hopefully the BIOS story will be better this time.
I'm not sure about the battery yet. Again - I don't really use it much, and I capped it at 60% right away too. I don't expect miracles. There is plenty of info online with proper measurements.
Summary
As you could see, I was somewhat of an early Framework adopter, and fine with some bumps along the way. I need a laptop that is a bit like a desktop: good power, open, repairable, and I don't care much about battery capacity.
I'm happy to see that everything that was not ideal in the previous version is now fixed, and the whole laptop is just a more polished and capable version of what I already liked.
Benchmarks
The main project I'm working on has a compilation benchmark, so I'm going to use it for real-life performance. It's a relatively large and heavy Rust codebase.
ren - my desktop
dpc@ren
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OS: NixOS 26.05 (Yarara) x86_64
Kernel: Linux 6.19.9
CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D (32) @ 4.04 GHz
Memory: 26.22 GiB / 62.01 GiB (42%)
Swap: 5.26 GiB / 31.00 GiB (17%)
Disk (/): 11.47 MiB / 31.00 GiB (0%) - tmpfs
Disk (/bin): 2.61 TiB / 6.84 TiB (38%) - bcachefs [Read-only]
Date: 2026-03-30
Commit: 08fb6c1b613
total user sys
Full check debug: 62.21 986.43 145.05
Incr check debug: 4.38 10.46 8.01
Full build debug: 111.77 2129.55 213.69
Incr build debug: 13.69 38.91 27.34
Full check release: 54.47 566.00 132.61
Incr check release: 15.77 39.94 7.89
Full build release: 448.37 12471.30 674.43
Incr build release: 371.44 10790.08 399.68tlb - new Framework 13
dpc@tlb
-------
OS: NixOS 26.05 (Yarara) x86_64
Kernel: Linux 6.19.9
CPU: AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 (24) @ 1.95 GHz
Memory: 14.24 GiB / 93.59 GiB (15%)
Swap: 0 B / 46.80 GiB (0%)
Disk (/): 10.86 MiB / 46.80 GiB (0%) - tmpfs
Disk (/bin): 91.67 GiB / 6.69 TiB (1%) - bcachefs [Read-only]
Date: 2026-03-30
Commit: 08fb6c1b613
total user sys
Full check debug: 162.62 2473.10 164.12
Incr check debug: 7.66 21.89 8.53
Full build debug: 317.64 5398.69 252.56
Incr build debug: 19.44 69.70 21.61
Full check release: 129.30 1324.88 144.16
Incr check release: 37.23 95.91 9.08
Full build release: 1488.11 31536.63 726.96
Incr build release: HANG? cargo bug?mutex - old Framework 13
dpc@mutex
---------
OS: NixOS 26.05 (Yarara) x86_64
Kernel: Linux 6.19.9
CPU: 12th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-1280P (20) @ 3.60 GHz
Memory: 3.76 GiB / 62.51 GiB (6%)
Swap: 0 B / 40.05 GiB (0%)
Disk (/): 11.96 MiB / 31.26 GiB (0%) - tmpfs
Disk (/bin): 755.77 GiB / 906.66 GiB (83%) - ext4 [Read-only]
Date: 2026-03-31
Commit: 5272f1734c4
total user sys
Full check debug: 226.67 2951.83 196.04
Incr check debug: 8.78 25.72 10.34
Full build debug: 433.46 6511.59 309.13
Incr build debug: 28.67 81.74 27.63
Full check release: 157.38 1606.74 183.38
Incr check release: 42.21 107.07 12.39
Full build release: 2062.62 38336.06 860.68
Incr build release: HANG?