it is simply not possible to build a device that is both elegant and
repairable look at this beautiful MacBook your idiot hands couldn't repair
it if it was easy to repair it would be some thick flimsy 2010 looking piece of
crap actually no those excuses no longer
hold any water the team over at framework has managed to not just create
a laptop that is easily repairable and upgradeable but it's also a thin
gorgeous performant laptop so without further Ado let's get to
building this thing because uh it did not arrive in one piece by the way
casually I bought one oh what I also bought is this segue to our sponsor
gskill gskill z5i is the first miniitx
with a Sleek five-sided design and curved tempered glass side panels that
can still install a high-end triple slot graphics card get yours today at the
link in the video
description
the story behind how framework started is amazingly relatable the creators
noticed that 10 15 years ago consumers
and manufacturers were all on the same page that a device that you purchased be
it a desktop computer or a laptop should have some kind of upgrade path so that
you could extend its service lifetime nowadays through a combination of of
glue soldered and non-standard components laptops are pretty much used
until some little thing goes wrong with it and then toss in the trash
W not this one most laptop manufacturers
out there are saying well in order to build something that anyone would
actually want to buy and use we have to
have this level of tight integration framework says well on something as
compact as a phone okay maybe I kind of see your point on a laptop though you
got kind of a lot of room to work with so this is my first Hands-On with this
thing and I got to say I see their point
it's like Ultra Book sexy thin and yet
what are all these modular do datam jigs
here ooh it even comes with a screwdriver can I take a moment to
appreciate that the one non-modular bit of IO is a headphone jack heck yeah wait
are these captain only five screws required to pop the
bottom up which means that compared to buying the pre-assembled one you are
almost surely going to find it worth it to assemble it yourself for the
$300 of savings oh my God not only do
they have a camera shutter they've got a microphone Hardware switch how cool is
that actually let's talk about the design philosophy here so framework is
made up of X engineers from Lenovo HTC
and apple predominantly who had the basic concept of all right instead of
trying to generate proprietary solutions to everything why don't we just go
around to component makers ask what are
you guys super jazzed about and then find a way to integrate that into a
repairable upgradeable design there are so many things to love about this design
that it's hard to know where to start but I'm going to settle on these QR
codes why open up a a paper manual when
you can just put QR codes that walk you through compatibility and how to upgrade
the various components inside your system you can see they're all over the
place they even go out of their way to say this battery is replaceable no
kidding made with love by the framework team that's freaking awesome there's
also the fact that while many of the screws use different threading or
different lengths they're freaking color coded how amazing is that it takes so
much guesswork out of trying to take something apart and put it back together
when the screws are different colors so you won't accidentally put one in the
wrong place and they actually include
some extras here in the top just in case
you misplace one it costs them probably
a fraction of a cent but it means so
much to the end user's experience the philosophical difference between
engineering things to make them harder for the end user because you don't trust
them and documenting things to educate
the end user so that you know you can trust them like look at look at this
just little things unplug this connector before removing the battery helpful
things it's got a 180° hinge look at
this even the touchpad huge touchpad
screws no glue the most mindblowing
thing about this is that the team of Engineers that designed this did it in
just a year and a half so was it actually impossible for a company like
apple that spends literal billions of dollars a year on R&D no the answer just
like anything is that they just didn't want to they also apparently are hiring
and yeah it's all it's all over the inside yeah look at that how beautiful
is it I'm going to start with the thing I recognize least ah yes this is one of
their little modular IO connectors now
the funny thing is that this isn't even a new dream Razer showed off a concept
PC way back that wanted to use Thunderbolt which uses a USB type-c
connector as a way to allow anything from Storage to even graphics cards to
be just slotted in in a really consumer
friendly way well as far as I can tell these are the first guys that have
actually managed to pull it off so no matter what it is you want to install
you just plunk it in and it'll interface with the machine via USB 3.2 that's not
to say that you have to plug in IO the thing that I put in just now is actually
a 1 TB storage Drive I wouldn't boot off
of that one but hey if you want a big fat steam library or something like that
that is absolutely the way to do it another thing traditional laptop
manufacturers do that framework is changing is maintain an unnecessary
level of secrecy about the actual components they're using to build the
device we did a video recently about how some laptop manufacturers were changing
the memory installed in their systems in a way that significantly impacted
performance well framework without forcing me to open this thing up and
actually you know check the product IDs of the chip says okay well this is using
a fisen controller it's got Micron nand it's capable of performance of around 1
GB per second and it's got support for self- encryption one happy challenge
right now is I was concerned that these were going to kind of come out too
easily but the truth is I actually cannot figure out how to get it out
looks like you're just supposed to press this button and you should be able to slide it out there's even a little like
oh yeah no you just got to you just got to give her so why don't we pop out this
USBC that Alex installed earlier so this
is a simple USBC expansion card and obviously you're going to need at least
one of these so that you can charge the device oh oh wow you have got to be
kidding me hey you know the laptop you
like it's got everything you need except man I sure wish I had a full-size
DisplayPort Port um Frameworks got you
covered that's awesome man I am not a
fan of having you USB type A on the right I have a tendency to use a Wired
Mouse because why do I use a Wired Mouse whatever I use a Wired Mouse deal with
it and I don't like having the the cable sticking out on the right because it
interferes with you know my my comfortable spacing here so I like my
USB type A on the left and with framework I can do that now the fit and
finish ain't perfect you know there's a there's a slight lip here CRI rer lest
look I have to acknowledge these things because that's the justification that
traditional laptop manufacturers have had for making everything so integrated
and so impossible to upgrade but it's also not a big deal it's on the bottom
of the device okay what else do we have here in terms of expansion cards we got
lots of USB-C's in case you're into that sort of thing you know what I'm going to
pop out that SSD and I'm going to go HDMI
I damn it I just realized I could carry
around a full freaking complement of these and they would take up less space
than my stupid type- C dongle I already have to carry anyway of course we got to
talk about the motherboard now like any other laptop the CPU is soldered
directly to the board that's because laptop CPUs are simply not available
with pads on the bottom but that doesn't mean that when this laptop has run its
course you couldn't still continue to use it in some way framework has
specifically designed the motherboard to be able to run outside of the laptop
enclosure and they've even gone as far as to provide CAD drawings so if if you
wanted to design your own case for it you could meanwhile other laptop
manufacturers have chassis intrusion detection switches so the thing won't
even turn on if you don't have it completely closed up what a diagnostic
nightmare that is this puppy is going to go right here got a little mini PCI
Express right there oh look at that conveniently the screw is already
in be really careful with these especially if for whatever reason you
have to take them off and put them back on CU you can actually rip them off the
solder pads on there oh man I love all the little Cable Management look at this
if I ever had to replace the display for example this would be so easy to take
out and rerun because they got just these little rubber grommet things right
here boom I have now recable managed it it took that long like that's the thing
that a lot of people don't understand when you talk about right to repair it's
not about telling you you're not allowed
to have your iPhone go have your iPhone I don't give a there just should be
other options that's all next up memory
now they sent over three sodiums I guess the point they were trying to make is
that you can kind of do whatever you want you can mix and match you can put
in one you can put in two uh it holds a maximum of 64 gigs of dual Channel ddr4
memory though so that is what we are going to install I'm trying to figure
out where I'm compromising here I mean
maybe maybe a more proprietary design could have squeezed in a little bit more
battery but it's just weather they make a conscious choice to put glue on the
bottom of it or not yeah cuz that's a 60w hour battery and that's a pretty
similar size to like a surface laptop that's 45 W hours very very respectable
in terms of the size of the device like I don't I don't see it like now I want
to invest something that's nagging at me a little bit though is that well yeah
there's better support for maintenance like swapping out a speaker module if it
fails or changing out the battery once it starts to degrade in terms of user
upgradeability we've got the io but most
laptops out there do have upgradable storage and do have upgradeable Wireless
modules for example and there are still many that have swappable RAM so unless
they're actually addressing upgradeable motherboards in some way they haven't
changed that much they only have 11th gen rate Now Intel but they say variety
of x86 maybe ARM and possibly even risk
five in the future of course we've seen larger companies than framework promis
this kind of upgradeability and failed to
deliver but of course those companies weren't built around openness
upgradability and repairability as a core pillar let's close it up shall we
sure which keyboard do you want Oh that's what this other box is isn't it
wait what is this oh my God I can have a white bezel if I want so also
wait you can see this switches the
Highlight features of the keyboard include a millimeter and a half of travel and as we mentioned before
shocking rigidity considering the thinness of the design and for the
trackpad it features a 4mm separation
between sensors so that's about as highend as you can get a glass top and
of course uses Windows Precision drivers
and that beauty is more than just Skin Deep these names might not mean a ton to
the average consumer but when I hear that the keyboard was built by lighton
and the trackpad was built by pixart I'm going well that's fantastic because
these are oems that have Decades of experience building these components and
it gives me a ton of confidence oh incidentally the power button SL
fingerprint sensor was built by goodex and features Linux drivers convenient
included pull in case you need to take it off and swap it out oh wow wait they
all use the same bit don't they yeah every screw in the whole laptop that's
something replacing the bezel for the white one that we don't want to use is
as simple as pulling off this magnetic cover and swapping it on a little
something like that this also gives us access to the screws that hold on the
display panel unfortunately at this time there's only one option A 2256 by 1504
resolution 3x2 display that does not have any touch touch support is built
into the motherboard so there's no reason that that couldn't be added in the future it does feature 400 nit Peak
brightness as well as full coverage of the srgb color space but I personally
would love to see a touch option this is
so cool this also gives you access to change out the camera and microphone
module which appears to be all one piece here yeah I have little clips that can
get broken when you can have little magnets that won't get broken you know
how one of the ways that you can evaluate the build quality of a laptop
is like a kind of a Twist test right and
a lot of the time that's the justification given for these tightly
integrated devices and yet here we are yeah there's some Flex that
is not an unreasonable amount of flex so
here's an XPS 15 which is basically gold
standard as far as Flex goes there's still a little bit okay fine but this
it's configurable where's my type a port Dell the Dell's not even thinner
and the hits just keep on coming all the drivers install in unattended mode why
is it that every motherboard for example
doesn't have just an unattended driver installer so that I don't have to click
next next next next next like some kind of monkey no doubt this is better you've
got to be kidding me the charger modular to would you look at that but like you
have your charger plugged into the wall someone comes along and they're like oh I want to charge my phone here's a
type-c cable yoink yeah basically I'm saying that my girlfriend's a terrible
person well yeah so it's gallium nitride
we've only seen them in really high-end laptop so far well that's awesome it's
so Compact and this will do up to 60 watts at 20 volts not bad at all holy
crap that's like actually not that bad so 1080p 60 FPS has a 1 six of an inch
Oni Vision sensor how you doing and an F2 lens with four elements yes you know
not a ton of dynamic range but it's doing like it's respectable yeah huh you
know how apple and Microsoft are the only ones that can do magnetic charging
connectors because of their stupid patents well now some you know little
hacky you know guy somewhere could just
make a magnetic charging connector clone
that just slots into your thing framework doesn't get in trouble cuz
they didn't make it this is like I mean I didn't say anything so
turboed to 4.2 I think that's about as advertised like 4.2 4.3 temporarily
it'll do around 3.5 all core I like that their fan just ramps instead of just
letting the CPU go to 100° you hear that like it's this has no
has no wine to it which is really nice like technically 100° is okay that
doesn't mean that I have to be comfortable with it though so all core
we end up at about 3.3 looks like it's just going to hold
there at around 80° this thing is cool I bet they even have like a configurable
BIOS battery disconnect oh that's so cool if you know you're going to run the
thing plugged into the wall all the time which can cause your battery to swell
and be a potential fire hazard you can just go battery disconnect run it off
wall power and just let it sit there latent power on AC attach like it just
powers on if you plug it in I could see that being useful like when do you plug
in your laptop when you don't actually know sometimes I plug it on in my bag
cuz I just want to charge it up before I leave the house okay I'm going to leave that off I'm sold I don't know if I've
actually ever done this before but I'm ordering one right now damn bloody hell
hold on this is not in US Dollars I'm surprised they even have a Canadian site
how are these guys so together got a strong framework
so Alex actually brought up with these guys a concern this is Affordable so how
are you guys going to stay profitable enough that I can trust that you will still exist in 2 years and they
basically said well it comes down to the direct to Consumer model as well as just
a more open-minded approach framework is counting on people coming back to them
for upgrades over time not because they build a shoddy product but because
people want to invest in improving the longevity of their device and obviously
where else am I going to go like if I want a different color bezel or they do
like a a partnership with some anime show that I love for a keyboard skin or
something like that I'm going to come back to framework for that kind of customization and that kind of
upgradeability and I think that's really really smart of them so here you go
they're only taking $100 deposits they're shipping in the summer right now
and I'm doing it thanks mik Center for sponsoring this video you can get the
best prices and selection on anything Tech at any one of microcenter's 25
locations across the United States if you use microcenter's custom PC Builder
you can spec out the best PC at any price point and once you're done in the
PC Builder just add your computer and setup to the Microcenter custom build
showcase which is a great place for people to gather and discuss each
other's builds and get inspiration for their next PC so don't wait head to the
link in the video description to check out Micro Center and get a coupon code
for a free pair of wireless bluetooth headphones if you guys enjoyed this
video uh you might also enjoy I mean when's the last time someone made a a
real like I going effort at module or anything well our DIY switch build
that's kind of why I was scared of this oh that was fun sure go watch that it
wasn't as good yeah the thing was terrible but it was fun yeah video's
good