When I invested in framework computers five years ago,
I thought, I hope it helps this more sustainable
and repairable laptop company get off the ground. But then I also thought, hey, wouldn't it be cool
if I got to see all their new goodies before anyone else? And yet, here you are, just four days
before your biggest announcement ever. Four days?
You're still seeing it before everyone else. I know, I know, I'm just mad you made me wait so long.
Guys, I'm talking four new products. A Framework 13 Pro model that uses LP-CAM2 memory
for high speeds and easy upgrades. A refreshed, not to mention cheaper version
of the Framework 16 gaming laptop. A brand new expansion bay module
that allows you to connect any GPU to your laptop.
And finally, a brand new product that raised my eyebrows right off my forehead.
What do you have to say for yourself, mister? We're trying to fulfill our mission.
What were you trying to hide from me? Leaving this till the last minute.
Am I not your favorite investor anymore? You are in the top five.
That's just how many you have, isn't it? It's about five. Is it because the other ones have more money?
That's what it's about, isn't it? See, you want to take the checkbook out? We can bump you up the list.
You know what else we can bump up the list? Is this message from our sponsor.
It's a keyboard. But before we talk about that,
I want to take a closer look at this.
It looks like a Framework 13.
It smells like a Framework 13. And it even like a Framework 13.
But it feels different. That's because the new Framework 13 Pro
is now in a new Pro chassis that like the MacBook Pro is made of CNC aluminum.
It also has a 21% bigger battery,
74 watt hours now, and new speaker modules.
But wait, there's more. It also comes with a higher resolution 2.8K display,
which is finally a touchscreen.
Okay, about time what the fuck took so long? That is actually an ask that came from you.
I remember five years ago you telling us we needed to have a touchscreen.
It actually is that it took us this long to get to a steel where we could afford to build a fully custom
from scratch panel. So this is actually the first panel we built
completely from a blank slate, which is actually a million plus dollar investment to make.
Wow. I mean, it looks great. What's the peak brightness on this thing?
This goes up to 700 net. We can actually crank it up right here.
No, no, it's already really bright. It is. Dude, this is incredible.
I'm honestly impressed. I did not know that this was going to be
a completely custom panel for you guys. Even the big boys, no offense, you're-
You're a big, well, you're bigger than me. Even the bigger laptop manufacturers
will often avoid the cost of a fully custom panel
because unless you're operating at the scale of someone like an Apple,
it's really hard to guarantee that you're gonna move
the kind of volume to justify that initial investment. We are confident. You must be very bullish on this.
Absolutely, on the pro. And they should be because the final big change to the pro
is the addition of an Intel Core Ultra Series 3 mainboard.
Now you can still get the Ryzen AI 300 series if you're into that sort of thing,
but the big difference with the Intel one is it comes with LP-CAM 2 memory
and upgrades to PCIe Gen 5 support for the SSD,
which means outstanding battery life, exemplary GPU performance thanks to Panther Lake,
and high performance RAM with no compromise on upgradeable memory.
Of course, the big question on people's minds
is can I take this Core Ultra 3 mainboard
and put it in my five-year-old framework 13 non-pro?
You actually can. So we, what? That's right. I thought he was setting up this question.
So you had to be like, womp, womp, there's a downside.
Now we maintained complete backwards and forwards compatibility on the mainboard.
So you can actually take an old mainboard and drop it into the pro chassis
or take the new Intel Core Ultra Series 3 mainboard
and put it into an original chassis. Elijah bamboozled me.
He got the briefing and the next line says, okay, well that's still way more
than any other laptop manufacturer. That's fucking nuts.
It took a lot of great engineering work. We pulled it off. Wow.
Genuinely impressed, man. This feels like another framework 16 moment
where I'm just like, yeah, no offense, but I thought it'd be impossible.
I never really believed in you, you know? Okay, thank you.
Well, no, it's not because I didn't think you were capable. I just thought your goals were too lofty.
We are ambitious. We're an ambitious company if nothing else. That is off script,
but I want to talk about the display a little bit more. You guys opted for a matte touchscreen,
which is an unusual choice. This is unusual. So we actually have a pretty novel
anti-glare polarizer here. So we're indoors here, but if you actually take this out into daylight,
it is actually pretty good, even pretty high contrast in that world.
Prove it. Are we gonna go for a walk? We've got the daylight, boys.
Watch your head, hey? I mean, watch your head, hey?
Now we're in Canada. I'm going straight into what is pretty much
the most challenging condition for a display.
Oh, wow. That's right. It is really, truly anti-glare.
That is the beauty of having the matte surface there. Holy crap, that's pretty good.
We turn it all the way down and you can actually still see it a bit,
which is pretty crazy. Okay, don't take this the wrong way,
but you know what it kind of reminds me of? Is those give back-
Retro-reflective. Yeah, yeah. We can actually turn the backlight off entirely.
You can see it's mildly retro-reflective, even just as a normal LCD,
but of course you can crank up the brightness and have it work normally. Like I can't see my cursor for shit, but like,
I mean, even at moderate brightness, this is usable.
Dude, I think my neck would burn before the screen would. Let's go back inside.
Another really cool thing that Framework is doing that many other laptop companies are not,
is offering a build of the system with Ubuntu. They're actually working directly with Canonical
to ensure that all the drivers and other updates that you need for seamless operation are pre-installed.
This is remarkable because while lots of laptops support Linux, if you want something official,
there aren't nearly as many options, making this an amazing gateway to a world
without Microsoft, which I have to say that
between our recent Linux challenge and my more recent MacBook Neo challenge,
I've actually been enjoying quite a lot. I've also been enjoying the Mac battery life experience.
Please tell me it's competitive. Do we have one we can open?
We can open up this one. But yeah, so this is actually a new expansion card latch
from the Framework laptop 12. So from that like two hand version
to this really simple single hand version. I mean, me, I prefer the two hand experience
if you know what I'm saying, but the Framework 13 Pro is no less of a man.
Is that okay for this channel? Are we going to be saying things like that? Say whatever we done well, please.
By the way, a nice hoodie. Oh yeah, twinning.
I should change. Oh. Into our sick new, damn it.
Moto T. How cool is this?
And it's in kind of on theme today.
Time for your open heart surgery, Mr. Johnson.
Hold on. What about the ribbon cable? It is right there and you can unplug it
while the computer is still running. Definitely recommended. Tell me how this bad boy performs.
We've got a higher capacity and higher efficiency.
So actually there are use cases where we're getting more than double the battery life
of the last generation Framework laptop 13. So for example, Netflix 4K streaming,
which oftentimes many of us do, we go from about eight hours on the last Framework laptop
to about 20 hours on this generation. Shit.
The battery actually is physically bigger in two dimensions.
So you'll need to bring along a new bottom cover and that new input cover to get the new battery.
Oh, let's talk about the new input cover. The final big change for the 13 Pro is the new input cover,
which will have a new haptic touchpad and a better typing experience due to its C and C frame.
With all these changes, this thing could be a serious competitor
to the MacBook Pro with its feel, style, and performance,
depending on one big thing, which I will find out after showing off a cool new feature.
There's a little spring pin that lifts this up to make it easier to lift off the keyboard now.
So nice. It's one banana, Michael.
What could it cost? $10? It is a little step up from the Framework laptop 13.
We actually are keeping that original chassis available
to be our new entry-level product. Obviously, adding a touchscreen, haptic touchpad,
larger battery, full C and C chassis does add some cost.
The memory and storage market is so volatile right now
that I actually don't want to put a number NVIDIA. But one thing that we can commit to
is that for anyone who is placing a pre-order for this product, whatever price they see
and place an order for is the price that they're going to pay for it. We're not going to update prices
on an order someone's already placed. I hate that that qualifies as a good guy take these days.
It's an okay guy take, yeah. Moving on, our next new laptop is less of a new laptop
and more of a mid-cycle refresh of the Framework 16,
starting with the input modules. There's new single-piece haptic track ports
and keyboards now. If you remember from the original Framework 16,
there were options to configure the inputs in a variety of ways, depending on your preference.
Well, this allows you to have a cleaner look,
but the bigger change is under the hood.
A new Ryzen 5 version that should make this a great option
for someone who wants a bigger screen or a bigger trackpad or a dedicated GPU,
but doesn't want to pay the top spec CPU tax.
There's also a translucent bezel that perfectly matches our carbon black
translucent screwdriver, lttstore.com. And finally, some cool developer projects.
What am I looking at here? These are actually input modules for Framework laptop 16
that were made by developers in the community. So this is a MIDI keyboard made by a guy named pitstoptech,
and this is- Weird mother naming him that. Yes, this is a cool Ergo keyboard layout
made by a developer named Axl. So super awesome projects that drop right into the 16.
And a trackpad. This was actually our design, our release.
So this was- You should leave it to the developers in the community.
I know, they do a better job than we do. We got a lot of asks, of course,
for that one-piece touchpad row. So we ended up actually releasing a 3D printable design
on GitHub last year, and then led that directly into this one-piece CNC aluminum
design that we're actually gonna be making for sale. Right, but how many seasons will this one piece have?
So what? Don't worry about it. I'm too old or too young for that reference.
I'm not sure which. Since we're on the subject of the Framework 16,
one of its biggest selling points is, of course, its upgradable GPU modules.
But up until now, your upgrade options have been pretty limited.
You've got a small handful of GPUs, or you've got, well, nothing.
But now, there's more. There's the Oculink Expansion Bay.
This will give you a single Oculink 8i connection
out the back of your laptop, which you could run into anything
that would take an Oculink 8i signal, like, say, for example,
a full-sized freaking desktop GPU,
which immediately raised tons of questions for me,
like, why Oculink instead of Thunderbolt 5?
Oculink gives you native PCIe out over that cable,
meaning you don't have protocol overhead. And we actually used 8i
rather than the more common Oculink 4 interface,
which means we can actually get up to 128 gigabits
per second of bi-directional throughput. And that's a very valid reason.
Actually, Tech PowerUp wrote an article a couple of months ago talking about how Thunderbolt 5
was anywhere from 16 to 36% worse for EGPU performance
compared to Oculink. With that said, I do still worry about some of Oculink's
missing quality of life features, like not being able to hot plug.
Do you have a plan for that? This is why we are positioning this as an Oculink dev kit,
because we know that this is not a general consumer solution,
like something like Thunderbolt, where everything is hot plug. And I mean, I guess that's what the other six
modular IO spots are for. Exactly.
My other question is, what does this mean for folks who want to run more than one PCIe card
off of this slot? Because 8 lanes is a lot.
8 lanes is a lot, but that gets you 100 gigabit network cards.
It gets you full DGPUs. There's a lot of great use cases for 8 lanes.
Right, but what if I wanted like two cards in like one of those bay things?
So we actually have, in this card, support for only Oculink 8i over a single interface.
There is actually a developer in the community who designed their own Oculink 8i board
that supports bifurcation into multiple interfaces.
Wow. That would be pretty cool.
On the subject of expansion bays, some of you might have noticed
All right, well, they have a new 10 gig Ethernet card for those who thought that two and a half gig wasn't enough.
You can play it as a joke. They've brought so much stuff that I literally forgot one of the end products are now.
It's okay, it's better than forgetting something, not on a plane. All right, let's, which brings us finally
to the star of the show. Okay, not the star of the show, but an odd choice.
The framework keyboard. Can you explain why you guys felt the need
to make this of all things? It actually started with the framework desktop.
So we designed the desktop to be a really convenient living room PC,
a server for a home lab setups, even stuff like SIM rigs.
And we found as we were using this, both internally and starting to seeding out
that there was just no keyboard that fit that scenario that we actually liked.
I was going to say, there are keyboards that fits that scenario. And then you finished the sentence and I agree.
I don't want to call out anybody's specific Elijah. He's handing me one that I've spent more time
than I'd like with. What makes this one different? This uses the same mechanical key structure
and actually the same touchpad architecture from the framework laptop 12.
So same great feel that we have across our laptop lineup.
And it's got an ultra power efficient new radio
from Nordic called the NRF 54. So the battery life is awesome too.
All right, the coolest part though, I think is actually this,
the little dongle garage that they built for it
so that I could permanently have the dongle installed
in my laptop. Not that I would normally use an outside keyboard
with a laptop, but actually I would want to use this for like my Logitech mouse receiver.
You could, it does fit in. It's a good fit. Okay, I'm going to try it because I actually have a new mouse
that I've been meaning to try. Okay, we haven't tested every dongle.
So we're going to find out if this specific one does fit.
Man, I'm putting them on the spot. All right, here we go. Yeah, of course I'm putting them on the spot. That's what I do.
Here it is, the pressure test. He knew what this was. Okay, that looks big.
Yeah, actually I don't know if that's gonna... Okay, I'm sure there are other Logitech products
in the world that have different size. You know what?
It's not that bad. It's better, yeah, it's better than it coming out the side.
I don't know if it comes out anymore though. Okay, this is the only, there's only two of these in the world.
Well, I guess one of them is mine now because I'm not giving you my dongle for my new mouse.
Oh, good. Do you want to make it a touch wider?
It's a perfect fit for our dongle. All right, so what you're telling me
is the tooling's already done. The tooling is actually not done technically.
Can you make it a little bigger? I'll bring that to your industrial designer. I'll blame you for the change.
Okay, to be clear, because like this one... That's a great fit. Is a great fit.
But the more you can accommodate, the better, you know? Now this seems like something
that would be more of like a community project, but how cool would it be if there was like,
you could kind of like have a slider to adjust the depth or something like that.
Great, thank you. Bring that back to the team.
On a desktop, it like doesn't matter, but on a desktop, it also just doesn't matter
if my dongle's sticking out the front. So this is really about the laptop.
That's right. So you know my suggestions are not that stupid. Okay, we did do the touch screen.
So what you're telling me is in five years, I can have a dongle garage that has an adjustable deck.
Exactly, that's right. Remember, you're not the favorite investor.
Top five, top five. I know it's because they have more money. Coming back to the keyboard,
the firmware is being fully open sourced for people who want to play around and have fun with it.
It can store four different profiles and it can use either the dedicated dongle adapter
or just plug the USB dongle directly into your system
or you can plug it in via USB-C. Now, question for you, Narav.
Framework is probably best known for its repairability.
How is a keyboard more repairable or upgradeable?
The battery is actually replaceable just like it is on all of our products.
Beyond that, there is actually not that much you can repair on something like this,
but we did make it as open as we could. So, of course, the firmware is open source.
We're releasing open source surface CAD, so you can three-print your own accessories.
And we're actually releasing the guts of the system, this control board, to be its own dev board
for people to make their own keyboards around. Oh, that's cool. If I spill a Coke in the touchpad, but my keyboard is fine,
can I buy a new trackpad from you? You, at the moment, cannot.
If we start to see that happen a lot in the community, that's something that we would look at.
Acceptable. Everyone starts spilling your drinks.
Well, I wouldn't actually tell people to do that on purpose,
but let's move around to the front and I'll ask them the real hard-hitting questions.
As exciting as a keyboard is, the two categories that probably come up
the most from people are printer and TV.
TV, yes, those are the top two. And what can you tell the community about those categories?
We ran out of space on this table, so that's all the products we could build for this year.
That is, wow. When he gets tired of running framework,
I'm pretty sure he's going into politics. Would you guys have any interest in exploring those categories?
Because they seem like ones where framework's
core values of repairability and upgradeability
would be a huge enhancement. I mean, TV manufacturers bring us a new TV every year
that has more ads and less repairability than the one before
with no way to meaningfully reuse any components of it.
That seems right up Frameworks Alley and then printers.
I mean, f***ing printers, right?
You're right. Even the keyboard actually starts from consumer frustration.
Like, we were frustrated, we looked down the community, we know people are frustrated by the only keyboard
that's available in this segment. And so when we think about what products
we want to build next, it actually really does start from consumer frustration,
but then we have to filter it through, can we build that product?
Do we have the supplier connections? Do we have the R&D expertise?
And actually, maybe most importantly, the money. Do we have the funding to be able to turn on the new category?
I knew that was why he came here today. Okay, I'm sorry to have to ask you why in this video,
but you happen to have any spare change that you can share.
No, but I do have something pretty exciting on our side that you might like.
Oh, it's here. Yeah, I'm going to go get it. I'll be right back.
I have no idea what he's getting. I hope it's a giant pile of cash.
He is gone. He went all the way to the other building. Maybe he went to the bank.
He went to the airport. Oh, he's flying. He's flying to sell the jet to fund the printer.
Call it inspired by frameworks designing those,
or maybe call it, we were already aligned in the first place.
We're finally ready to start talking about a product that's very exciting and coming soon at LTT Store,
and it's going to be- This looks cool. Our new battery bank.
My original goal was to have it so that you could completely resell it, C-E-L-L.
Once the batteries reached their end of life. There was no battery manufacturer on earth
who was willing to accept the liability of a design like that,
but we've reached what we think is going to be a good middle ground,
and that is what we're calling battery mags.
So these are going to allow you, once you reach the end of life for yourselves,
to keep the control board, keep the chassis, and just swamp, throw in a new battery pack.
But wait, there's more. The best part is, you know, again, very framework inspired,
upgradeable firmware. That's good. And reconfigurability, so that in the event
that let's say sodium ion were to make its way
into the 18650 form factor in the future, which has benefits like being
a little more ecologically friendly, more stable and better at lower temperatures,
you'd be able to swap in a new battery magazine or order it configured with that in the first place
and take advantage of those better characteristics. Or if there are future chemistries,
we'd love to be able to support them. This is awesome. The coolest part is this mechanical interface,
which is still kind of under development, but the goal here is to be able to equip it
with different hats. So what you could do is you could build
like a USB-A breakout hat or an LED flashlight hat.
Expansion card hat? Expansion card hat, bench top power supply hat.
Whatever it is you want to build, you'd be able to clip it on and then use the two USB-Cs that are there by default
and adapt them to whatever you need. Disassembly is with one screw.
Very cool. Hopefully someday soon. And now that I've shown it to him,
they can't do a battery bank before we do. Great, thank you for that.
And you know what else he can't do before I do it? It's a segue to our sponsor.
If you guys enjoyed this video, why not check out the original investment video,
which really outlines what I found so inspiring
about Framework's mission and their design ethos and what made me want to put some money in
and have some skin in the game and be a part of their success.
And it's, again, don't take this the wrong way, but it's worked out like way better
than I could possibly expected. Yeah, yeah.