 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 it did not arrive in one piece. By the way, casually, I bought one. Oh, what I also bought is the segue to our sponsor, G.Skill. G.Skill Z5i is the first mini ITX 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 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. Whoa! 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 gotta say, I see their point. It's like ultrabook sexy thin. And yet, what are all these modular doodadamajigs here? Ooh, it even comes with a screwdriver. Can I take a moment to appreciate that the one non-modular bit of I.O. is a headphone jack? Heck yeah! Wait, are these captive? Only five screws required to pop the bottom off, 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 ex-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, upgradable 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 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 this, just little things. Unplug this connector before removing the battery. Helpful things. It's got a 180 degree hinge. Look at this, even the touch pad, huge touch pad, screws, no glue. The most mind blowing 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 over the inside. Yeah. Look at that. How beautiful is it? I'm gonna start with the thing I recognize least. Ah, yes. This is one of their little modular I.O. 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 I.O. The thing that I put in just now is actually a 1TB 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 check the product IDs of the chip says, okay, well, this is using a Fizen controller. It's got Micron NAND, it's capable of performance of around one gigabyte per second, and it's got support for self-encryption. One happy challenge right now is I was concerned that these were gonna 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 gotta give her. So why don't we pop out this USB-C that Alex installed earlier. So this is a simple USB-C expansion card, and obviously you're gonna need at least one of these so that you can charge the device. Oh, pah, oh wow. You have gotta 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 display port port. Frameworks got you covered. That's awesome. Man, I am not a fan of having 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 cable sticking out on the right because it interferes with, you know, 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 slight lip here. You're crying me a river, Linus. 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've got lots of USB-Cs in case you're into that sort of thing. You know what, I'm gonna pop out that SSD and I'm gonna go HDMI. I, damn it. I just realized I could carry around a full freaking compliment of these, and they would take up less space than my stupid Type-C dongle that I already have to carry anyway. Of course, we gotta 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 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 gonna 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 because 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 shit. There just should be other options, that's all. Next up, memory. Now they sent over three Sodems. I guess the point they were trying to make is that you can kinda do whatever you want. You can mix and match, you can put in one, you can put in two. 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 whether they make a conscious choice to put glue on the bottom of it or not. Yeah, cause that's a 60 watt hour battery. Yeah. That's a pretty similar size to like a surface laptop. That's 45 watt hour. 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 while 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 upgradability, we've got the IO, but most laptops out there do have upgradable storage and do have upgradable wireless modules, for example. And there are still many that have swappable RAM. So unless they're actually addressing upgradable motherboards in some way, they haven't changed that much. They only have 11th gen right 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 promise this kind of upgradability and failed to deliver. I don't. 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. Wait. You can see the 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 track pad, it features a four millimeter separation between sensors. So that's about as high end 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 track pad 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 slash 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 three by two 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 f**king 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's modular too. 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 laptops 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 one sixth 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 because they didn't make it. This is like, I mean, I didn't say anything. So it 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 a hundred degrees. You can hear that like it's, it has no, has no wine to it, which is really nice. Like technically a hundred degrees is okay. That doesn't mean that I have to be comfortable with it though. So all core, we ended up at about 3.3. It looks like it's just going to hold there at around 80 degrees. 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 while 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 because 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 two 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 partnership with some anime show that I love for a keyboard scan or something like that, I'm going to come back to framework for that kind of customization and that kind of upgradability. And I think that's really, really smart of them. So here you go. They're only taking a hundred dollar deposits. They're shipping in the summer right now, and I'm doing it. Thanks Micro Center for sponsoring this video. You can get the best prices and selection on anything tech at any one of Micro Center's 25 locations across the United States. If you use Micro Center's custom PC builder, you can spec up the best PC at any price point. And once you're done in the PC builder, just add your computer and setup to the Micro Center 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, you might also enjoy, I mean, when's the last time someone made a real like- I was going to say- Effort at modular anything. Well, our DIY switch build, that's kind of why I was scared of this. Oh, that was fun. Yeah, sure, go watch that. It wasn't as good. Yeah, the thing was terrible. But it was fun. Yeah, video's good.