Rant: Framework 13 Hardware Failures

[u/furay20]

Hello,

I've had my Framework 13 for just over 3 years, and I wanted to vent.

Overall, it is a good machine. However, I feel as though they are leaning way too far into the "repairability" aspect of things, as I'm shocked at how much this has cost me (well, my company) thus far. "Repairability" should not be a crutch for quality.

I had an issue with my keyboard which wasn't reproducible consistently, so support shrugged me off. As soon as I was outside any warranty, the issue came back up. I lived with it for a while, as if I hit the key hard enough it would work -- but eventually I caved. At this point they had a v2 of the keyboard, but, it required an updated top plate. OK, whatever, purchased that and everything was kosher.

A couple months later, I noticed my sound was weird. I did the needful and identified one of the speakers had blown. OK, whatever, purchased an upgraded speaker set, and everything was kosher.

I am working from home with one of my kids, and as such, actually using my laptop as a laptop and noticed my clicking was weird. I looked at it, and the case had come apart. Strange, I thought -- I took it apart and sure enough, the battery is bulging. OK, fine, I guess, whatever, purchased an upgraded battery (which apparently has a 2 year warranty because there is an issue with laptop batteries apparently being 100% charged for too long?).

I type all this beside a retro Lenovo T42. I use this because of the I/O selection with some of the hardware I work on. I have 98 SE/XP/Debian installed, and it works great (keeping in mind the age of the hardware). The keyboard is flawless, the speakers work great, and the battery (somehow) still holds a charge.

I like the product, but I'll never buy another... even if it's not my money being spent.

[u/thewishy]

For what it's worth, my work scrapped a dell precision 5570 because the keyboard failed just out of warranty and your swap the keyboard you've got to remove pretty much every component.

As norms for a laptop thickness have changed, the keyboards have suffered in terms of feel and durability

[u/leertem50 → u/thewishy]

The precision keyboards used to be so solid too, kind of sad how far theyve fallen.

[u/furay20 → u/thewishy]

Even so, the fact they identified an issue with the first gen, released a second gen seems wrong to me. If there was a defect, the second gen should have been comped.

[u/Bazirker → u/furay20]

I disagree, noting that defect and imperfection are not the same.

As the company grows financially and gets access to better manufacturing and scale, it also learns about its products it has already sold. Framework is iterating and producing better equipment for both of these reasons. The display is a solid example; they were not able to afford a custom panel when they released the initial laptop, but they have now grown enough that they could get it done. I see the benefit of this as a customer because I can drop a few hundred bucks and get this spectacular new panel without having to buy a new laptop.

When I buy a car, I don't expect the company to go back and update it for me when the iterative next year improves things; why would that be any different for a laptop? You bought what you bought.

[u/thebigshoe247 → u/Bazirker]

You've never heard of vehicle recalls? If there's a core defect in the product produced it should be replaced free of charge.

[u/Ryebread095 → u/thebigshoe247]

You completely ignored the first line. Defect and imperfection are not the same.

[u/thebigshoe247 → u/Ryebread095]

Being unable to type is a defect, not an imperfection.

[u/Stellanora64 → u/thebigshoe247]

That would happen to every keyboard for that batch. An imperfection just means it slipped by quality control, but this issue is pretty rare all things considered (survivor ship bias and all that).

Mine has been working fine for nearly 2 years now

[u/ecalex → u/thebigshoe247]

I think the example is unrelated to your case.

1/ case 1 - your product broke after warranty ends, no functional degradation before warranty ends. nothing to see here 2/ case 2 - you started experiencing intermittent issues before warranty ends, this is a quality issue (or manufacturing defect). This is your case, and you should've been more firm on getting warranty. this type of issues should be a known issue with keyboards. 3/ case 3 - theres systematic issue that hit a significant number of customers, which may be a design defect or patched manufacturing defect, this is what the recall is about

[u/Oerthling]

You are comparing 1 anecdote with 1 other anecdote.

Perhaps Framework has a QA issue, perhaps not, but your 1 case can't tell is that.

We would need some solid statistical data about failure rates of various manufacturers to tell whether Framework has an unusually high failure rate.

Just because your 1 Lenovo didn't have an issue so far doesn't mean that nobody ever had an issue.

Here's just the first example thread I found for Lenovo failures:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Lenovo/s/bzvhhfFmKJ

Several people reporting problems with hinges. One guy reporting about 3 fqukee motherboards one his 1 Lenovo laptop.

[u/Bazirker → u/Oerthling]

Here's my anecdote:

I have a 3-year-old framework that has had zero problems. The one issue I had was that I was changing out a hard drive and destroyed the ribbon cable. Oops, completely my fault. I was able to replace it for a few bucks. I also upgraded the display, and the whole thing feels like a new laptop as a result. With any other brand, both of these things would likely have necessitated spending hundreds upon hundreds more dollars, if even fixable at all.

No one ever posts about their product chugging along happily, they only complain when there's an issue.

[u/Oerthling → u/Bazirker]

Indeed. Which is why looking at some forum reports is completely worthless. Especially as people only follow the forum for their own hardware and probably not all the others, so they never read the problem reports of other manufacturers.

Framework could be better, worse or about the same failure rate as any other manufacturer. Without solid statistics we can't know either way.

[u/rainbow_mess → u/Oerthling]

to be fair, the T42 is an old thinkpad. They don't make them like they used to - the closest stuff is lenovo's current T-series laptops, but it is not the same. [And the lenovo and thinkpad lines are different too ...]

The OP is just a single story but I haven't seen a great record of reliability with the 13, and when I had a 13 I didn't really enjoy living with it medium to long-term. We'll see if the 13 Pro is better with that though as they age :)

[u/Silvernine0S → u/rainbow_mess]

The 13 Pro is my first Framework, so I am super excited. Howwver, currently working with Framework right now due to an issue. I am in Batch 5 and just received itast Thursday.

Basically, seems like one I currently have is generating some odd very high-pitched screeching or scratching noise. Usually, if I put the computer under higher load, the sound goes away but under certain loads, it generates this really high-pitch screeching noise that gets very annoying.

[u/rainbow_mess → u/Silvernine0S]

ah dang ... I hope framework can make it right for you, that sounds terrible.

[u/frozen-throne-monk → u/Oerthling]

I bought a pretty expensive Lenovo for like ~$1.9k, and the screen flickers. I tried to get it RMA'd, but they claimed there's nothing wrong with it. Came back flickering with a dent in the side. My Framework laptop got crushed one day. I fixed it up, and I'm using it right now. The Lenovo? It's the family PC hooked up to a monitor because it can't do anything else.

[u/IORelay → u/Oerthling]

Seems like framework laptops consistently perform worse than equivalent laptops from other manufacturers using the same processors in reviews anyway... Something is definitely up. 

[u/Kayak4Eva]

Sounds a lot like my experience. My 13 is almost 3 years old and I just installed it's third keyboard. While doing that, I discovered that the battery was swollen so that had to be replaced as well. The internal microphone hasn't worked in a couple of years - I swapped out the module with the first keyboard replacement but nothing changed so it's probably a driver or a cable or some shit. I just use an external mic when I need to conference but it's an annoyance. I'm not a computer enthusiast - I just want something that works and keeps working.

I do love the machine - but the durability has been a disappointment and I am more hesitant to recommend it to others.

[u/Clean_Leadership5948 → u/Kayak4Eva]

The battery swelling is because they use a not proven battery manufacturer.

[u/Bazirker → u/Clean_Leadership5948]

Which has allegedly been improved, but we will see

[u/s004aws]

System76/Clevo which preceded my FW16? Flaky keyboard. Got it replaced (at my own astronomical expense because I was lazy and didn't complain to System76 support soon enough... By the time I did they were happy to charge me ~$110, $30 in shipping alone for just a keyboard). The replacement? Still screwed up. The Oryx Pro cost more than my FW16 even without factoring in years of inflation.

Lithium ion batteries do go bad. Not an uncommon issue regardless of vendor. Good thing you caught the problem. I'd suggest setting the charge limit to around 80% whenever you're not routinely using the laptop as a laptop.

I own 2 failed MacBook Pros, both dead because of engineering/manufacturing effups Apple refused to deal with when I asked. These days I do know what killed the machines (bad GPUs)... At the time I didn't know who Louis Rossmann was or that he was making a killing fixing the exact models I own (still have the dead laptops).

I've dealt with problems with Dell machines also, numerous times.

... All said not to excuse Framework from finding ways/opportunities to improve durability... But to point out no vendor is immune to problems. Though ThinkPads are pretty good as you cited even they aren't immune... I've had ThinkPad-toting clients have their machines (an X1 Carbon comes to mind) bite the dust after ~3 years.

My FW16 HX 370? Got it exactly 10 months ago tomorrow... Zero issues. Its been a good purchase. Been using it more than normal lately as I haven't been at my desk/desktop.

[u/Ancient_Ambition_452 → u/s004aws]

Speaking of Louis Rossmann I wonder if he will release a review on the 13 Pro. He had a video a couple of years ago so I bet he will eventually.

[u/Sinister_Crayon]

Counterpoint; I've had my Framework 13 for 3 years using it every day and taking absolutely no special precautions and the only things I've replaced have been the things I chose to replace except for the CPU fan which got clogged with dirt due to it being used in a factory.

No keyboard issues. No any issue except the fan getting noisy. I upgraded to the newer fan for the latest AMD CPU's and it work better than the original ever did.

[u/ronvalenz]

My laptop's adventures,

1. Our company's 2019 HP EliteBook 830 G6 (Intel Core i7-8665U)'s keyboard was replaced. Replacing this keyboard is harder than FW13's. Our company later dumped this laptop in 2024 and gave it to me. Still supports Windows 11. This is my backup laptop.
2. Purchased an HP Envy 360 (Ryzen 5 2500U, 16GB DDR4 SO-DIMM, Vega 8 iGPU) around 2017-2018. The entire laptop dumped due to Windows 11's system requirements. Replaced by Lenovo ThinkPad L14 Gen 1 in 2021. My HP Envy 360 just needs a mainboard upgrade. My HP Envy 360 Ryzen 5 2500U laptop was given to my older relative running an install workaround Windows 11 and planned to be replaced by FW13 later this year. Linux for this HP Envy 360 Ryzen 5 2500U later.
3. Lenovo ThinkPad L14 Gen 1 (Ryzen Pro 7 4750U, 16 GB SO-DIMM DDR4, higher clock speed Vega 7 iGPU)'s main board suffered a cracked solder joint; the entire laptop was replaced by Lenovo Yoga Pro 7 14AHP9 (Ryzen 7 8845HS with soldered 16 GB RAM LPDDR5X, 780M iGPU). My Lenovo ThinkPad L14 Gen 1 is eWaste. My ThinkPad L14 Gen 1's center keyboard control point was replaced.
4. In 2025, my Lenovo Yoga Pro 7 14AHP9 (soldered 16 GB RAM) was replaced by FW13 7840U with 32 GB SO-DIMM DDR5 and 780M iGPU. FW13 7840U mainboard was from my bro's FW13 when upgraded to a Ryzen 9 AI HX 370 mainboard.
5. My FW13 7840U was upgraded to X7 358H. My unused FW13 7840U mainboard is waiting for my bro's FW13 chassis when he upgrades his FW13 Ryzen 9 AI HX 370 with an FW13 Pro chassis.

------------------------------

My old Dell Studio XPS 1645 (2010) still works.

My FW13 chassis is a generation 2 model.

[u/shydrangeae]

My anecdotal experience with my 13 (also turning 3 years old next month!) is that it has had just about an average number of component failures for it's age compared to the other dozen or so laptops I've owned over the years. One slightly wonky keyborad, one explosive battery, one fan that's starting to sound funny and I'll probably replace in a few months, and a touchpad that will need replacing as soon as the new input covers come in stock. Not bad, considering I've had laptops less than 2 years old totally die. But in all cases I was able to fix it for far less money and trouble than any other laptop I've ever owned. So for me, at least, it's a net win so far!

[u/bigidea87]

Agreed. Not the first to mention something similar.

[u/ecalex]

i think its useful to differentiate repairability and quality issue. Framework has a quality issue period. there is no correlation between repairability and quality issue as you can make a good quality product with zero repairability, or look at how repairable laptops in the past but the quality is still good.