Hands-On with Framework's Fully Modular Laptop!
hey everyone it's norm from tested and got a question for you when's the last time you upgraded your laptop your notebook and i don't mean go out and buy a new computer to replace the one you currently have but actually open up that system and swap out the ram or upgrade the storage or replace the battery or repair any of the components well chances are if you have a macbook or even a modern day ultrabook on the pc side you haven't been able to actually swap out that parts and that's by design a lot of the modern day computer manufacturers solder on the components directly onto the main board or motherboard for kind of proprietary purposes so they can keep the design as compact as possible but also to lock you into their system so you have to go to them for repairs or buy a new system from them when you do need to upgrade and that's that's not how laptops used to work way back in the 90s and the early yachts you know we had computers where swapping out components or even upgrading things like ram was pretty basic part of that experience and that's what a company called framework is trying to bring back they have a new laptop that's available for pre-order today where they've designed not only the components internal components to be completely upgradable and swap outable but also the ports as well your usb a c your hdmi out ports and even the motherboard itself the idea is down the line where an intel might release new chipset or new cpu you don't instead of having to buy a completely new computer you can actually just buy a main board with a cpu from them and put that into your laptop chassis kind of the way you would if you built your own desktop pc well i had a chance to visit frameworks offices and check out the latest prototypes of their system and chat with their ceo narav patel about how they've designed this laptop not only to be repairable and modular and upgradeable but also be competitive design wise and cost wise with today's latest laptops let's take a listen looking at consumer electronics as a whole pcs are almost the only place where you still do retain a level of modularity and ownership and ability to tinker with your product and that really to a large extent is what inspired us to get into the notebook space and kind of hit the reset button and return to that you know just watching this trend over the last couple of decades of consumer electronics products getting increasingly locked down and glued together and soldered down and you know designed in a way that consumers can't upgrade and repair them easily and so this everything you see here is really just a reaction of that of like let's really think about how we can build a product that is a great product that still retains those useful properties to the end user and i imagine that's no simple engineering or design challenge so let's talk about the form factor right because i assume it all starts with you guys choosing a a weight and a profile and of a volume essentially of how much many components you can pack in and how much custom custom hardware you want to design yourself and your team right that's right we do have a fantastic team and that's how we've been able to accomplish this but you know as you look at the product really the goal from the outset was let's benchmark against the other products that are in the market and make sure that from a form factor and a materials and a thickness and a weight perspective that it really matches what's out there you know we don't want to have a product that is great and modular and upgradable and repairable but then comes in as this you know bulky monstrosity we wanted it to feel familiar to users and really feel like a product that can fit into their existing lives and workflows and the way they use pcs so you can actually check this out i mean from a thickness and weight perspective it really does look and feel like a normal notebook and it's a standard size of 13.5 inches i like the aspect ratio you guys have gone with so it's not that widescreen i do like this um and i can see here this is basically the cavity you have uh the anatomy of a laptop you know people don't often these days take apart their laptops maybe who will build up their pc so use that analogy you have like a motherboard or a main board and over time that's gotten really small like right tablets these days it's like a strip of circuit board you know this is the the main board that you guys have designed that's right right yep um and it's running off of uh intel 11th gen yeah intel's latest tiger-like cpus so talk about the design of this because i see the cpu there how much of this had to be designed by your team what are the considerations for making this fit within the chassis here but also as something that can potentially be upgradeable definitely um so the goal here really was to make the main board replaceable which is something that you can do on a desktop pc it's not something that any other notebook offers and we made that plausible really by socketing as much of the value as we could so ram storage wi-fi those are all socketed as modules rather than being soldered down and that means that the vast majority of the cost and complexity of this main board is actually in the cpu itself which means that by making you know the ram and storage and wi-fi removable we can actually offer this as an upgrade module to consumers in a pretty cost effective manner and we've designed this basically thinking through you know not just how to make it work around tiger like in this platform and this generation that we have now but also designing this main board in a way that we can carry this form factor forward into future cpu generations we've done that by basically really thinking through the interconnect and the interfaces and just the general size and shape of this thing and the way it slots into the system and the fact that it's socketed not started on you're having those ports you're adding a little bit of height those are your trade-offs in terms of you know it not being a fixed part but it still fits into the cavity here you mentioned interconnectivity uh how does that work in terms of ports yeah definitely and just on the you know on the thickness of the machine you know we had to probably add a fraction of a millimeter of thickness but the actual machine as a whole is still 15.85 millimeters thick which is actually 0.2 millimeters thicker than a 13-inch macbook pro which you know it is like a totally soldered down and glued together machine and so yeah as you look at the the product one of the most interesting uh choices that we made from modularity standpoint was actually making all the external ports uh user swappable expansion cards and these are all hot swappable meaning that you don't have to reboot the machine to be able to slot them in and out they actually just slide directly in and out and can be ejected directly and the goal there was you know as we looked at how people are actually using their pcs we can see that everyone has a different set of peripherals and cables and monitors and other things in their lives but notebooks come in whatever configuration the manufacturer decided was useful and so we saw that as just this really low hanging way to use modularity to make our product work better for end users and so at order time people can actually choose exactly the ports that they want to their machine and then when they get it at their doorstep and unbox it and put it together they can slot in the ports that they want on whichever side of the machine they want them on how it's actually ported out on the motherboard because it's hot swappable is that just usbc yeah it's actually usbc and you know that is one of the nice things that's come about in the last you know five years especially is just the dominance of usbc over all other physical interconnects and the ability to route all these great protocols directly over it so that usbc port there that's just like an extension you know in this form factor so you have it flush with the laptop that's right yeah this is just a pass-through card via the usbc to usbc and the a is you know just changing right exactly yeah and we have a few other cards too like a micro sd card um actually in this machine here we've got an hdmi on one side i think i actually added another hdmi to displayport which you have probably a normal user would not ever have three monitors plugged into the node right right you can if you want um and we also have high speed storage which means you can even install your os on an external drive that slots right in and be able to pop it out as you need to and you said this is possible because the way i guess the platforms are designed today that controller controls data video it's all through the system exactly and then and you can also all have it with a usbc endpoint that then using that module can be that's right yeah and that was actually one of the great things about the tiger-like platform and one of the reasons that we chose it is that actually all four of these ports have identical functionality which just means you don't have to think through which card needs to go where you can plug any of them into any of the four ports and power it also go through that's right as we power through any of the four ports as well through usbc and so in terms of off the shelf components i see ram storage you said wi-fi that's right as well as decision not to integrate that the packaging here is all custom um the way i understand like traditional laptop makers you know they buy they may design their own packages or they buy a chipset package from like like intel but here it's all that's right so oftentimes especially you know historically actually ram was socketed uh on most notebooks and it's really over the last you know decade or five years that there's just been this trend towards soldering it down which means that as a consumer when you buy your machine you have to think through for the next few years how much ram am i ever going to need i better buy all of it right now because i can't upgrade it whereas by making it modular like it is on desktops you can buy just the amount you need on day one and if you ever need more you can just buy more and slot it right in and a big part of the volume of a laptop is of course the battery so i see this battery here that's right is this custom design as well yeah so that's custom actually everything here except for these off-the-shelf modules is a set of modules that we've custom developed to fit into the framework laptop and what's this capacity so that's a 55 watt hour which is pretty typical for a 13 and a half inch notebook and something that if they wanted to replace you would unscrew it and that's right and that is one of the modules we focus on making as easy to replace as possible because we know that you know performance upgrades really you know there may be a subset of people who are interested in that but literally everyone has had the experience of a product with a worn out battery and just getting frustrated by that so making it super simple to be able to get a new battery slot it in and get great battery life again was just incredibly important for us is there any design decision as to not have that be an external solvable battery and then have extra housing on this that that is something that we that we looked at and thought through but to keep a really slim and robust form factor we knew that we had to keep it internal um you know that's something that you know for other types of products i think there are other trade-offs there but for a thin and light portable notebook it really is important to keep it thin and light enough that you can keep it portable so this is just a normal assembled framework laptop we've taken all the expansion cards out of it and then this is actually the screwdriver that we ship in box and it has all the functionality needed to replace any module in system so just a torx screwdriver on one side phillips on the other side and then a spudger on the back of it to be able to lift any small cables or connectors and then we can unscrew the five fasteners that are up the bottom and these are all actually captive fasteners which means that they stay inside of the module so you don't have to fish around and potentially lose your your screws or all just stick in place a driver with interchangeable and a spudger on the other side why did no one think of this before and so yeah we pop off the input cover and take a look inside and we've designed this to be really simple to repair so there's just a single cable that connects the top half and the bottom half and at that point you've got a single level of modules here a single layer and then a single layer of modules here so you don't actually have to like fish around anywhere everything's just directly exposed and you can see that the qr codes are all visible so you can take your your phone out and scan them and get to our support pages and the marketplace and so we can do two things here actually so we can pop in an extra stick of ram so right now there's eight gigs in there and we can just drop in another eight gig stick so that simple as that we're done adding ram and then we can also swap out the battery since that is likely going to be a thing that any consumer who wants to use their product for more than a few years is going to do and so this again three captive fasteners all using the same screwdriver we just unscrew it and then take out the cable use the little spudger to lift the tag up and then unplug that and battery comes out old battery and then we can take the new battery thank you and then slide that right in and we can plug in the connector and screw back in the three fasteners that we unscrewed and then take our input cover that we took off and connect the connector that we disconnected and stick this back on and flip it over and then re-screw the fasteners and this we've done here is like 90 percent of what you'd ever need to change in a laptop adding some more ram to uh to keep your performance good as you need new applications and swapping out a battery as your battery wears down and we did it in like two minutes um so it's you know we really designed this thing to you know look and feel really like a normal laptop but still make it super easy to get in and do all the things that you'd like to be able to do to make it last for longer and then over time you know as intel releases new chips the thing that is soldered on here is the processor is the idea that framework would then design a new whole main board system that's right exactly yeah and at that point you know you take your storage out you take your wi-fi you take your ram and you swap out the main board for a new one and as long as you know the ram generations and compatibility remains the same you plug everything back in slot it in and boot back up you know in some generation to generation updates there may be things like ram changes where then you'd also need to bring new ram but actually part of our model is that modules that you take out of your laptop because you're upgrading and replacing they still have value to someone somewhere and so we're actually building out a marketplace where in addition to new modules that we sell we're going to be enabling users to resell their old modules so the user benefits and that you know they get some money back for the product they're selling some other user benefits by getting something that they needed and of course the environment benefits because we're reducing e-waste going out into the environment i can also imagine that because everything is modular it doesn't necessarily have to be the form factor of a laptop either that's right someone wanted to you know 3d print and design their own housing and make that a set-top box or something like that another video game you know main box or something they could do that yeah yeah we're like i'm especially excited to see the cyber deck builds that people put together with the with the main boards coming out of these um also then aesthetics and uh kind of the the visual presentation of it yeah you notice you know you have some different color ways here bezels here is there differences in like the type of keyboards that people can buy yeah definitely so we built in uh you know good high key travel keyboards so 1.5 millimeters of key travel and we've designed it in a way that it is easy for users to be able to swap it out in case you know something ever happens and they manage you know to break a key or even if you just want to change the keyboard language you're learning a new language or you bought a used laptop that came in a different language you have the ability to swap that out and we have a couple of special editions uh which are actually these stealthed out blank keyboards so black one and a clear one and these are all backlit um and in addition to that yeah we've got the bezel is actually magnetically attached and removable and you know the core intent there actually was that we wanted to make it easy to replace panels you know not needing to replace the entire top half of a notebook if you know you dropped your notebook or something and cracked the screen just being able to replace the panel itself and so you pop off that mechanic or magnetically attached bezel unscrew the panel and put in a new one but it also lets us offer different color ways as you noted and you guys are offering the laptop in two primary models someone can buy it pre-configured so they get something like this where maybe the most they'd want to swap out or the io or something that's really a kit build almost that's right if you look at the how home i guess granular is it right yeah so you know we that's another place that we really drew on desktop pcs and so the idea behind the frame the framework laptop diy edition was that you can bring your own off-the-shelf modules bring your own ram storage wi-fi your own operating system and then when you unbox the machine unlike our pre-built ones where you just hit the power button you're in windows and you're done you open it up slot in your off-the-shelf modules swap out anything you want to change like a keyboard or a bezel and then boot it up install your operating system and get going which is really almost an exact copy of what you would do on a desktop pc but crammed into the form factor of a notebook right and the business model you guys have obviously selling laptops selling kits selling components are there any aspects of this where you might potentially you know put out cad models for people design their own customized parts or start sharing designs for parts yeah definitely so actually the expansion card system is one where we'll be releasing reference designs and documentation to let people build their own cards which is great because you know an individual hobbyist with you know home 3d printer and all the great pc hobbyists or or pcb hobby services that are out there can actually build their own card and we've built some interesting internal prototypes that are pretty fun but that's something we're really looking forward to seeing and the idea again behind the marketplace is that someone can not just build something that's interesting to them but then they can also build you know an extra dozen or hundred or thousand and sell them out into the rest of the folks in the world who are interested in the same concept and really building a community of people who want to embrace this platform and i guess that's a big question for people this is chicken neg if like they want something like this to to last and endure and it's not cheap to custom design this hardware so from a business standpoint you know what can you promise potential consumers or you know how big of a community base you need to really make this work that's right and yet we know it's on us to build all the modules that we need to to sustain the ecosystem and build the community until it's large enough for other people to come in and say like okay this there's an install base here it makes sense for us to participate um you know in some to some extent it is a little bit like game consoles with like the hardware and game content model where if you're standing up a new platform you have to fuel it with content and for us the content actually is modules and so we are building the modules we need to build but over time we really want to encourage third parties to come in and participate in the same ecosystem and you're launching uh pre-orders uh soon right now this video so when when is like how far along is this in the production pipeline and when will people be able to get these yeah so these this is actually our last pre-production build that we have in hand here and all the parts here came out of that and so we are just about to ramp into production we'll be shipping out this summer with our our first batches of orders awesome well it's a i love this idea i love that it's really although it sounds new it really is going back to the roots of laptop um and for for pc enthusiasts and and good luck with it thank you so that was nirav patel and i want to thank him for inviting us over to the offices to check out this laptop and you saw in the video i did get a chance to actually go through the disassembly process and it is as straightforward as you saw in the interview there are five screws in the back and that really nifty driver that you get to unscrew them with the screws are captive so they actually fall out they stay on the bottom of the chassis which is nice and it's very easy then to pop off the keyboard and look and see in that loop and then you can really just disconnect one ribbon cable with the loop very easily nothing was torn and that gets you full access to this beautifully laid out internal arrangement of components you got the battery on the bottom the main board on the top everything is really nicely labeled and you can very clearly tell the places where you can swap out your ram the storage as well as even the wi-fi chip and every component has a qr code so that gives you access to not only more information about that part but also their planned marketplace where you can not only buy new components but also offload your old ones when you want to do an upgrade and that's the promise of this ecosystem this community they want to build of people swapping components replacing parts and then having the older laptops finding new life in new system builds whether it's inside a framework laptop or in some other type of system that you might put that main board in and that's a really neat idea it's going to of course rely on framework sticking around and lasting long enough through these upgrade cycles because this isn't a system where i can see myself you know opening up the laptop every couple months even to swap out a component you're going to do it maybe once a year seasonally maybe when there's a nice sale on the holidays for storage or ram and you're going to buy components now the diy model that they have is going to start at 750 so it's a pretty good price point but you do have to bring your own storage and ram uh and that's where you know maybe storage is a great place because uh where you can find parts that you might already have at home because today's nvme based pcie storage it's basically the same component that you might have on your desktop pc and so i can very easily see myself maybe upgrading my desktop pc getting more storage there and then passing on the stick of storage onto a framework laptop now their main board is based on the intel platform and so they're using the uh the tiger lake processors these are the the u-class processors four cores using their iris gpu so it's it's their built-in gpu no external nvidia no you know amd based gpu here and they're also i think limited i want to say with the kind of expansion ports four usbc ports which compared to maybe a macbook yeah that's pretty standard but compared to a high-end pc laptop i expect you know multiple usb-a and usb-c and hdmi and micro display port and maybe even ethernet so that's where even though it's a neatly and kind of a nice cartridge based system that they've put into their their ports uh the four ports still feels a little bit limiting and as framework is launching they have only one chassis design right now it's basically a 13.5 inch display the equivalent of what you'd find on you know a
13-inch macbook pro uh but i would love to see them go bigger i would love for them to take this idea and you know incorporate a motherboard and chipset that can make use of intel's age class processors and discrete gpus and even more expansion slots something in a larger form factor or maybe for a more workstation class laptop is something i'd love to see them dive into but good luck to framework at this launch and if i have a chance to test this laptop we'll of course be reporting it back here on the channel thank you so much for watching and i'll see you next time bye
2021-05-18 00:23
