4 ms·

Framework Laptop 16

93 points by kristianp 3y ago

benatkin 3y ago
Is this an announcement of an announcement? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35978833 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35978833
chrismorgan 3y ago
Duplicate, discussed when the article was published two months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35286544 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35286544 (682 points, 370 comments). They did just publish a new article, Framework Laptop 16 Deep Dive - Display <https://frame.work/blog/framework-laptop-16-deep-dive---display https://frame.work/blog/framework-laptop-16-deep-dive---disp...>, but https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36064079 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36064079 (8 hours ago, 5 points, 2 comments) didn’t get much traction.
contrarian1234 3y ago
I don't understand why they dropped the 3:2 ratio for the larger model. I thought these are targeted at professionals and not media consumption... I can't see myself going back to 16:9 or 16:10 Just seems like a dumb move. They even seem to have the space with those hideous bezels from 2010. There are tons of similar 16:10 options. It's a saturated market, while there are only a small handful of 16inch 3:2 laptops - written from a Huawei Matebook 16
- CrampusDestrus 3y ago
  Who makes 16" 3:2 displays?
  - ztrww 3y ago
    HUAWEI MateBook 16 has one so somebody must make them.
    - peanuty1 3y ago
      Surface Laptop also has a 15" variant.
- rx_tx 3y ago
  It's possible they weren't able to source 16" panels in that ratio? (at a price that worked). I wouldn't exclude a different ration screen in the future maybe?
- dankwizard 3y ago
  Is your favourite handheld also the Gameboy Advance? - Sent from my Icecream maker
- 2muchcoffeeman 3y ago
  What makes that screen ratio non professional?
  - twelvechairs 3y ago
    Writing (including code and word documents) tends to push the vertical bounds of screenspace rather than horizontal. Media (widescreen cinema) is more horizontal.
    - echelon 3y ago
      Side-by-side is horizontal. I'd like three terminals or code editor windows side by side. I don't care about the vertical space as much.
      - locusofself 3y ago
        exactly. even just comparing a diff side by side sucks on most laptops.
  - perardi 3y ago
    A 16:9 screen is too short when working on 16:9 video. It is really nice to have video span, if not the entire viewport, most of it, with the timeline down below. 16:10 gives you a nice bit of control area. But 3:2 is even better. Hell, give me a 5:4 screen—I live and die in Figma all day, working on mobile app mockups. Which are very tall, obviously, and get awfully small on these HDTV-ish aspect ratios.
    - Sunspark 3y ago
      You could just rotate your monitor 90 degrees and change the orientation from landscape to portrait in the desktop.
      - bhaney 3y ago
        Somewhat hard to do with a laptop
- pbmonster 3y ago
  Their "screen deep dive" [0] mentions this bit: > There was no existing panel that satisfied all of these needs, so we instead developed a semi-custom LCD display module with BOE, the same panel maker we use for the Framework Laptop 13. The “semi” part is that we customized the backlight for higher brightness and liquid crystal chemistry for better contrast and color gamut while leveraging an existing TFT mask set to avoid needing to pay a few million dollars in tooling fees. So probably the existing TFT masks all where 16:9 and 16:10? I personally would also have preferred a higher aspect ratio screen (my favorite laptop is still the IBM Thinkpad X41, which had a 4:3 display), but the other features are probably more important than... 8% more screen height. [0] https://frame.work/blog/framework-laptop-16-deep-dive---display https://frame.work/blog/framework-laptop-16-deep-dive---disp...
  - contrarian1234 3y ago
    It's a good guess but i don't think it's true Check here under Display https://www.notebookcheck.net/Huawei-MateBook-16-AMD-Review-Multimedia-laptop-impresses-with-its-Ryzen-7-CPU.575022.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/Huawei-MateBook-16-AMD-Review-... It's a 16 inch 3:2 display. The Display model is listed as "BOE TV160DKT-NH0 X-Rite i1Pro 2" Same BOE they claim to be working with
- xeus2001 3y ago
  From the newsletter: "There was no existing panel that satisfied all of these needs, so we instead developed a semi-custom LCD display module with BOE, the same panel maker we use for the Framework Laptop 13. The “semi” part is that we customized the backlight for higher brightness and liquid crystal chemistry for better contrast and color gamut while leveraging an existing TFT mask set to avoid needing to pay a few million dollars in tooling fees." Looks like they had to make some compromise. P.S.: I personally like what they did and especially the resolution of 2k, for me the best compromise between work, video and gaming. I will for sure get one (when they support enough memory for my needs).
pazimzadeh 3y ago
> We’re excited to share our next major product category Isn't this still in the category of laptops?
NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
The Chromebook version of this looks exciting. I hope driver issues will not prevent mix-and-match modules from coexisting.
- G3rn0ti 3y ago
  A US$2000 chrome os experience? But why? While I like ChromeOS and I believe it’s the perfect fit on low-end devices, I never quite understood the premium Chromebook market. Why would you pay so much for a device which you then can basically only use for browsing and binge watching?
  - NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
    I use mine for work, though it's designed for gaming. It runs all PWAs, Android, and Linux. ChromeOS is a leader in the primary and secondary education markets, and my community college loans them out. Thanks.
p-e-w 3y ago
The "old" Framework 13 is still not available in the vast majority of countries[1], including most of the EU (and forget about it if you live anywhere outside the Western world). I find it pretty surprising that designing an entirely new device has higher priority for them than making sure people who don't live in one of 9 countries can buy their existing product. I get that the listed countries are huge markets, but there are also huge markets elsewhere and entering them doesn't seem to be a priority for the company at all, with snail-like progress on regional availability in the 2 years since US+Canada started shipping. [1] https://knowledgebase.frame.work/what-countries-and-regions-do-you-ship-to-r1899ikiO https://knowledgebase.frame.work/what-countries-and-regions-...
- jitl 3y ago
  Companies can do two things at the same time. The people working on sales and marketing are probably not the same people doing design and engineering.
  - majewsky 3y ago
    If entering a new market requires obtaining a bunch of safety certifications, I wouldn't be surprised if a decent amount of engineers' time would be involved in that.
- j16sdiz 3y ago
  Compliant with local customer protection law and import regulations are not easy. Unless they go rogue like china sellers, guess it won't be fix anytime soon.
- froh 3y ago
  the EU has a number of regulations both for the product and after sales which carry an up front investment and which require some local representation. they are all good for the consumers but nevertheless they mean a barrier to entry to that market. not sure if that is the case here but it's a plausible explanation.
- 5e92cb50239222b 3y ago
imdoor 3y ago
I wanted to preorder the updated 13 inch model but it turned out that in EU Framework sells their products only in a selected few countries (also they are actively preventing people from using forwarding services so there's no good way to sidestep this). It would be great if they had a distributor somewhere in the EU or something that could resell their products otherwise it might be a very long wait till they're available where I'm at.

93 points by kristianp 3y ago

Is this an announcement of an announcement? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35978833 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35978833

chrismorgan 3y ago

Duplicate, discussed when the article was published two months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35286544 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35286544 (682 points, 370 comments). They did just publish a new article, Framework Laptop 16 Deep Dive - Display <https://frame.work/blog/framework-laptop-16-deep-dive---display https://frame.work/blog/framework-laptop-16-deep-dive---disp...>, but https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36064079 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36064079 (8 hours ago, 5 points, 2 comments) didn’t get much traction.

contrarian1234 3y ago

I don't understand why they dropped the 3:2 ratio for the larger model. I thought these are targeted at professionals and not media consumption... I can't see myself going back to 16:9 or 16:10 Just seems like a dumb move. They even seem to have the space with those hideous bezels from 2010. There are tons of similar 16:10 options. It's a saturated market, while there are only a small handful of 16inch 3:2 laptops - written from a Huawei Matebook 16

CrampusDestrus 3y ago
Who makes 16" 3:2 displays?
- ztrww 3y ago
  HUAWEI MateBook 16 has one so somebody must make them.
  - peanuty1 3y ago
    Surface Laptop also has a 15" variant.
rx_tx 3y ago
It's possible they weren't able to source 16" panels in that ratio? (at a price that worked). I wouldn't exclude a different ration screen in the future maybe?
dankwizard 3y ago
Is your favourite handheld also the Gameboy Advance? - Sent from my Icecream maker
2muchcoffeeman 3y ago
What makes that screen ratio non professional?
- twelvechairs 3y ago
  Writing (including code and word documents) tends to push the vertical bounds of screenspace rather than horizontal. Media (widescreen cinema) is more horizontal.
  - echelon 3y ago
    Side-by-side is horizontal. I'd like three terminals or code editor windows side by side. I don't care about the vertical space as much.
    - locusofself 3y ago
      exactly. even just comparing a diff side by side sucks on most laptops.
- perardi 3y ago
  A 16:9 screen is too short when working on 16:9 video. It is really nice to have video span, if not the entire viewport, most of it, with the timeline down below. 16:10 gives you a nice bit of control area. But 3:2 is even better. Hell, give me a 5:4 screen—I live and die in Figma all day, working on mobile app mockups. Which are very tall, obviously, and get awfully small on these HDTV-ish aspect ratios.
  - Sunspark 3y ago
    You could just rotate your monitor 90 degrees and change the orientation from landscape to portrait in the desktop.
    - bhaney 3y ago
      Somewhat hard to do with a laptop
pbmonster 3y ago
Their "screen deep dive" [0] mentions this bit: > There was no existing panel that satisfied all of these needs, so we instead developed a semi-custom LCD display module with BOE, the same panel maker we use for the Framework Laptop 13. The “semi” part is that we customized the backlight for higher brightness and liquid crystal chemistry for better contrast and color gamut while leveraging an existing TFT mask set to avoid needing to pay a few million dollars in tooling fees. So probably the existing TFT masks all where 16:9 and 16:10? I personally would also have preferred a higher aspect ratio screen (my favorite laptop is still the IBM Thinkpad X41, which had a 4:3 display), but the other features are probably more important than... 8% more screen height. [0] https://frame.work/blog/framework-laptop-16-deep-dive---display https://frame.work/blog/framework-laptop-16-deep-dive---disp...
- contrarian1234 3y ago
  It's a good guess but i don't think it's true Check here under Display https://www.notebookcheck.net/Huawei-MateBook-16-AMD-Review-Multimedia-laptop-impresses-with-its-Ryzen-7-CPU.575022.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/Huawei-MateBook-16-AMD-Review-... It's a 16 inch 3:2 display. The Display model is listed as "BOE TV160DKT-NH0 X-Rite i1Pro 2" Same BOE they claim to be working with
xeus2001 3y ago
From the newsletter: "There was no existing panel that satisfied all of these needs, so we instead developed a semi-custom LCD display module with BOE, the same panel maker we use for the Framework Laptop 13. The “semi” part is that we customized the backlight for higher brightness and liquid crystal chemistry for better contrast and color gamut while leveraging an existing TFT mask set to avoid needing to pay a few million dollars in tooling fees." Looks like they had to make some compromise. P.S.: I personally like what they did and especially the resolution of 2k, for me the best compromise between work, video and gaming. I will for sure get one (when they support enough memory for my needs).

pazimzadeh 3y ago

> We’re excited to share our next major product category Isn't this still in the category of laptops?

NoZebra120vClip 3y ago

The Chromebook version of this looks exciting. I hope driver issues will not prevent mix-and-match modules from coexisting.

G3rn0ti 3y ago
A US$2000 chrome os experience? But why? While I like ChromeOS and I believe it’s the perfect fit on low-end devices, I never quite understood the premium Chromebook market. Why would you pay so much for a device which you then can basically only use for browsing and binge watching?
- NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
  I use mine for work, though it's designed for gaming. It runs all PWAs, Android, and Linux. ChromeOS is a leader in the primary and secondary education markets, and my community college loans them out. Thanks.

p-e-w 3y ago

The "old" Framework 13 is still not available in the vast majority of countries[1], including most of the EU (and forget about it if you live anywhere outside the Western world). I find it pretty surprising that designing an entirely new device has higher priority for them than making sure people who don't live in one of 9 countries can buy their existing product. I get that the listed countries are huge markets, but there are also huge markets elsewhere and entering them doesn't seem to be a priority for the company at all, with snail-like progress on regional availability in the 2 years since US+Canada started shipping. [1] https://knowledgebase.frame.work/what-countries-and-regions-do-you-ship-to-r1899ikiO https://knowledgebase.frame.work/what-countries-and-regions-...

jitl 3y ago
Companies can do two things at the same time. The people working on sales and marketing are probably not the same people doing design and engineering.
- majewsky 3y ago
  If entering a new market requires obtaining a bunch of safety certifications, I wouldn't be surprised if a decent amount of engineers' time would be involved in that.
j16sdiz 3y ago
Compliant with local customer protection law and import regulations are not easy. Unless they go rogue like china sellers, guess it won't be fix anytime soon.
froh 3y ago
the EU has a number of regulations both for the product and after sales which carry an up front investment and which require some local representation. they are all good for the consumers but nevertheless they mean a barrier to entry to that market. not sure if that is the case here but it's a plausible explanation.
5e92cb50239222b 3y ago

imdoor 3y ago

I wanted to preorder the updated 13 inch model but it turned out that in EU Framework sells their products only in a selected few countries (also they are actively preventing people from using forwarding services so there's no good way to sidestep this). It would be great if they had a distributor somewhere in the EU or something that could resell their products otherwise it might be a very long wait till they're available where I'm at.