I didn't want to take any risks wrt the egpu support because with an egpu there's already a whole lot of unknowns, so wanted to play it safe with proper TB supp

I didn't want to take any risks wrt the egpu support because with an egpu there's already a whole lot of unknowns, so wanted to play it safe with proper TB support. It's a bit of a niche requirement though, so I get that other people may not care. But aside from that I just wanted a basic cheap and light laptop. I got an Acer for £500 on sale with a 2nd gen intel chip. Despite the hate intel gets, their 2nd gen chips are actually really good in terms of battery life. If I spec a comparable laptop right now on Framework, it's around £1400, even for 1st gen intel. Plus the Acer came with a lovely OLED screen, which the framework doesn't seem to have, as you mentioned.