Hi, prospective buyer here?
First of all, I absolutely love the look of the framework. Id be dead set on buying it if it wasnt for one thing: battery life.
I’m a university student who travels around a lot so for me battery life is the make or break factor for a laptop. Heretical as it is to say here I’m really weighing up between a framework 13 and a macbook air m2. The M2 lacks everything I love about the framework, but its battery life is undeniably amazing.
What real world battery life do you guys get on your frameworks? And what would be the best configuration battery life wise? I was considering getting the low tier AMD model and installing a 61wh battery in it myself.
Would i be able to last a good 8 hour day or will i need a powerbank?
I have an Intel Framework, easily gets through a day of school for me, with light - medium use
I get 6-9 hours (AMD/Fedora) as a stats major, mostly web browsing and coding
How do you get that battery life? I’m on Nobara doing the same thing as a SWE and I always average 4-6 depending on what I’m doing.
I just got my AMD Ryzen 7 version and it seems to be able to do an 8 hour day no problem.
That said, this is my second experience with a Framework. I bought an Intel Core I5 model (13th gen) for my step brother to go to University with back in June. He loves it and has absolutely no complaints for what it’s worth.
Just a fun idea, but considering how easy it is to replace the battery in the framework, you could carry around a spare internal battery and swap it in like a phone with a removable back and battery.
(Sarcasm implied)
Actually not a bad idea, if they made a hardshell battery thing I could totally see people doing this while sacrificing a bit of capacity for the hard shell bit
Amd has pretty good efficiency. Framework has talked about releasing a case mod to use an older framework battery into a powerbank. One option is go for rzyen 5 with smaller battery and then if not enough life pick up better battery and use the smaller as a bank. My wife has an 11th gen with smaller battery. I iust ordered a ryzen 7 with bigger battery. The 11th gen with smaller battery isnt great but have seen reviews of the ryzen version with much better life.
Getting a smaller cpu will not save you any battery life, as the faster cpu spends more time sleeping. So i would go Ryzen 7 and not buy 2 batteries.
I don’t agree. i get around the same battery as the r7 ones. The 6 core amd chip has fewer cores idling, so it uses less power.
Every laptop I’ve ever owned I end up replacing because the battery capacity declines (for me, typically every 3-4 years) to the point that I’m afraid to charge it unsupervised.
So it’s not just initial battery life for me, which is about 8+ hours of average use on my new AMD 7840 FW (consisting mostly of web browsing, YouTube watching, and email lately) but when that battery capacity eventually worsens, I can just buy a new battery and easily replace it. To me, that’s a huge factor in its favor.
Yeah, that’s what put me over the fence as well. All of my old laptops (including macbooks) were mostly fine when I replaced them, but had gotten terrible battery life over time + some other, more minor issues. Framework fixes that.
Heck, you might even be able to upgrade to a better battery in a few years!
The battery life is my main and perhaps only moot point with it. It just about gets me through a full day of school (high school student) using literally Word, Firefox and other assorted basic programs.
I get about 6-7 hours on AMD/Fedora
You could always buy a USB-c battery pack. I got one from Dell with my old laptop and it seems to be able to charge the Framework 1.5 times. I have a Ryzen and get about 9 hours between charges, the battery pack would theoretically add another 13-14. I used it at a conference when I hadn’t charged the framework the night before, and it charged it to 100% and was a bit below 50%.
Wow that’s awesome
Get around 8-10 hours with the AMD ryzen 5, 32GB ram and 55Wh battery coding with two node js servers running and a lot of chrome tabs open.
I’m on Windows 11 and use it for note taking and development. I can get around 6 hours on it with several chrome tabs, WSL, VSC, etc at the same time. High end for me was around 9 hours
8 hours is a stretch but you can do that yea. The thing is that at my college and in about half the trains they have power outlets so I can use those
I’m getting 6 to 9 hours with the Ryzen 7 on Windows 11. I have a 65 watt power bank to back it up if needed. If I’m gaming with my 13 then I only get 2 to 4 hours depending on the game.
If you value battery life over everything else then a Macbook is a no-brainer IMO. That said, you should be able to get a Ryzen or even an Intel 13th gen FW13 to last at least 8 hours without much difficulty.