Between that and the potential $300 CPU upgrade you’ll want to get—the AMD Ryzen 9 HX 370—the laptop will start at $2,449, and it’ll only go up once you add other components like memory and storage. To put things in perspective, the extremely high-end Razer Blade 16 with the RTX 5070 is around $2,300 (though it frequently dips on sale below $2,000). With the Framework Laptop 16, you’re paying extra for the ability to swap out parts in the future.
Fortunately, what you get in return is solid gaming performance. It’s good enough to give you an option of playing in native resolution in some games, such as Cyberpunk 2077. The frame rates you see above were all tested at the highest graphics preset without enabling upscaling or ray tracing, so you can get higher frame rates by dropping the settings. I like that there’s enough performance to let gamers choose smoother gameplay or sharper visuals depending on the game and the style of play. Of the games I tested, Black Myth: Wukong was the only title that couldn’t run smoothly at the max graphics settings. The RTX 5070 only has 8 GB of VRAM, which is its biggest deficiency in AAA titles, unlike the desktop GPU of the same name, which has 12 GB.
The trade-off in adding a discrete graphics card is in battery life, though it’s not as bad as you might think. Despite having just as powerful graphics, the Framework Laptop 16 still nets around 25 percent more battery life than the cheaper gaming laptops out there. In my testing, it lasted for close to nine hours in local video playback. That will equate to much less in a real-life workload—I was getting closer to five hours in my typical daily work. One unique benefit of the system is that you can always remove the graphics module if you want to get a few more hours of battery life while traveling, and you don’t plan to play games.
One of the impressive things about the Framework Laptop 16 is that it runs entirely off USB-C power. The 240-watt GaN power charger is no bigger than a standard charger, yet it can power the entire system, graphics included. Just make sure to actually use both sides of the included charger to get the full performance.
The Framework laptops were conceived and designed before the recent changes in laptop pricing. You can now buy a really great laptop for $650—even less during big sales events. Unfortunately, Framework’s pricing doesn’t tend to change, and the company doesn’t sell through third-party retailers. But there’s an audience for a repairable, sustainable, and now more powerful laptop—whether you want it to run Linux or Windows. Just be ready to pay a premium.
