Note: $1399 does not give you a usable base system. It’s literally a chassis, CPU, keyboard, and screen.
I really want one :(
Not even storage and ram?
No, it’s the DIY with the bare minimum. It’s for tinkerers who want to add in their own off the shelf components such as RAM, SSD, OS, charger etc. Either to reuse them or make use of specific parts unavailable from framework.
The pre-built version has everything you need and starts at 1699$, with an 7840HS, 16GB DDR5-5600, 512GB SSD. It also has a pretty good display from what the specs suggest and modular keyboard, touchpad, input modules and IOs.
The only difference between prebuilt and DIY is the lack of OS, memory, and storage. The power brick is also an extra $80 for DIY (pretty good deal for a 180W charger). That makes the base prebuilt be +$200 to give you 16GB ram, 512GB ssd, and windows home. That price is good, but if you instead want 32GB and 1TB, the prebuilt price goes way up and you are better off doing DIY. Standard laptop overcharge for upgrades is in effect.
I’d love to be capable of buying it!
I configured the higher end of what I’d want and 2500 + my own storage with high RAM capacity and the higher end of the CPU/GPU isn’t awful. Still wouldn’t do it over my MacBook personally (or that 15" air has a real nice form factor), but my impression on value is better than it was with the older version.
Framework is a bit expensive, but good god I will never buy a MacBook again. It mostly collects dust and tests aarch64 code while I wait for Asahi Linux to get better.
