If your focus is repairability/upgradability, a Framework laptop may be the better choice.
this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2023
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Right to Repair
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Whether it be electronics, automobiles or medical equipment, the manufacturers should not be able to horde “oem” parts, render your stuff useless if you repair it with aftermarket parts, or hide schematics of their products.
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Alright, so. I bought a Tuxedo Pulse 15 Gen1 2.5 years ago.
Hardware-spec wise it's a great machine.
The build quality is...let's say I have seen a lot worse. But still...
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When I got the machine, the spacebar had an issue that the leftmost and rightmost cm wasn't registering a key hit. That was a known issue for a batch and they replaced it for me (although I was without a laptop for a week,,,)
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The keyboard typing feel is... okay. not great, not terrible
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The keyboard design is a giant crumb and hair trap. be prepared to clean it constantly. if you manage to do it (because crumbs will easily go underneath the key caps.
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After I somehow managed to get a single drop of coke on a key, it was sticky. I wanted to remove the keycap to clean the machanism. Watched their official video about it and carefully removed the key. The problem came when I wanted to put it back and the suuuuuper thin (half a mm or so) clip the keycap uses to atach to the mechanism snapped off. Luckily they sent me a new keycap without a problem.
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The touchpad has a 50/50 chance of not recognizing a right click on the first try
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When the laptop was 1.5 years old or so, the bottom cover suddenly came off on a corner. Turns out, the screws aren't holding the cover itself, but a super thin piece of plastic that is glued to the cover. and that piece broke off, making the screw not hold the cover anymore. Here I also got a replacement cover without any trouble
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now after over 2 years, the corners of the laptop are showing small cracks in the plastic
I am using the hardware gently. But I walk around with it a lot in my apartment and used it every day. I expect some wear&tear, but I have not seem such a degree of wear on a thinkpad, for example.
Basically: their support is great. The laptop was... okay. Better than most random electronics store laptop.
Now I have a framework for a month, and I love it. As others have said, get a framework if you want repairability and upgradability
Watched their official video about it and carefully removed the key. The problem came when I wanted to put it back and the suuuuuper thin (half a mm or so) clip the keycap uses to atach to the mechanism snapped off.
Haha, same here with an ultra fragile piece of plastic that snaps as soon as you touch it. Except mine was a connector socket soldered to the motherboard and they made zero effort to help me get it fixed.
The experience with my Tuxedo Infinitybook Pro 14 v4 (also a Clevo chassis) is bad. I probably won't consider buying from them anymore. They had some marketing jargon on its store page saying something like "easy repairability, upgradable parts are readily accessible" or the likes. Also, they sell a barbones version (which I bought), which IMO should imply at least no hassle installing ram and ssd. However, I ended up breaking the connector on the motherboard to the keyboard LED on my first attempt at opening the laptop (I was using Tuxedo's own video tutorial for it). According to them, the only way to repair that was to replace the entire mobo - replacing just the little socket was apparently not an option - kind of an Apple-like policy if you ask me. If, like me, you have waited for 3 months for your new laptop, you'll probably think twice about sending it right back and waiting another three weeks.
To open the thing, 12 screws need unscrewing, and the keyboard needs to be popped out from its frame by inserting a screwdriver from the underside (the procedure which I didn't perform quite carefully enough), while its LED cable still connected to the mobo, which only then you can unplug.
To replace the battery, which I recently did, the motherboard itself needed to be displaced, I had to unplug a number of connections. In short, installing new/replacing old parts in this laptop is the hardest I've seen in any laptop I owned so far.
Add that to reluctant service, several bugs and 3 months delivery time (they upgraded me to a slightly better chipset for free), not an experience I want again.
Thanks for the info.
That's worse in every way then the latitudes I usually work with.
Thanks for your input, I'm glad you were able to weigh in with hands on experience!
Depends on your upgrade plan
Changing RAM, SSD, battery is easily done on my Pulse 15 (Gen 1) at least
They are built on a third party frame, in my case a „Clevo“. The only difference to standard notebooks is that they take care of all the drivers and select parts for Linux compatibility.
Compare the model you want to the Clevo products. Perhaps you’ll find it there.
I got a Framework now, much better in my eyes.
Thank you all, I think I will have to look around some more for my Linux Laptop.
Hmm IFixIt doesn't have a repairability score for that one
https://www.ifixit.com/laptop-repairability
They do have guides for RAM and SSD replacement, but that's the bare minimum.
Maybe look into the repairability index from the EU as well, maybe they rate it?