Something to look forward to: In a sea of laptops that are becoming less upgradeable or repairable every year, a small company called Framework is trying to carve a new niche with a work laptop that offers a lot of customization options and is partially fabricated of recycled aluminum and plastic. Here's to hoping they decide to brand a gaming laptop in the future.

Ane of the major complaints about laptops introduced in the last few years has been that manufacturers are most always prioritizing thin and light designs over upgradeability and repairability. Many PC laptops all the same accept replaceable and/or upgradeable components like RAM and SSD storage, only in the case of MacBook owners these are all soldered to the logic board, while other things like the battery and Touch Bar are tricky fifty-fifty for repair professionals to bargain with.

In the smartphone land, consumers have to deal with a similar phenomenon, just there are some companies like Pine64 and Fairphone that push dorsum confronting the current with repairable, modular, and fifty-fifty eco-friendly designs. This calendar week, a startup chosen Framework announced a laptop built on similar principles, with components that are easy for users to supercede or upgrade as needed.

The new laptop comes with a 13.5-inch, 3:ii ratio display with a resolution of 2256 by 1504 pixels and over 400 nits of brightness. Its components are housed within an aluminum chassis that is a hair under 16 mm thick, for a total weight of up to 2.9 lbs (1.3 kg). You tin can configure it with one of iii 11th-gen Intel Tiger Lake processors with Xe integrated graphics -- i5-1135G7, i7-1165G7, or i7-1185G7 -- and up to a Wi-Fi 6E module for wireless connectivity.

The CPU is the one notable component that can't be replaced as information technology's designed as a BGA parcel that'southward soldered onto the motherboard. However, the Framework team says information technology will release new motherboards in the future when newer CPUs come out, so theoretically that shouldn't exist that big of a problem. And thank you to the lessons learned with the Alienware Surface area-51m R1, information technology'due south ultimately up to Intel to make things easier in that department.

You can pair the processor with up to two 32 GB DDR4-3200 RAM modules for a total of 64 GB, and for storage you tin can configure up to a spacious, 4TB Yard.2 2280 NVMe SSD. The slot supports four-lane PCIe four.0 drives, and so you can install any of the fastest consumer SSDs out there.

For connectivity, the Framework squad came up with a bang-up solution to the USB-C transition -- the four ports are recessed into the case to allow the installation of any ports yous need for your use case via removable modules. Since these connect through USB-C, y'all tin can probably lend them to a friend or colleague in need of a USB-A, HDMI, microSD slot, DisplayPort, and even a headphone jack. This organization also allows yous to cull which side those ports are on, which can come in handy more ofttimes that you'd imagine.

The screen is besides replaceable, equally is the magnetically-attached bezel that houses the 1080p webcam and microphone with physical privacy switches for both. The keyboard offers a 1.5 mm key travel, and you can choose a localized version if needed. Powering all the components in the Framework laptop is a 55 Wh bombardment that is also user-replaceable, as it'south not glued to the case.

The Framework team plans to offer this laptop with Windows 10 or Linux, starting this summer. There's no pricing information yet, merely nosotros do know information technology will besides be offered as a "DIY" kit for those of y'all who want to get together the laptop yourselves. As for the many user-replaceable parts, they'll be available in the Framework market, which volition exist open to third political party sellers of components.