Framework Laptop 16 (2023) Laptop Review

The display bezel is customizable with different colors, including black, orange, and lavender. Extra spacers are available in black, orange, gray, lavender, color shift, as well as a programable LED Matrix. See the bottom of the Framework 16 here.

The build quality is decent for the Framework 16. The chassis is magnesium alloy, the cover is aluminum, and there are plastic pieces throughout. It feels solid, and there's only a little flex in the keyboard deck. While the materials generally feel durable, the laptop's modular design results in gaps and creases where the different modules connect to each other and the chassis. The edges of the spacers around the touchpad are sharp and can scratch you. Similarly, the display assembly lacks rigidity and flexes quite easily, likely due to the customizable bezels. The black plastic finish above the keyboard scratches easily, and the power button picks up fingerprints and smudges after some use. That being said, there are no complaints about the feet or the balance of the laptop; the feet feel solid, and the weight is well distributed.

The hinge is outstanding. It feels smooth and has a moderate amount of resistance, allowing you to easily lift the lid with one hand. Because of the flex in the display assembly, there's some wobble when you adjust the screen; however, the wobble isn't present when typing heavily.

Everything is replaceable in the Framework Laptop 16, including the display, frame bezels, keyboard and numpad, GPU, and more. Accessing the internals is a bit more labor intensive than with its smaller sibling, the Framework Laptop 13 (2023), but everything is well-labeled and easy to work with. You need to undo a total of 16 T5 screws (these are captive, thankfully), and then disconnect the ribbon cables from the keyboard and trackpad to access the motherboard. If you want to use the Expansion Bay Module, you'll need to remove additional screws and clips from the Graphics Module. Although most parts are proprietary to Framework, the RAM and storage are replaceable with compatible parts from any brand.

See the support and service guides here.

• 180W power supply
• USB-C to USB-C (right-angle) cord
• Documentation
• Framework screwdriver with Phillips & T5 heads
• Stickers
• Iron On graphic patch
• Paper poster

The Framework 16's display looks sharp and provides ample room for multitasking, as you can comfortably fit at least two windows side by side. It features a 16:10 aspect ratio, providing you with additional vertical real estate compared to the more traditional 16:9 aspect ratio. This is great when web browsing or reading articles, as you don't need to scroll as much. The trade-off is that you will almost always get letterboxing on the top and bottom when watching videos.

The response time of the Framework 16's 165Hz display is outstanding. There's very minimal ghosting behind fast-moving objects. It also supports FreeSync variable refresh rate technology, so you don't need to worry about screen tearing when playing games with an uncapped frame rate.

The display's contrast ratio is decent, although it's on the lower end for what's typical of recent IPS display panels. It's also lower when compared to other display technologies like VA and OLED. This results in blacks appearing gray in dim settings.

This display gets bright enough for use in almost all indoor settings. Depending on the content and viewing conditions (whether the sun is shining directly on the screen or not), it can also get bright enough for outdoor use. It also gets very dim at the lowest setting, which is great for preventing eye strain and fatigue if you want to view content in a dark environment.

The display's matte coating is good at handling reflections. You'll barely notice direct light sources like a lamp or sunlight through your window when the screen is on full brightness, although these will be more apparent when viewing dark content.

The display's horizontal viewing angle is okay. The image dims and washes out fairly quickly when moving to the side. It's best to be close or directly in front of the screen if you need perfect accuracy for color-critical work.

The display's vertical viewing angle is okay. Like the horizontal viewing angle, the image looks dimmer and more washed out from above or below. You'll need to look at the screen more or less straight on to see an accurate image.

The out-of-the-box color accuracy is adequate for this display. The color temperature leans towards the warm side, giving the screen a yellowish tint. Most white balance inaccuracies are fairly minor, but because this display targets a wide color space, the colors look oversaturated and inaccurate. The gamma is too low, over-brightening most scenes.

The display offers a wide color gamut, with near complete coverage of the sRGB and DCI P3 color spaces. This makes it great for color-critical work. It also has excellent coverage of the Adobe RGB color space, but it can't display the highly saturated greens, so it might not be good enough for professional photographers.

The Framework 16's keyboard is great. It offers a spacious layout that's easy to use. While the keys are stable and have a decent amount of travel, they feel mushy, almost like a rubber dome keyboard. This mushiness doesn't provide the most satisfying typing experience.

What is satisfying about this keyboard is the ability to customize its layout, inputs, and position. All keyboards either come with white backlit or per-key RGB lighting; there are also options to add a numpad, macropad, or simple spacers to fill the additional space. You can configure the inputs of the numpad and macropad to your liking, as they run QMK layouts. You can also customize the keyboard position to the left, right, or center of the unit, although the center position only works if you opt for the spacers. The laptop includes the spacers at the time of purchase if you don't purchase the numpad or macropad modules; however, if you choose one of these modules, the spacers cost extra.

The Framework 16's touchpad is decent. While not small by any means, proportionally to the rest of the chassis, its design feels dated. Tracking is great, except for the right edge of the trackpad, which is inconsistent. It tends to work if you begin a movement elsewhere on the touchpad, but it has a hard time detecting inputs when you begin along the right edge. Similarly, while the buttons feel click and work well, you can only click on the bottom half of this touchpad. Finally, palm detection is inconsistent.

The Framework 16's speakers get reasonably loud but are devoid of bass and treble, resulting in a stuffy and congested sound. On the bright side, the speakers don't rattle at high volumes.

The webcam is decent on the Framework 16. It provides a clear and rather detailed image. However, the exposure is too low, and there's some visible noise. While the microphone is clear and you can understand voices well, it's on the quiet side. There is a hardware privacy switch for the webcam and microphone rather than a physical cover; the switch disconnects the webcam and microphone from power, making it impossible for you to use them without flipping the switch again.

The Framework 16 has a modular port system with six slots. The Graphics Module also features a dedicated USB-C port that supports display out and USB 4 data transmission but not charging. Each port is built into a small cartridge that Framework calls 'expansion cards'; they use USB-C to connect with the chassis. You can buy as many expansion cards as you want from the following options:

• USB-A (USB 3.2 Gen 2)
• USB-C (USB 4, charging, DisplayPort Alt Mode)
• DisplayPort (1.4)
• MicroSD (UHS-I)
• HDMI (2.0b)
• Ethernet
• 3.5 mm combo headphone/microphone jack
• 250GB (USB 3.2 Gen 2) Storage drive
• 1TB (USB 3.2 Gen 2) Storage drive

The rear two slots (labeled 1 and 4 on this diagram) pull more power when housing USB-A ports. Similarly, slots 3 and 6 do not support charging the laptop. Slots 3, 5, and 6 do not support video output. See Framework's diagram about port specifications here.

The wireless adapter is an AMD RZ616, also known as the MediaTek MT922A22M. Wi-Fi 6E has faster speeds, lower latency, and less signal interference than previous Wi-Fi standards. However, you'll need a router that supports Wi-Fi 6E to benefit from these features.

The Framework Laptop 16 (2023) is available with the following CPUs:

• AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS (8 cores/16 threads, up to 5.1GHz, 24MB L3 cache)
• AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS (8 cores/16 threads, up to 5.2GHz, 24MB L3 cache)

Both are high-performing 35W CPUs typically found in gaming and workstation laptops. These 7000-series processors were the first generation of AMD CPUs to include a Neural Processing Unit (NPU) for AI-based tasks like image generation in photo editing apps and background blurring during video calls. AMD has released a new 8000 series of CPUs that features better NPU performance but otherwise is a refresh of these 7000-series chips.

These Ryzen 7 and 9 processors can easily handle general productivity tasks and more demanding workloads like gaming, programming, and content creation. Both CPUs have the same core count and cache; what differentiates them is a slight boost in clock speed for the Ryzen 9 processor. Framework advertises a 45W Thermal Design Power (TDP) for these processors of 'continuous processor power,' meaning they should be able to maintain this higher power draw to achieve better performance for intensive workloads.

The Framework Laptop 16 (2023) is available with these GPU options:

• AMD Radeon RX 7700S 8GB GDDR6 (100W TGP) discrete GPU
• AMD Radeon 780M integrated graphics

If you are primarily interested in gaming or performing GPU-intensive workloads like 3D modeling or rendering, get the discrete GPU option. The RX 7700S is a mid-range GPU that competes with NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 4060 and 4070 GPUs. It supports features like ray tracing, hardware-accelerated AV1 encoding, and AMD's frame generation technology, Fluid Motion Frames. It's great for high refresh rate 1080p gaming in modern AAA games and can also provide a great 1440p experience. Ray tracing performance trails its NVIDIA counterparts, however.

Regarding integrated GPUs, the Radeon 780M is at the top of its class. It can handle some graphically intensive games but only at 1080p with low settings. This makes it a good option if you only plan to game once in a while but primarily use your laptop for light productivity tasks like web browsing or video playback. See our review of the Framework Laptop 13 (2023) for performance metrics of the 780M iGPU on a lower power CPU.

This laptop has many RAM configurations. The DIY model has the following RAM options:

• 8GB DDR5 5600MHz (1x 8GB)
• 16GB DDR5 5600MHz (1x 16GB)
• 16GB DDR5 5600MHz (2x 8GB)
• 32GB DDR5 5600MHz (1x 32GB)
• 32GB DDR5 5600MHz (2x 16GB)
• 64GB DDR5 5600MHz (2x 32GB)
• None (bring your own)

• 16GB DDR5 5600MHz (2x 8GB)
• 32GB DDR5 5600MHz (2x 16GB)

The Performance and Performance Pro variants come with 16GB, while the Overkill variant has 32GB. The RAM is user-replaceable. Each SO-DIMM of DDR5 RAM has two channels; therefore, if you plan on upgrading to more RAM down the road, you can select an option with only one DIMM and add another one later without having to worry about sacrificing performance like with the older DDR4 standard.

The Pre-built models have a fixed amount of storage and use M.2 2280 PCIe Gen 4 SSDs. The Performance and Performance Pro variants come with 512GB, while the Overkill variant has 1TB. Pre-built variants all come with Western Digital PC SN810 drives. There's a second M.2 slot using the smaller 2230 format; see the layout here.

The DIY variant has many storage options, including:

• 250GB WD_Black SN770
• 500GB WD_Black SN770 
• 1TB WD_Black SN770
• 1TB WD_Black SN850X
• 2TB WD_Black SN770
• 2TB WD_Black SN850X
• 4TB WD_Black SN850X
• None (bring your own)

The secondary storage options include:

• 250GB WD_Black SN770
• 1TB Western Digital SN740
• 2TB Western Digital SN740
• None (bring your own)

The SN850X drives are the fastest; the performance of the the SN770 and the SN740 is the same for 1TB capacities and above. However, the smaller 500GB and 250GB SN770 drives perform worse. If you primarily game, the differences are mostly negligible. However, if you transfer a lot of files locally, the difference in performance will be more noticeable; see the SN740's specifications, SN770's specifications, and SN850X's specifications.

Finally, you can add additional storage with Framework's expansion cards, which use a USB 3.2 Gen 2 interface. There are options for 250GB or 1TB cards; Framework advertises up to 1000 MB/s read and 800 MB/s write speeds for both capacities.

The Framework 16 has an outstanding overall score in Geekbench 5. The AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS has strong single- and multi-thread performance, making it suitable for general productivity tasks and highly demanding workloads. Just know there are significantly faster CPUs on the market for heavy workloads, like the Dell Alienware m18 R2 (2024)'s Intel Core i9-14900HX. The Ryzen 9 7940HS will be marginally faster overall due to a small bump in clock speeds.

The Radeon RX 7700S GPU performs very well and is suitable for intensive tasks. There are certainly much faster GPUs, but this is a great mid-range option for productivity applications.

The Framework 16's AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS CPU performs very well in the Cinebench R23 benchmarks. While the laptop immediately thermal throttles when starting the multi-core test, the performance impact is minimal. Comparing results to the Lenovo LOQ 15 (2023) with the same chip (and whose peak temperature only hits 88 °C or 190.4 °F), the Framework scores 7% lower in single-thread performance and around 5% slower for multi-core workloads. There are several user reports of thermal throttling for this CPU configuration in the Framework Community Forums.

The Framework 16 is outstanding for Blender work. It's always better to use the discrete GPU for rendering complex 3D images (GPU rendering isn't available for the AMD Radeon 780M iGPU). Although the Radeon RX 7700S performs fantastically, the NVIDIA RTX GPUs still perform better because they support the Optix API.

The Framework 16's RX 7700S scores remarkably well in the Basemark GPU benchmark. As mentioned in the GPU section, this AMD GPU can handle demanding games at the native QHD+ resolution, although you have to tweak the settings. By contrast, the AMD Radeon 780M iGPU will be able to handle some graphically intensive games, but only at the lowest settings and at 720p or 1080p.

As mentioned in the Storage section, performance will vary depending on the SSD model you choose, and in the case of the WD_Black SN770 drives, the capacity you select. For expansion cards, Framework advertises 1000 MB/s read and 800 MB/s write speeds for both 250GB and 1TB drives.

Borderlands 3 runs relatively well at 1080p on the Framework 16 with the AMD Radeon RX 7700S. The average frame rate is high, but there are noticeable stutters due to frame drops. We've also tested Red Dead Redemption 2's (RDR2) built-in benchmark with a variety of settings and resolutions:

• Ultra Settings:
• Average FPS (1080p): 58
• Average FPS (Native): 37
• Ultra Settings + FSR 2 (Balanced):
• Average FPS (1080p): 78
• Average FPS (Native): 64
• Very Low Settings:
• Average FPS (1080p): 148
• Average FPS (Native): 103

This laptop provides a smooth and playable experience in RDR2 at both 1080p and QHD+, provided you're willing to tweak the settings or use FSR upscaling.

The 780M iGPU runs demanding AAA titles poorly, even if it's able to achieve over 60 fps by turning down all the settings to low.

Civilization VI, and other turn-based strategy games, are easy to run at the native QHD+ resolution of the Framework 16 using the RX 7700S configuration. You can also expect to achieve playable frame rates at 1080p resolution on the 780M iGPU if you tweak the settings.

Every configuration of the Framework 16 can run Counter-Strike 2. The RX 7700S is a great choice for gamers chasing high frame rates in competitive first-person shooter games, even at the laptop display's native QHD+ resolution. Although the 780M iGPU isn't ideal for gaming, by lowering a few settings, you can achieve a smooth 60 fps experience at 1080p in this title and other similarly demanding games.

The RX 7700S configuration delivers a smooth, high-refresh-rate experience at 1080p in Shadow of the Tomb Raider and will be able to run this game smoothly at the native QHD+ resolution. The 780M iGPU may achieve a playable frame rate at 1080p if you use the lowest settings.

The Framework 16 is quite loud, and its keyboard is warm to the touch under load, although not uncomfortably so. The bottom of the laptop gets hotter around the GPU module reaching 46.9 °C (116.42 °F).

The Framework 16 almost immediately thermal throttles during a multi-core workload, reaching 100 °C (212 °F), although this doesn't impact performance too much.

The Performance model comes with Windows 11 Home, while the Performance Pro and Overkill models use Windows 11 Pro. The DIY version allows you to choose either Windows 11 versions or no OS installation (if you want to use your favorite Linux-based OS, for example). Framework provides a list of officially supported Linux distros as well as instructions for installing them here.

There's a fingerprint sensor built into the power button.