The Framework Laptop 16 is the most upgradeable laptop I’ve ever used, and it’s not close. Six expansion card slots give you genuinely flexible I/O. The swappable GPU module is revolutionary for a laptop—nothing else on the market lets you upgrade your graphics without buying a whole new machine. The display is excellent. The keyboard is one of the best I’ve used on a laptop. The build process is more involved than Framework’s Desktop and takes real time, but nothing about it is difficult. Build quality is excellent, the design is solid, and you come away from the assembly understanding exactly how your machine works. That’s worth something. It is also, to be clear, not a portable machine in any meaningful sense. This is a desktop replacement that happens to fold shut.

What It Is

My configuration is the high-end build: an AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 in the expansion bay, 96GB of DDR5-5600 memory, and 8TB of WD_BLACK SN850X NVMe storage. The 240W power adapter should tell you something about the thermal envelope. Total cost was $3,924—not cheap, but you’re getting a workstation-class GPU in a chassis you can upgrade piece by piece instead of replacing wholesale.

The Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 is AMD’s Strix Point platform: Zen 5 cores, an XDNA 2 NPU, and RDNA 3.5 integrated graphics that mostly sit idle behind the RTX 5070. The expansion bay GPU is the real story here—a full mobile RTX 5070 that slides in and out of the chassis as a module.

The Build

If you’ve built Framework’s Desktop and expect the Laptop 16 to be a similar experience, recalibrate. The Desktop is a twenty-minute affair—snap in a fan, seat an NVMe drive, click some tiles into place. The Laptop 16 is a proper build. There are a lot of small screws. You’re assembling a laptop from components, and it feels like it.

None of it is challenging. Framework’s documentation walks you through every step, and nothing requires particular dexterity or specialized tools. But it is time-consuming. Plan for an afternoon, not a coffee break. I’ve been building computers for thirty years and I didn’t find any of it difficult—just methodical.

The upside is that by the time you’re done, you know exactly how everything comes apart and goes back together. Every panel, every module, every connection. When something needs upgrading or replacing down the road, you won’t be guessing. You’ve already done it. For a machine built around the premise of long-term repairability, that’s not a side effect of the DIY approach—it’s the point.

Display

The display is great. For a 16-inch laptop panel, it punches well above what I expected from a company whose reputation is built on modularity rather than display engineering. Brightness is solid, colors are accurate, and the resolution is sharp enough that text rendering is clean at any scaling level. I don’t have strong opinions about display technology in laptops—I care that text is crisp, colors aren’t lying to me, and brightness handles a well-lit room. This one checks all three boxes comfortably.

Keyboard and Input

The second-generation keyboard is excellent—genuinely one of the better laptop keyboards I’ve used. The key travel is satisfying, the layout is clean, and it doesn’t have that mushy, over-dampened feel that plagues most thin-and-light keyboards. I added the numpad module, which slots in beside the keyboard and gives you a real number pad without compromising the main key layout.

Framework gives you actual choice here. Different keyboard layouts, the numpad module, a blank spacer if you want symmetry instead—you configure the input deck to match how you work. Most laptop manufacturers make this decision for you once, at the factory, forever. Framework lets you change your mind.

Expansion and Modularity

Six expansion card slots. That’s the number that matters, and it’s enough to meaningfully customize your I/O for different workflows. I’m running four USB-C, two USB-A, two HDMI, an Ethernet adapter, and an audio card—swapping them between slots depending on what I need. The same system that feels like a novelty with two slots on the Desktop becomes genuinely transformative with six on a laptop.

The real headline is the expansion bay. Framework lets you swap the GPU module—pull it out, slide a new one in. No other laptop manufacturer offers this. When the next generation of mobile graphics arrives, you don’t buy a new laptop. You buy a new module. For anyone who’s ever retired an otherwise perfectly good laptop because the GPU aged out, this is the feature that justifies the entire product line.

Build Quality

Almost perfect. The chassis feels solid and well-built. Panels fit tight, hinges are firm, and the overall construction inspires confidence in a way that plenty of more expensive laptops don’t manage.

Almost. One of my side panels sits about half a millimeter off—not enough to affect function, not enough to notice in normal use, but enough to catch your eye if you’re looking. It’s quite possibly my fault; when you’re the one assembling the machine, tolerances that would be handled by a robot on a factory line are handled by you and a screwdriver. I’m not bothered by it. But if you’re the type who needs every seam flush to the micron, understand that a DIY laptop means your build quality is partly a function of your own assembly.

That said: it feels solid. It feels like a laptop that was engineered to be taken apart and put back together repeatedly without degrading. The modularity doesn’t come at the cost of rigidity. That’s hard to pull off, and Framework pulls it off.

Linux

After spending weeks wrestling with Linux on Framework’s Desktop—trying Debian, NixOS, and eventually settling on Ubuntu—I was braced for a similar experience on the Laptop 16. It just worked. Ubuntu recognized the hardware, the GPU module cooperated, and I was up and running without the library wrangling that the Desktop’s Strix Halo platform demanded. Different silicon, different experience. If Linux support is a concern, the Laptop 16 on Strix Point is in a much better place than the Desktop on Strix Halo.

Portability

Let’s be honest: this is a heavy machine. The RTX 5070 module, 96GB of RAM, 8TB of storage, and a 240W power brick add up. You can carry it. You will notice you are carrying it. This is not the laptop you grab for a quick trip to a coffee shop. It’s the laptop you set up on a desk and use like a desktop that you could move if you needed to. If portability is a priority, Framework makes the Laptop 13. The Laptop 16 is for people who want a workstation that technically fits in a bag.

Verdict

The Framework Laptop 16 is the proof that upgradeable laptops don’t have to be a compromise. The expansion card system delivers real flexibility with six slots. The swappable GPU module is the kind of feature the industry should have built twenty years ago. The display and keyboard are both excellent. Linux works without drama. The build process asks more of you than most laptops do, but it rewards you with a machine you genuinely understand.

At nearly $4,000 for my configuration, it’s a serious investment. But this is a laptop where the GPU, RAM, storage, keyboard, and I/O are all independently upgradeable. The math changes when you’re not buying a whole new machine every few years—you’re buying components. Over a long enough timeline, that modularity pays for itself.

Expect a lot of small screws. Expect an afternoon of assembly. Expect a machine that’s too heavy to carry casually and too capable to leave behind. And expect a laptop that you won’t need to replace the next time a single component falls behind—because you can just swap that component out instead.