All of these models are nearly unbreakable. The only issues I've encountered so far are related to the fans and the fact that they tend to get very hot after about two years of daily use. By daily use, I mean working on them and having daily video calls—the hardware just isn't designed for that level of usage.
I have given all of my previous ThinkPads to friends and family. Recently, I purchased a used X220 (with an i7 processor, 16GB of RAM, and a 500GB SSD) for 250 bucks. It's now my "holiday" notebook, running FreeBSD and Sway.
I don’t care how much it weighs, give me a milled aluminum chassis that could double as a weapon. I also want it thick enough for a normal Ethernet port and a good keyboard. Speaking of ports, I want them all. Can’t always predict what my travels will get me into, and more options is better than less. Especially when 2,000 miles from the box of cables, converters, and dongles at home.
That said, its display tech is bordering on too old. 1366x768 is too small for most people to reasonably work on. In true X220 style you can upgrade this, and although you give up a DisplayPort on the dock, most people won't care about that. The other problem is external resolutions are limited to 2560x1600, which isn't 4k. Finally, a lot of software has gotten too heavy for its CPU. You can run things like VSCode, Slack, Google Meet, etc. on it, but it's not wonderful. I have a basic belief that if an app is slow on the X220 it's too slow in general, but developers of workplace collaboration apps and almost all websites disagree.
One of my "when I get rich" projects is to design/print a board to put a Raspberry Pi 5 CM in an X220 shell and sell it along with display upgrade kits. I think I've had actual dreams about this.
They have a huge following and many amazing features as you say. The MacBook screens, trackpads, keyboards, and speakers are still top shelf.
I have a couple of old MacBooks (and a Thinkpad) that I would upgrade for sure. A Snapdragon X Elite would be great.
The thing about a Pi 5 though is that it is really not any faster than the X220 natively.
That's very ready to argue - it has the same awful unergonomic layout like almost every other keyboard instead of ortho staggered. And the spacebar is needlessly huge
Also the screen had poor resolution for the best laptop
One think I don't remember having in X220 was physical microphone off switch, which is present in the Framework.
varbhat•5h ago
I do think that X220 is a great laptop because despite its age, it still runs great.
But, tbh, i don't think that it holds up well in terms of performance if we compare it to any modern laptop.
What we do want is a modern laptop which is open source friendly, has a great battery life, is repair-friendly, has a good hardware. Do Framework laptops fit this criteria? I don't know. I also do hear that the modern Thinkpads are good but they used to be better, years back.
buccal•4h ago
schroeding•3h ago
It is significantly more fragile than a X220, though. And tbh, the screen looks the most fragile of any laptop I ever had, as there is an air gap behind the LCD, i.e. you really shouldn't hit it with e.g. a pen or something, at all, as it may flex and break. At least you can easily replace it, without ripping out glue, if it happens? :s
It also is not the best bang-for-buck compared to other new laptops, if you ignore the repairability. IMO understandable due to their smaller scale and additional engineering, but still true.
I use mine with Linux and it's great, you feel like a first-class customer like you do with e.g. a Systems76 machine (which are also nice), it's explicitly supported. Here is their support page for each motherboard: https://frame.work/de/en/linux
If you choose a mainboard with a new CPU, you may need to use a mainline kernel instead of LTS for a while, but that's it, in my experience.
Battery life is not on ultra book level, but it's at least on par with the X220. I get like 8, 9 hours out of it.
Can highly recommend it, even if it's not perfect.
boogsbyte•2h ago