I've been happy with my X13 Gen 2 AMD 32GB. Even has a nice screen at 2560x1600@400 nits. Keyboard isn't as good as my ancient Thinkpads, but still better than anything else on the market. I agree though that Thinkpad offerings can be all over the place, and quality varies.
Although, to be honest, I probably would have given up on Thinkpad/x86 entirely if they didn't offer AMD, because in my experience Intel mobile processors are terrible for pro work. I got so fed up with my T480s i7 thermal throttling at pretty much any task that I gave it away.
I believe if you are running a ThinkPad designed for Linux, you get a great Linux experience. I've found great Linux support on older ones that only target Windows. What do you think is missing?
The old ones (ivy bridge) are fine (for that generation). Current ones have regressed on several axes (worse keyboards, trackpads, soldered components), and have not really improved in any meaningful way. They still use poor screens, poor webcams (which are slowly being upgraded now due to macs), no ecc memory etc. Thinkpads are doing the bare minimum, nothing else.
I have a newish X13 and have owned several ThinkPads since the T40. It is the best made machine from them that I've used so far. The keyboard is still good, not as great as the X230 or previous (not full size). The memory is soldered I believe, but harddrive is not. Screen is fine. It is AMD and had a few problems to start with which have ironed out.
I would say, overall, this is an excellent machine for doing work and build quality is excellent. It's a shame that Lenovo have such dubious ethical standards.
I run a Lenovo X1E, which is supposed to be Linux compatible. The Linux experience is bad though. The Lenovo device drivers are just an incomplete buggy mess.
For some reason, people on HN praise Lenovo for Linux compatibility, but in my experience it is quite a bad experience. Yet, every time I bring up this subject, there is someone commenting about how their T430 runs just fine on Linux. Newsflash: the T-series is a 20(!) year old laptop, build by IBM.
Nowadays, the whole 'Linux compatible' thing with Lenovo seems like a marketing afterthought. My X1E is now a couple years old, and yet nobody at Lenovo bothered to provide any fixes for basic stuff like the ACPI driver.
At least the first gen had issues with linux sleep and battery drain. Build quality looks average. It's not a bad device; just not too compelling at the price point.
"After setting these two items, on the lowest brightness idle you will see the CPU hit C8 states on the second tab of powertop and the overall usage be roughly 2.5W if you have a single DIMM. Without ASPM enabled, the power usage will be between 3-4W."
Hanging around the Framework forums https://community.frame.work/ made me feel a lot more comfortable w/ them and I put in a pre-order for a DIY barebones system. To me the price difference didn't seem too bad (I have my own 64GB DDR4-3200 and 2TB PCIe 4.0 M.2s already).
Even if there's a premium, it's a bit weird to argue against the lack of "differentiation" since not another laptop manufacturer offers a parts store like https://frame.work/marketplace or the ability/support to swap or build your own expansion cards.
That's worked around, not really fixed. There are quite a few Clevo or other generic laptops that don't solder ram, storage, and wifi. That's 90% of what you care about. So framework's value add on top of that is not that high for the price premium. The expansion cards are perhaps useful, but I don't see the draw. Their barebones diy edition even before storage and ram is in the 1.2-1.5k range based on the processor. I find that a tough sell.
The mainboards are swappable at $400-1000 which means that if you like the chassis, your next upgrade would be considerably cheaper (and because the CAD files are available, you can easily buy or 3D print a case to use the old mainboard as a NUC). Although personally, the Framework doesn't seem so outside the pricing for the laptops I've been comparing it to anyway, tbt (in my case: ultrabooks that are Linux friendly with decent displays and that can get to 64GB of RAM) - the Slimbook Executive 14, Tuxedo Pulse 15 Gen2, Star Labs Starbook 14, are all around the same ballpark price. The HP Dev One is a bit cheaper, but on the flip side, the HP Elitebook 845 Gen9 is double the price.
As for the marketplace, the keyboard, trackpad, case components, battery, and displays are also easily replaceable/repairable, which certainly matters a lot to me and I'd imagine would matter a lot to people who are looking at being able to upgrade or keep using the laptop longer term, or that are concerned about value/TCO.
I think their are enough people that would be sold just on the "repairability" angle, but the modding culture stuff is cool too. I'm a big fan of some of the stuff happening, like this Eink display mod: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=480xteW2wq4
I bought a Pinebook which was bricked almost instantly by a child gently tripping over a lead. The build quality was terrible, it wouldn't have happened with any other laptop I've owned in the last 15 years.
I should qualify this by saying that it happened on the day I first got the device. I was really excited to receive it, and it did everything hoped it would, but a gentle pull to the side on the power lead was enough to break internal components such that repair was out of the question, which is a real shame. This was one of the cheap 11" laptops, the bigger ones are probably better.
Thinkpads (T): Decent keyboards, fwupd. Everything else is mediocre to poor.
Dell Precision: About the same as thinkpads.
S76, Starlabs: coreboot, upgradable. Mediocre screen, keyboard, trackpad, audio etc.
Framework: Not enough to differentiate for the price premium.
I have mostly given up on this. If macbooks get gpu linux drivers, I am willing to jump ship.