Framework 16 vs Framework 13 + Immersed Visor

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I have a batch 12 preorder for the Framework 16. I've been pretty excited for this laptop since I first heard hints of it, it's basically a straight upgrade from my XPS 17 9700 from 2020, and I want to give this one to my dad.

My biggest gripe with my current laptop, however, is portability. I travel quite a lot, and this thing is heavy, over 2.5 kg thanks to the dedicated GPU that I rarely use. Hence my excitement: get a Framework 16, pop the GPU in when I'm at home and take it out for travel every couple months. Seems like the perfect cadence for the swap process.

I'm still concerned about the GPU-less weight though. The Framework 13 is pretty much the max of what I'd really like to be lugging around on long trips where I have to carry it for hours at a time.

I'm also concerned about the resolution downgrade going from 4k -> 1440p. I know, this forum, LTT, and seemingly everyone in the world somehow can't distinguish the two on a 16-17inch display, but I (a) primarily use it for work, not gaming, and (b) have contacts that correct my vision, so I can. Every time I mention this I get pushback but please, just take it for granted; I've tested it with others' laptops. It's not a complete dealbreaker, but it's a consideration and the lower real estate affects my work when traveling and away from my external monitor.

Then I came across the Immersed Visor. I just tried a friend's vision pro the other night, and the resolution is about as grainy as a 16-inch 1440p laptop-distance display, so that seems like a wash, except the part where I'd essentially have multiple external displays while traveling. This seems like a strict upgrade, and since I very rarely use my laptop's GPU (I used to use optimus or whatever the name-du-jour is on Linux but I now use on-demand, reboot-to-use for my dedicated internal GPU and I haven't used it in a month), I don't think the graphics upgrade is even a major consideration. I'm considering building a desktop for work purposes anyway, in which case I'd pretty much never use an internal laptop one (I'm not a big AAA gamer).

So my consideration now is: keep my Framework 16 preorder, or cancel it and get a Framework 13 and an Immersed Visor when it comes out. The price is pretty much the same depending on some specifics.

Is there anything I'm missing here?

[igormp]

3 minutes ago, AAAAAAAAAAAAAA said:

My biggest gripe with my current laptop, however, is portability. I travel quite a lot, and this thing is heavy, over 2.5 kg thanks to the dedicated GPU that I rarely use. Hence my excitement: get a Framework 16, pop the GPU in when I'm at home and take it out for travel every couple months. Seems like the perfect cadence for the swap process.

Why not go for an eGPU solution, or, as you mentioned later, just have a desktop at home?

4 minutes ago, AAAAAAAAAAAAAA said:

I'm also concerned about the resolution downgrade going from 4k -> 1440p. I know, this forum, LTT, and seemingly everyone in the world somehow can't distinguish the two on a 16-17inch display, but I (a) primarily use it for work, not gaming, and (b) have contacts that correct my vision, so I can. Every time I mention this I get pushback but please, just take it for granted; I've tested it with others' laptops. It's not a complete dealbreaker, but it's a consideration and the lower real estate affects my work when traveling and away from my external monitor.

Do you actually use 4k at that screen size without any scaling? If so, wew, I envy your eyesight

Otherwise, if you do use scaling, going for a smaller res and just going down with the scaling factor should give you as much screen real estate. You'd be losing a bit on crispiness, but would have better battery life, so that's a tradeoff you need to consider.

7 minutes ago, AAAAAAAAAAAAAA said:

Then I came across the Immersed Visor. I just tried a friend's vision pro the other night, and the resolution is about as grainy as a 16-inch 1440p laptop-distance display, so that seems like a wash, except the part where I'd essentially have multiple external displays while traveling.

Does it work with regular linux/windows devices? TIL, nice to know. Not sure how comfortable it is to use while on the go, but I never tried it out anyway.

 

8 minutes ago, AAAAAAAAAAAAAA said:

So my consideration now is: keep my Framework 16 preorder, or cancel it and get a Framework 13 and an Immersed Visor when it comes out. The price is pretty much the same depending on some specifics.

I'm personally not a fan of large laptops, I have a powerful desktop at home that I can always remote it or just use when I'm there, otherwise I prefer 13~14" laptops with good battery life. A dedicated GPU is pretty much useless for me on a laptop, I don't play games at all in those, and for any GPU-demanding tasks I can just remote back into my machine at home, so my vote goes for the FW 13.

 

9 minutes ago, AAAAAAAAAAAAAA said:

Is there anything I'm missing here?

What about FW 13 + one of those portable external monitors? This could help with your screen real estate issue, which seems to be your biggest gripe (which I understand way too well, since I use a 42" 4k TV as a monitor lol)

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46 minutes ago, igormp said:

Why not go for an eGPU solution, or, as you mentioned later, just have a desktop at home?

Do you actually use 4k at that screen size without any scaling? If so, wew, I envy your eyesight

Otherwise, if you do use scaling, going for a smaller res and just going down with the scaling factor should give you as much screen real estate. You'd be losing a bit on crispiness, but would have better battery life, so that's a tradeoff you need to consider.

Does it work with regular linux/windows devices? TIL, nice to know. Not sure how comfortable it is to use while on the go, but I never tried it out anyway.

 

I'm personally not a fan of large laptops, I have a powerful desktop at home that I can always remote it or just use when I'm there, otherwise I prefer 13~14" laptops with good battery life. A dedicated GPU is pretty much useless for me on a laptop, I don't play games at all in those, and for any GPU-demanding tasks I can just remote back into my machine at home, so my vote goes for the FW 13.

 

What about FW 13 + one of those portable external monitors? This could help with your screen real estate issue, which seems to be your biggest gripe (which I understand way too well, since I use a 42" 4k TV as a monitor lol)

Good points!

Yeah I do scale it, the crispiness is an issue but also the scaling available in gnome isn't fine-grained (only in increments of 100%).

I considered an external monitor, but they're surprisingly heavy and at that point it seems somewhat worthwhile to just get a better laptop and internal display.

I haven't tried the Immersed Visor yet either, it's not even out to reviewers yet but I'm operating on the assumption that it's basically as-advertised since they're not pretending it's a good gaming VR headset and uses basically the same displays (with a little more resolution and fov) as the AVP.

[igormp]

10 hours ago, AAAAAAAAAAAAAA said:

Yeah I do scale it, the crispiness is an issue but also the scaling available in gnome isn't fine-grained (only in increments of 100%).

Have you tried a 1440p screen without scaling then? Your current 4k display at 200% scaling has the same screen real estate as a 1080p display. The FW 13 has a 2256x1504 display (weird af res), which at 100% scaling should give you more real estate than your current laptop, but may be hard to read. You could either use it without any scaling if your eyesight is that good, or try fractional scaling with 115~150% to reach the same real estate as your current device, with a little less crispiness (the DPI will be a little lower compared to your current 4k 17" display).

 

Anyhow, which version of gnome are you using, and are you on X or Wayland? Seems like fractional scaling is now possible on gnome under wayland. If you're willing to, you could also try KDE instead, I've heard it has a nice support for fractional scaling (that's the term you'll want to search if needed instead of "fine-grained", btw).

10 hours ago, AAAAAAAAAAAAAA said:

I considered an external monitor, but they're surprisingly heavy and at that point it seems somewhat worthwhile to just get a better laptop and internal display.

Fair enough.

10 hours ago, AAAAAAAAAAAAAA said:

I haven't tried the Immersed Visor yet either, it's not even out to reviewers yet but I'm operating on the assumption that it's basically as-advertised since they're not pretending it's a good gaming VR headset and uses basically the same displays (with a little more resolution and fov) as the AVP.

Oh, it's an actual product, I thought you were referring as a generic term for those AR devices lol

I wouldn't hold my breath on that. Ofc, try it out whenever it's available, but buy a laptop that works for you even without it.

 

EDIT: oh, forgot to add, do you have a tablet? If so, maybe you could use some of those software things to use it as an extra display. If not, then ignore this idea, adding an extra device is not a good solution to your problem.

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4 hours ago, igormp said:

Have you tried a 1440p screen without scaling then? Your current 4k display at 200% scaling has the same screen real estate as a 1080p display. The FW 13 has a 2256x1504 display (weird af res), which at 100% scaling should give you more real estate than your current laptop, but may be hard to read. You could either use it without any scaling if your eyesight is that good, or try fractional scaling with 115~150% to reach the same real estate as your current device, with a little less crispiness (the DPI will be a little lower compared to your current 4k 17" display).

 

Anyhow, which version of gnome are you using, and are you on X or Wayland? Seems like fractional scaling is now possible on gnome under wayland. If you're willing to, you could also try KDE instead, I've heard it has a nice support for fractional scaling (that's the term you'll want to search if needed instead of "fine-grained", btw).

Yeah at some point the issue is just it's a tradeoff between real estate and resolution that I don't have with 4k that I would with the 1440pish of the framework. Again, not a complete dealbreaker, but a big consideration.

 

 

4 hours ago, igormp said:

Oh, it's an actual product, I thought you were referring as a generic term for those AR devices lol

I wouldn't hold my breath on that. Ofc, try it out whenever it's available, but buy a laptop that works for you even without it.

 

EDIT: oh, forgot to add, do you have a tablet? If so, maybe you could use some of those software things to use it as an extra display. If not, then ignore this idea, adding an extra device is not a good solution to your problem.

Yeah it's an actual product, it looks pretty much ideal for work in my case and that's specifically what they made it for so that makes sense. But yours actually seems like quite a good idea: I think I'll cancel my 16 preorder, get a 13, and get a portable external monitor or use my tablet while I wait for it to come out. I haven't found any great tablet-as-external-display (open-source) apps, but assuming I can find one I'll try that!

[igormp]

58 minutes ago, AAAAAAAAAAAAAA said:

or use my tablet while I wait for it to come out. I haven't found any great tablet-as-external-display (open-source) apps, but assuming I can find one I'll try that!

Gnome on wayland should support this natively:

I tried to test it but it doesn't work on Xorg and I'm not really willing to move to wayland as of now

 

I managed to get it working with x11vnc and some workarounds since my desktop has an nvidia gpu:

https://github.com/santiagofdezg/linux-extend-screen

https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/585069/unable-to-add-a-virtual-display-to-xorg/585078#585078

 

Enabling the new xrandr virtual display made my actual display a bit flickery tho, but ymmv.

 

[AAAAAAAAAAAAAA]

On 2/16/2024 at 5:31 PM, igormp said:

Gnome on wayland should support this natively:

I tried to test it but it doesn't work on Xorg and I'm not really willing to move to wayland as of now

 

I managed to get it working with x11vnc and some workarounds since my desktop has an nvidia gpu:

https://github.com/santiagofdezg/linux-extend-screen

https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/585069/unable-to-add-a-virtual-display-to-xorg/585078#585078

 

Enabling the new xrandr virtual display made my actual display a bit flickery tho, but ymmv.

 

I tried this actually and it only worked like half the time unfortunately. Tried a couple different RDP apps too. That was a few months ago though so maybe worth another test!