Last year, the Framework 12 was powerful enough to get plenty of routine stuff done, and that hasn’t changed this time out. If all you want to do is write a term paper, watch YouTube or whatever else the youth do these days, it was fine. But the constrained thermals meant that as soon as it was asked to do anything even remotely strenuous, it started wheezing.
It had a surprisingly low performance ceiling, too, where it struggled to play Fortnite, surely table stakes for a computer aimed at kids. Thankfully, the power efficient, cool and muscular grunt of the Core Series 3 has taken a sledgehammer to that ceiling. This is not the same underpowered machine that went on sale for too much money over a year ago.
Fortnite hums along on high-res graphics, as does Hardspace: Shipbreaker, hardly a low-power title despite its age. The acid test, however, was Cyberpunk: 2077, which I’m delighted to say it was able to run perfectly well. Of course, it was using the lowest graphics settings available, but there wasn’t a single skipped frame or stutter. I’m not a hard-nosed gaming aesthete, so I found it eminently playable, and if this was the only machine I had, I’d be happy with the performance.
Sadly, while the performance issues are solved, the usability ones aren’t — at least not for heavy loads. While I’ve had this machine on my lap for much of testing and writing this review, I wouldn’t dare to have it there while gaming. Putting this on a table to test Cyberpunk 2077, it took less than ten minutes before the underside of the chassis was roasting.
As for battery life, I was able to wring five or so hours from a full charge while just writing and listening to Spotify. Do anything more strenuous, like gaming, and you’ll find that figure starts to fall quite sharply, to the point where I’d need to plug in at the three-hour mark.
