Would you believe that the Framework Laptop 13 is back?

Framework’s fifth motherboard for the Laptop 13 – which, as usual, can easily be installed into any existing Framework Laptop 13 of any generation – is significant primarily because it offers Intel’s Meteor Lake-based Core Ultra chips. However, Framework likes to release its updates in batches, and this one includes some designed to make the Laptop 13 a better system for Linux enthusiasts.

One of those changes is a redesigned keyboard that looks exactly like the older Framework Laptop 13 keyboard, except it has a Super key instead of a Windows logo. The second change is an upgrade to a higher resolution display, chosen specifically because it looks better in 200 percent scaling mode than the old screen; Linux still has problems with “fractional” scaling modes like 125 percent and 150 percent, where the old Framework screen usually looked best.

As usual, we ran performance tests on the new Framework laptop to show how it compares to older models, but since so many Framework laptops now contain mixed and matched parts, we also re-ran a ton of battery tests on most of the older Framework laptop motherboards to show how screen resolution affects battery life (BIOS and driver updates also affected battery life on some models, but more on that in a moment).

The high-level summary is the same as our last Framework Laptop reviews: this isn’t a perfect laptop, and Framework still needs to earn some credibility in terms of software updates and extended support. Intel’s Meteor Lake is also an upgrade with a big asterisk next to it, with generally good news for battery life and graphics performance, but mediocre and conditional gains in CPU performance. But the Framework Laptop’s greatest strength has always been that it gives you Optionsand now upgraders and new buyers have even more of it.

A new screen

The new 13.5-inch display that Framework is releasing alongside its Meteor Lake boards – available as a configuration option for both Intel Core Ultra and AMD Ryzen systems, and as a separate $269 component for upgraders – is Framework’s third laptop 13 display, following the original glossy 2256 x 1504 screen and the matte version with the same resolution that Framework introduced last year alongside Intel’s 13th Gen refresh.

The new screen’s 2880 x 1920 resolution isn’t a huge step up from the original, but the 120Hz refresh rate is a more noticeable upgrade if that sort of thing matters to you. According to Framework’s specs and our own color measurements, it has roughly the same 1500:1 contrast ratio and color gamut coverage as the original, albeit with a slightly higher maximum brightness. It also has a matte finish – if you’re currently using a glossy Framework screen and were considering the matte upgrade anyway, this one is worth the extra money you’ll pay for the higher refresh rate and resolution.

One selling point that Framework uses for this screen is that it’s more comfortable to use at 200% scaling, which is less relevant on Windows 10 or 11 (where 125% or 150% scaling looks perfectly fine), but is important for Linux, where fractional scaling is usually labeled as an “experimental” feature that still breaks a number of apps. Most of our testing was still done on Windows, but the UI in Kubuntu (pictured at the top of the article) was actually more comfortable to use at 200% than on the original 2256×1504 screen. The UI elements are still a bit large, but it’s better than before.

Framework officially supports Ubuntu 24.04.1 LTS and Fedora 40 on the Core Ultra Framework laptop, and distributions based on them should work fine as well. “Community support” is available for Project Bluefin, Arch Linux, and the gaming-focused Bazzite distribution. Whether other distributions will work depends largely on whether they have reasonably recent kernels. The 6.9 kernel and even the still-unfinished 6.11 kernel should include pretty big performance improvements for Meteor Lake, so the newer the better.