I've been using an asus zenbook 14 OLED with linux. Compatibility is great.
The screen blows apple out completely. It's clearly, obviously better. The fan noise and battery life are worse than Apple. The keyboard feels better to type on, the trackpad is slightly worse, but not enough to annoy me.
The new Pop OS cosmic is a very fun OS concept for laptops with the autotiling workspaces as a fundamental primitive.
Is the fan turning on often? Is it very loud?
From my research on Macbook alternatives only the Zenbooks looked like almost-an-even-match to me. Curious what's your experience with day-to-day fan noise and heat.
I know someone with a modern Zenbook and it sounds like a jet engine at all times, battery life is awful too.
From a quick search online, the max brightness of your laptop is 400 nits SDR and 500 HDR. My M5 MacBook Pro is 1000 and 1500 nits.
Screen brightness is not something I will compromise on after having a taste of greatness.
I personally wouldn't mind spending 30-40% more for a Linux laptop with similar qualities + repairability. But I will not settle for something much more expensive and worst in some aspects.
There are also arguments agains repairability in Framework's laptop. I did the calculations and for the Framework 16, it would be cheaper to buy a gaming Asus laptop and throw it out in a couple years to replace it versus buying a framework and upgrading it. Utter insanity.
The Macbook Neo is about 500 nits but I'd bet the Asus laptop was more than $600 base.
Looks like the Framework laptops depend on model/screen, between 4-500 but with the new 13 pro hitting 700 nits. For a user replaceable screen, and backwards compatibility (I think), that's pretty solid.
The Framework philosophy was never that it was going to be cheaper.
> The fan noise and battery life are worse than Apple.
That's the main issue for me. I am on M1 Max 32GB RAM. Except for local LLMs, there is absolutely nothing that gets even close to the performance limits of this device. As a result, all the work I do is performed in perfect silence. Very occasionally the device would get warm, never hot. Based on my usage, I could probably go for an Air model, except for how many external screens it supports.
Zero-noise is non-negotiable for me. It's lamentable how absolutely no-one comes even close.