Framework Laptop 13 gets ARM processor with 12 cores via upgrade kit

I don't have much faith in Arm Linux. Tuxedo gave up.

Cheap Windows Arm laptops are flooding the market, if someone can pick ONE laptop to support they could easily buy them on sale , refurbished them with Linux and make a profit.

Looks likes their are some challenges with doing this.

No interest in this exactly, but I am interested in the idea that third parties are now targeting the Framework form factor explicitly to sell upgrades/replacements outside of the Framework marketplace.

This board uses the CIX CP8180 SoC, which has worse performance and significantly worse efficiency than even Apple's M1 chip. See Jeff Geerling's review of a desktop with this SoC: https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2025/minisforum-stuffs-ent... If you need an ARM Linux laptop, it's probably a better choice to get a used M1 or M2 MacBook Pro and put Fedora Asahi on it.

So this isn’t an official thing, this is a 3rd party selling a replacement motherboard, is that right?

here's the actual listing: https://metacomputing.io/products/metacomputing-arm-aipc

i posted the article instead because it has some details that aren't on the listing.

This is astonishingly bad power usage for a laptop, a complete dealbreaker: "...early tests show that the SoC already draws about 16 watts at idle..."

https://metacomputing.io/products/metacomputing-arm-aipc

Save you a click or two. Looking at this I have so many questions. Am I buying a mainboard? It is not clear. It lists ports: it only supports 2 ports? You have four options with 16/32gigs and 1tb of storage? Is the storage soldiered? If so, what is the storage? emmc? Soldiered memory seems to be a given in the ARM ecosystem, but the storage is completely unacceptable on a framework mainboard.

The only difference between the pro and the regular is that the second port is a usb-c over an hdmi? I am assuming this is the mainboard even supporting framework extension cards.

No listed Linux compatibility support. Forget if the NPU even works in Linux; I do not even know if this will boot Linux because the company did not bother to submit devicetree patches to the kernel for their SOC. No listed Windows support even.

This company's copy is absolutely terrible.

I'm curious to see battery life reports over this. Chances are these arm chips will not be beating intel/amd on battery life.

Also worth looking at battery life compared to performance...

These Snapdragon X processors have some drama around not having decent Linux support, right?

EDIT: Sorry, not SnapdragonX - apparently I can't read.

Also, who is "MetaComputing" and can I trust them with my money? Something about the big "Web 3 Integrated Devices" branding on their landing page makes me less than enthusiastic. Otherwise I'd be hovering over 'buy'