Framework, Fairphone and the Repairable Tech Worth Buying

The Framework Laptop 13 Pro and Fairphone 6 side by side — two very different devices, one shared philosophy: repair rather than replace.

I've spent the better part of a decade watching manufacturers glue, solder and seal their way to ever-thinner gadgets, only for those same devices to become e-waste the moment a battery sags or a screen cracks. So it's genuinely refreshing to spend time with kit designed to be opened, mended and upgraded. This review pulls together the state of repairable tech in 2026 — Framework's expanding laptop and desktop range alongside Fairphone's sixth-generation smartphone — to work out what's actually worth your money, and who each device really suits.

The pitch for repairable tech has always been part practical, part principled. On the principled side, you're keeping devices out of landfill and reducing the mining and manufacturing churn that comes with the two-year upgrade cycle. On the practical side — and this is the bit that tends to win people over — a laptop you can drop a bigger SSD into, or a phone whose battery you can swap in five minutes for the cost of a takeaway, simply lasts longer. And a device that lasts longer costs you less per year of ownership, even if the sticker price looks steep at first.

What's changed in 2026 is that these devices are no longer curiosities for the tinkering crowd. Framework's line-up now spans a 12-inch convertible, two 13-inch models, a customisable 16-inch machine and a proper Mini-ITX desktop. Fairphone, meanwhile, has matured its modular phone into something you could hand to a non-technical relative without apology. Let's dig in.

The Repairable Landscape in 2026: An Overview

Before we get into individual devices, it's worth setting the scene. The two headline players approach repairability from opposite ends of the market. Framework builds modular computers where practically everything — memory, storage, ports, keyboard, even the mainboard — is user-serviceable and, crucially, sold as replacement parts. Fairphone applies the same thinking to smartphones, an area where the industry has spent years moving in exactly the wrong direction with glued-in batteries and sealed chassis.

Both brands are now readily available in the UK, which wasn't always a given. Framework ships its laptops and its desktop to British buyers directly, and the Framework Laptop 12 opened for UK pre-orders starting at £499. Fairphone has UK retail distribution and European warranty support. That matters, because a repairable device is only as good as your ability to get the spare parts, and both companies now run parts stores that ship domestically.

Framework Laptop 13 Pro: The Flagship

Shop Framework Laptop 13 Pro on Amazon UK

Announced on 21 April 2026, the Framework Laptop 13 Pro is the newest and most polished expression of the company's 13-inch platform. It takes the familiar repairable formula and wraps it in a premium aluminium chassis, which addresses one of the longest-standing criticisms of earlier Framework machines — that they felt a touch plasticky next to a MacBook or an XPS.

The Framework Laptop 13 Pro's premium aluminium chassis measures under 16mm thick and weighs 1.4kg — thin and light enough to forget it's endlessly repairable.

Design and build

The move to a premium aluminium shell is the story here. At 1.4kg and under 16mm thick, the Laptop 13 Pro sits comfortably in the mainstream ultrabook category on physical dimensions alone — it's no longer a compromise you tolerate for the sake of repairability. Open it up and the philosophy is intact: the Expansion Card system lets you pick your ports and slot them into either side, so you can run twin USB-C on the left and an HDMI plus a card reader on the right, or reconfigure entirely when your needs change.

Framework has also sweated the input details this time. There's a haptic touchpad — a first for the platform — an improved keyboard, and Dolby Atmos-tuned speakers. Those three things are exactly what buyers of previous Framework laptops asked for most, and it's satisfying to see the company respond rather than chase spec-sheet headlines.

The display is genuinely lovely

The 13.5-inch LTPS LCD runs at a sharp 2880×1920, hits 700 nits of peak brightness and offers a variable refresh rate from 30Hz all the way to 120Hz, with integrated touch. That combination — high resolution, high brightness, adaptive refresh and touch — is the sort of panel you'd expect on a considerably more locked-down premium laptop. The 3:2-ish tall aspect ratio remains a joy for documents, code and web browsing, giving you noticeably more vertical space than a 16:9 panel.

Performance and battery

You can specify the Laptop 13 Pro with Intel's Core Ultra Series 3 (Panther Lake) chips — the Core Ultra 5 325, Core Ultra X7 358H or Core Ultra X9 388H — or AMD's Ryzen AI 9 HX 370. That's a broad range covering everything from efficient everyday computing to seriously capable content work, and the choice of platform matters as much as the specific SKU.

The 74Wh battery is a 22% capacity increase over its predecessor, and Framework quotes over 20 hours of 4K video streaming. I always treat those headline numbers with caution, and to Framework's credit the figure is explicitly measured at 250 nits streaming 4K in Power Efficiency mode. In real-world mixed use — brightness up, a dozen browser tabs, the odd video call — expect that to land closer to 12–16 hours. That's still an excellent result and comfortably a full working day away from the mains.

Software

The Laptop 13 Pro officially supports Windows 11, and there's strong support for a range of Linux distributions including Fedora, Ubuntu and Arch Linux, with Framework actively working to keep compatibility tight. That last point is a genuine differentiator — Framework treats Linux as a first-class citizen rather than an afterthought, and if you're the sort of buyer drawn to repairable hardware, there's a decent chance you'll want that freedom.

Framework Laptop 13 (Ryzen AI 300 Edition): The Upgrader's Choice

If the Pro is the flagship, the Framework Laptop 13 in its AMD Ryzen AI 300 form is the model I'd point most people towards — precisely because it leans hardest into the upgradeable ethos. It was updated in 2025 with AMD's Ryzen AI 300-series chips, and it's in stock and ships immediately in the UK.

Why the SO-DIMM slots matter

Here's the crux: the Laptop 13 has two SO-DIMM DDR5-5600 slots that are genuinely user-upgradeable up to 64GB, plus an M.2 2280 NVMe slot you can populate with up to 2TB of storage. That means you can buy a modest configuration today and pour more memory or a bigger SSD into it in a year or two when prices ease and your needs grow — no soldering, no specialist tools, no service centre. This is the purest expression of the repairable-upgradeable promise, and it's why I keep recommending this model to friends who ask.

The AMD Ryzen AI 7 350 with integrated Radeon graphics is a strong all-rounder. Depending on the exact chip you choose, you get Radeon 840M (4 cores), 860M (8 cores) or 890M (16 cores) integrated graphics — the higher tiers are surprisingly capable for light gaming and creative work without a discrete GPU eating into your battery.

Two panel options

You choose between a 2.2K panel (2256×1504, 60Hz, over 400 nits) and a 2.8K panel (2880×1920, 120Hz, over 500 nits). The 2.8K option is the one to have if your budget stretches — the extra resolution, brightness and the jump to 120Hz make a real difference day to day — but the 2.2K panel is perfectly pleasant and helps keep the base configuration affordable.

Two user-upgradeable SO-DIMM slots and an M.2 2280 NVMe bay make the standard Laptop 13 the most future-proof machine in the range.

Framework Laptop 12: The Affordable Convertible

The Framework Laptop 12 is the range's entry point and its most approachable device. It's a 12.2-inch convertible — a 2-in-1 tablet-laptop hybrid — and UK pre-orders opened starting at £499, making it by some distance the most affordable way into the Framework ecosystem.

The Laptop 12 pairs a 1920×1200 panel with 400 nits of brightness and, pleasingly, supports both MPP2.0 and USI2.0 styluses — so it doubles as a note-taking and sketching device. Inside sit Intel's Raptor Lake-U chips, either the Core i3-1315U or the Core i5-1334U. These aren't cutting-edge processors, but for browsing, office work, streaming and note-taking they're more than adequate, and the convertible form factor makes this the natural pick for students or as a knock-about second machine.

Crucially, the repairability story holds even at this price. There's a single SODIMM slot supporting up to 48GB of DDR5-5200 and an M.2 2230 slot for your NVMe SSD — both user-serviceable. A £499 starting point for a repairable, upgradeable convertible is quietly remarkable, and it's the device I'd hand to a teenager heading off to sixth form.

Framework Laptop 16 and Framework Desktop: The Power Options

Shop Framework Laptop 16 and Framework Desktop on Amazon UK

For buyers who need serious horsepower, Framework now offers two very different machines that both keep the modular ethos intact.

Framework Laptop 16

The Framework Laptop 16 is the endlessly customisable big-screen machine, and it's the only laptop I know of with a genuinely upgradeable graphics module. This generation is powered by NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 5070 alongside AMD's latest Ryzen AI 300 Series processors. The headline here is that the GPU isn't soldered to your motherboard for the rest of the laptop's life — when a faster module arrives, you can swap it in. For anyone doing 3D work, video editing or gaming who's tired of buying a whole new laptop every time the graphics fall behind, that's transformative.

Framework Desktop

Announced in February 2025 and shipping since Q3 2025, the Framework Desktop is a 4.5-litre Mini-ITX machine built around AMD's Ryzen AI Max silicon. You choose between the Ryzen AI Max 385 (8 cores, 16 threads, 3.6GHz base, 5.0GHz boost, 32MB L3 cache) and the Ryzen AI Max+ 395 (16 cores, 32 threads, 3.0GHz base, 5.1GHz boost, 64MB L3 cache).

The integrated graphics deserve special mention: the Radeon 8050S (32 compute units) on the Max 385 and the Radeon 8060S (40 compute units) on the Max+ 395 deliver performance close to a dedicated mid-range graphics card, all inside a tiny 4.5-litre box. That makes the Framework Desktop a compelling little workstation or living-room machine, and the Mini-ITX standard means it's a proper PC you can service and expand with off-the-shelf parts.

The 4.5-litre Framework Desktop packs Ryzen AI Max silicon and near-mid-range integrated graphics into a Mini-ITX chassis you can service yourself.

Fairphone 6: The Repairable Smartphone Grows Up

Announced as "The Fairphone (Gen. 6)" on 25 June 2025, the Fairphone 6 is the current flagship modular smartphone — and the device that best demonstrates how far repairable tech has come. Where earlier Fairphones felt like a compromise you accepted on principle, the sixth generation is a phone you'd happily use without caveats.

Design and display

The Fairphone 6 measures 156.5 × 73.3 × 9.6mm and weighs 193g. That 9.6mm thickness tells you this isn't chasing the wafer-thin trend — and that's deliberate, because thickness is what allows for a removable battery and serviceable internals. The 6.31-inch LTPO OLED display is the standout, offering vibrant colours and a smooth 10–120Hz adaptive refresh rate, protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 7i. LTPO is the good stuff: it lets the panel drop right down to 10Hz to sip power on static content and ramp to 120Hz for scrolling.

The back-plate system is genuinely clever — it supports fully integrated accessories including a card wallet, a finger loop and a lanyard, all of which clip in without cases or adhesive. It's the kind of thoughtful, practical modularity that makes you wonder why other manufacturers don't bother.

Performance and daily use

Under the glass sits the Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, and storage is expandable. This is a solid upper-mid-range chipset rather than a flagship-tier processor, and that's the honest trade-off with the Fairphone 6: you're not buying it to top benchmark charts. In everyday use — messaging, social apps, navigation, streaming, photography, the occasional game — it's smooth and dependable. If you're the sort who needs the absolute fastest silicon for heavy gaming, this isn't your phone, and I'd rather be straight with you about that than pretend otherwise.

Battery and charging

The 4,415mAh battery is the headline repairability feature — it's user-replaceable, which is almost unheard of on a modern smartphone. When the cell inevitably degrades after a few years, you swap it yourself in minutes rather than paying a service centre or, worse, replacing the whole phone. Charging is 30W wired. There's no wireless charging, and Fairphone has been upfront about why: it has previously cited the lower energy efficiency of wireless charging, choosing instead to focus on the removable battery and 30W wired charging. Whether that trade sits well with you is personal, but the reasoning is at least coherent.

Cameras

The rear camera system pairs a 50MP main sensor — a Sony Lytia 700C — with a 13MP secondary lens, and there's a 32MP front camera. The Lytia 700C is a capable modern sensor, and in good light the Fairphone 6 produces pleasing, natural-looking shots. It won't out-shoot a £1,000 flagship in tricky low light, but for everyday photography it's genuinely good, and a clear step up from earlier Fairphones.

Durability and connectivity

You get an IP55 rating for dust and moisture — enough to shrug off rain and splashes, though not a phone to take swimming — and Fairphone says it passes multiple military-grade drop tests, helped by that scratch-resistant Gorilla Glass 7i. Connectivity covers 5G and Wi-Fi 6E, plus a fingerprint reader, NFC and Bluetooth 5.4 LE. It's a thoroughly modern spec sheet.

How They Stack Up: Repairable vs Conventional

Numbers on a page only tell part of the story, so here's how the two hero devices compare against conventional, non-repairable rivals in the same broad category.

The pattern is clear. In raw spec terms the repairable options are broadly competitive rather than category-leading — you give up a little on things like water resistance and wireless charging on the phone, and pay a premium on the laptop. What you get back is a device you can keep alive and current for far longer. That's the whole game.

The Long-Term Money Argument

This is where repairable tech earns its keep, and it's worth thinking about carefully because it runs counter to how most of us instinctively judge value. We look at the sticker price and compare. But the number that actually matters is cost per year of ownership.

Consider the phone. A sealed handset's usable life is typically capped by its battery — once the cell fades to the point where it won't see out a day, most people replace the entire device. With the Fairphone 6, you fit a fresh 4,415mAh battery yourself for a small parts cost and carry on. Crack the screen? That's one of the 12 replaceable parts, not a write-off. Stretch two years of use to five, and the effective annual cost roughly halves.

The laptop story is even stronger because of upgrades. Buy a Framework Laptop 13 with modest memory today, then add a second SO-DIMM to reach 64GB when DRAM prices ease. Fill the M.2 2280 slot with a 2TB drive when you need it. On the Laptop 16, swap the graphics module rather than the whole machine. And across the range, a future mainboard swap can give you a new processor generation without a new chassis, keyboard, screen or battery. Each of those interventions is a fraction of the cost of a new device.

Verdict and Ratings

Taking the range as a whole, here's how I'd score the 2026 repairable line-up. The scores reflect both what these devices do today and, importantly, the long-term value they unlock.

The Fairphone 6's user-replaceable battery and 12 serviceable parts earn it a near-perfect repairability score.

Who Should Buy What

Frequently Asked Questions

Repairable tech has quietly grown up. What started as a niche for enthusiasts is now a mature, credible alternative to the sealed, disposable devices that dominate the shelves — and one that, over the years you'll own it, tends to cost you less. If you've been on the fence, 2026 is a very good time to jump.