Agree, battery life is atrocious. I get typically get 1.5-2 hours on a charge, after 2.5 years of ownership. I always have anxiety about plugging it in. It's the biggest problem with this machine.
Other than that, I have been very happy with it. Keyboard, trackpad, screen - all adequate for me. In every way other than the battery, it pretty much gets out of the way and gets the job done.
I've had the complete opposite experience (I replaced their Pop OS with Arch Linux). With light usage I get about 10 hours, if I'm playing games or something then yeah it drops a bit but not that much. It easily lasts the duration of an intercontinental plane flight which is my primary use-case.
Maybe it's because I don't actually use it all that much, so my battery hasn't had many cycles put on it. I only use my laptop for travel, normally I have a desktop. That's why I went for a small, highly portable model.
My experience is the same. I replaced Pop with Arch running a pretty low-resource desktop setup (i3 and generally lightweight programs) and I can get roughly 10 hours with very heavy usage: Firefox with a handful of windows/dozens and dozens of tabs open, Docker, Spotify, etc.
Not terribly impressive compared to something like the newer Apple silicon MacBooks but also not terribly offensive considering I don't often work far from an available power source for super long stretches.
Wow, I'm surprised to hear this about the battery from you guys, as that appears to be one of their top selling points: "Most battery life!"
I see that the article describes it as repairable, but is it really easy to get and put in a new battery? I don't see them for sale on system76.com/components
I almost bought one of these in late 2021 when I was in the market for a new Linux machine. They were one of the few manufacturers that actually had stuff ready to ship. But I wasn't interested in PopOS and Framework seemed to be offering a slightly better deal, so I ended up waiting a month for a Framework DIY edition. I've been happy with it despite Framework not being truly Linux-first.
As far as I'm aware, every System76 laptop is a rebadged OEM laptop with an opinionated set of expansion components that they've effectively certified as functional in Pop!_OS by ensuring good driver and DWM compatibility. I think the OEM is Sager, but I'm not confident on that, or if that's uniform. Anywho, because of this, it should be reasonably possible to source replacement components upstream.
Yep, Sager/Clevo. Clevo L141AU has the same specs (2.5 lbs, 14 hours claimed battery life, 65W barrel charger, same keyboard layout, i7-1355U option). The case looks close, maybe identical, to the photos in the article. https://laptopwithlinux.com/product/clevo-l141au/
EDIT: Customized the Laptop with Linux Clevo to the same exact specs as the review unit and got a total price of $1,507, so about the same, give or take $30.
I wonder why. I'm running Ubuntu 22.04 on a Dell Latitude and battery life hasn't been an issue for me. I probably don't really do power-hungry stuff but just browsing, editing code, ssh, email, etc. it's been fine.
I think this might have to do with aggressive CPU throttling and backlight brightness. I've noticed both of those play a pretty big role in the discharge duration of my Dell Latitude.
I'm planning to send it in to them this week for some repairs (USB-C port stopped working, replace the rubber feet, and replace the battery). I have to pay for the battery replacement (~$100 I think). Hopefully it improves the battery life. IIRC, I was getting 4-5 hours when I first got the machine. Never got anywhere close to 11. Maybe it's how I'm using it.
Other than that, I have been very happy with it. Keyboard, trackpad, screen - all adequate for me. In every way other than the battery, it pretty much gets out of the way and gets the job done.