[snapplebobapple]

I love mine too (have owned every 13" they have made either personally or at work, plus the new 16"). Having the actual usb recessed and having a sacrificial usb-c as the one you use has saved taken me from breaking usb-c ports at roughly one a year to zero. The upgradeability and serviceability is real as well.

That beings said, my complaints about them are: They are a few hundred dollars more expensive than comparable hardware most of the time.

They were pretty slow releasing bios updates, although they seem to be getting faster at that.

There is no kensington lock.

After seeing the Linus tour of the factory where they fully assemble the DIY edition for testing and then take it back apart for shipping. I'm kind of annoyed. Find a different way to discount home users, you're spending more labor to get a lower price for your product.

[ieidkeheb]

Tbh it probably is cheaper for them to test that it powers up ... There would be nothing worse than building a laptop to find it was an RMA deal.... I would expect that the social media backlash could kill the product...

[snapplebobapple]

Yah, it does, but just leave it assembled to the point you had to assemble it and ship it rather than making me put the ram/gpu/nvme/whatever back in putting wear on the insertion slots and taking my time. I get that they are trying to put a barrier big enough that people are willing to pay the few hundred dollar convenience tax, so maybe just leave the NVME out and avoid the wear and tear on the GPU and the ram. It's basically the same barrier because you are removing the keyboard and undoing a bunch of scary screws in both cases but you get to spend less on labor at the factory and I have to install less crap myself (I was always buying the self assembled one, I like that stuff).

[Iridescent_]

I fully expect that the intention is to force you into opening up the laptop to install the RAM. RAM is so easy to install that there's basically no risk of the customer messing up, and it exposes you to how easy it is to open up your laptop and how high quality the build is. Worked very well for me, I knew I would not accept buying anything of a lower standard before I even powered it on for the first time.

[snapplebobapple]

If it's actually an advertising expense then it's likely priced wrong. They should give the real price in the business section (where people don't want to have to install because they are buying multiples of them and where that price is obscured from the consumer) and have an even higher price for the fully assembled one (and a bit lower price for the unassembled one). Now if 80 % plus of their consumer business is the diy one right now then I'm wrong, but I doubt I am.