Modular laptops are few and far between, but the concepts and in-market products that I have seen seem to fall into two general categories: ones that are based around a removable system on module with the CPU and RAM soldered, and ones that are all-out discrete for everything, including socketed CPU, RAM, and if applicable, discrete graphics card. Separately upgradable storage seems the standard and bare minimum for all of them though.

Of these, the SOM concept have the potential to be thinner and lighter but you have to upgrade the entire module at once, while the everything separate concept can obviously allow for separate component upgrades while being thicker and heavier. The everything separate concept is also quite a bit more complex, requires more material, which would be wasted if the user doesn’t upgrade or doesn’t upgrade compute components separately.

If a hypothetical manufacturer wanted you to dicide for them, which one would you choose? I think it mainly boils down to whether you think the tradeoff of thinness and lightness is worth having to upgrade the CPU, GPU and RAM as a single module instead of separately. Curious as to what people here think.