I just not understands peoples here, because L14 is a security-privacy reprogrammable gnu+linux unclevo ethical Laptop so if something fail ok go troubleshooting…go reprogramming the firmwares on chipsets, we all know that gnu+linux it is a faulty system with many bugs everywhere. If you do not want faulties then go for the Apple Jail but don’t blame Purism much.
Used linux with gnu many years now. Never realized it had many bugs …
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Got my third replacement Librem 14 on June 10, nearly 5 full weeks after reporting that the 2nd one had died with the exact same defect as the first. I was writing to customer service several times a week to check on the status of the case and it still took nearly 5 weeks to get a replacement, during which time I had no laptop. The third one died yesterday. They refused my refund request after the second failure. I’m requesting a refund again, we’ll see what they say but I’m not very hopeful. I spent nearly $2k on this laptop and they have sent me 3 defective machines in a row. Would absolutely NOT recommend buying one of these unless you’ve got money to burn.
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Don’t take this the wrong way, but its sort of incredible that you’ve had three of the same failures in a row. There’s always some length of time between receipt and failure. I wonder if you have a bad power strip or something?
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I’ve tried with multiple outlets and chargers. This last one actually died while I was out of town visiting friends so not even plugged into an outlet at my house. I wish it was a charger or power strip issue because then I could fix it! But since when I send it in for ‘repair’ they never give me any further information about what / why / how it failed, I don’t really have a way to do any troubleshooting.
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After some back and forth with support I sent the dead L14 to be fixed (on Purism expenses) and got to make it work on Monday. So far so good.
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Just adding here that I have a new librem 14 and it just died after 2.5 weeks in exactly the same way. After reading about people having this problem multiple times in a row, I’m returning it since it’s still within 30 days. I love what Purism is trying to do. Unfortunately I can’t afford to have a laptop potentially die over and over the same way. 
Hoping this gets better in the future.
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I just got hit with the same exact issue with my librem14. I have 2 librem 14’s and this was a second one a barely used until now.
Since I have two of them I can tel you for sure the following:
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Its not a power adapter issue. If I flip power adapters the results are the same. The power adapter one the failed librem charges the other just fine.
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since i have 2 i was able to remove the fully charged battery from the working librem14 and place it in the dead one – its boots up just fine and the drained battery charges just fine in the working librem14. There it’s not a battery issue - This is a hardware failure.
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people speculating that its an EC issue: Since i can run broken librem14 using the other battery I reflashed it to the latest EC and just to make sure also updated to latest verison of coreboot --> This didn’t work either so again points to a hardware failure.
I was able t troubleshoot this in less than an hour. Why is there no response from pusrism on this thread in months? Can you please tell us what the issue from the boards you received from cusotmers? I am too afraid to send you mine because who knows when I will ever get it back from past experiences.
Is this a fix I can do an a local repair shop and even myself ( i can solder etc etc). Thanks
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You can check the status of the EC, if the EC get erased the Librem 14 will never turn ON, so with a chipset burner it could be revised.
Do you used a Power Delivery charger to charge the L14 any time? because seems that usb-c charger way is unreliable ATM. I never used a PD in my L14 so i not sure what going on.
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I just got my L14 back from my second RMA and it died again within an hour of moving back in. Something is very wrong here.
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Sorry, totally missed this. I don’t know if it’s helpful now, but I received a second replacement (idk if it was the same device or a new one) and it has been working ever since. Overall, I’m happy with the support experience since it was fairly quick and I never had to pay import fees or shipping for a second time. The issue is unfortunate and I know not everyone’s experience went as well as mine, but count my issue as resolved.
What i know is that L14 battery is limited to sink energy, so if peoples is connecting many devices, it normal that L14 will shutdown at some point. And also that Purism with very small money can not pay another firmware programmer to quick stabilize the EC Firm.
Also i see many peoples using the L14 like Desktop Computer which is not very appropriate ATM.
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Sorry - you mean to say I shouldn’t be able to use my L14 with a monitor, keyboard, and mouse? Because that’s literally all I had plugged in when it failed this time.
This is not an issue of over taxing a battery, this is an issue of the power circuit failing, preventing the system from running on external power, resulting in the system powering off as soon as the battery dies.
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Hi everyone I purchased a second librem 14 after issues with keyboard on first one just a few weeks ago and it has now having exact issues described here so pissed I was on the latest firmware etc
I’m having essentially the same issue as described here (sorry for creating a new forum post, didn’t see this one when I was looking). My L14 is working fine with the 4 cell battery, but does not work with the 3 cell battery (no charging, not booting). I was on i think 1.09 of the EC firmware, not updated to 1.11, no difference.
My L14 will not power on. No lights. I tested the ac adaptor, its feeding 19v. I opened the case, pulled the battery and cmos battery for more than 5 minutes. Nothing no lights. I attempted to charge with usb-c. Nothing.
Is this a sure sign the laptop needs to be RMA’d or is there something else I can try?
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Hi @mladen - Good day sir. This is an interesting post which seems to to remove EC as a primary cause and I haven’t seen any response. Is this something you can provide thoughts about? Thanks
My Librem 14 power charging via the barrel connector just failed this weekend. It’s been running the v1.11 EC firmware for several months, so I don’t believe it’s an EC issue. Disconnected main battery and CMOS for 20 minutes, reconnected, same issue.
I seem to remember some sparking when inserting the barrel connector last time it worked, but I can’t be sure. Has anyone else noticed sparking when inserting the power connector? Maybe to be safe we should never insert the power connector while the power supply is energized?
At present I want to say this is a hardware defect or design flaw with either the barrel connector and socket or something in the charging circuitry. When the laptop battery still had some power, the LED indicator light by the barrel connector would flash orange and white, so I know the LED is working. Charging by either USB-C port does not work either.
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Looks like the barrel connector sparking is a known issue and I’m not the only one to experience it. Sparks Fly / Librem 14 / Power Cord
Hi everyone,
I have 2 librem14 received in 2021.
and 1 with qubes pre instaled received in 2022.
The first is used by me regularly. No problem. Fully satisfied
The second is/was for my wife. Used much less. It got the same problem (no power on. etc) 2 months ago. I ordered the hardware flash material, flashed coreboot, ec (oh, how difficult it is to put again the cord on the wifi card back!), and other tricks of this thread. But no changes at all.
The third (qubes) had no problem at all, works like a charm. I hope longer again…
Finally i wrote to purism support today. Let’s see the costs for repair.
So it looks to have been a serial problem in the production of that time 2021/2022. I am already happy to have 2 laptops of 3 that work great (except bug with pureboot v30), but I am a bit worrying after reading this thread, hoping it won’t happen for the 2 others in the next months.
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