I was thinking the same thing. Sure, this is better than a dongle in some ways, but is still an order of magnitude worse than the normal, flush-fitting expansion cards.
I do recall someone on the Framework subreddit saying that they carry a laptop around with them on a shop/factory floor, but mostly use wired ethernet when they stop and put it down on a workbench. Using a dongle wouldn't be great because it'd be something that would swing around unpredictably as he'd walk around a crowded room with lots of people and machines running. So in this case, this expansion card would probably be a useful step up from a dongle.
Regardless, a retractable "XJACK"[0] from the PCMCIA days might have been a better choice for this, if the hardware could be made "short" enough in that dimension. Downside there is of course fragility; I imagine they're easy to snap off.
My Megahertz XJack never snapped off, but it felt precarious and ugly. Imagine some Cat-5 with RJ45 connector pointing down, snapped into this narrow XJack frame, stiff cable sticking up beside your typing fingers and tension pulling on it.
3Com also had a proprietary connector on the PCMCIA card edge, and an adapter cable of a few/several inches that went from that to a bulky RJ45 socket housing with an LED on it. It meant carrying the adapter with your laptop, but the experience during use felt a little better. The PCMCIA-side of the adapter stuck out a bit and wasn't a very solid attachment, but that might've been partly by design. If the cable gets jerked, the connector might pull out before dashing the much more expensive laptop to the floor.
Overall, I liked the Xircom RealPort PCMCIA/CardBus cards of the same era, which took up the space of 2 PCMCIA slots, and basically added 1 or more flush connectors to the side of your laptop. https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=xircom%20realport
I thought it wouldn't be long lived - but I once tried to put as much torque and pressure on that jack on an older/broken card - and I was amazed at how much abuse it took - I'm not even sure I was able to snap it off. Much more rugged than it appeared (though the cards died all the time - we had stacks of them).
I do recall someone on the Framework subreddit saying that they carry a laptop around with them on a shop/factory floor, but mostly use wired ethernet when they stop and put it down on a workbench. Using a dongle wouldn't be great because it'd be something that would swing around unpredictably as he'd walk around a crowded room with lots of people and machines running. So in this case, this expansion card would probably be a useful step up from a dongle.
Regardless, a retractable "XJACK"[0] from the PCMCIA days might have been a better choice for this, if the hardware could be made "short" enough in that dimension. Downside there is of course fragility; I imagine they're easy to snap off.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XJACK