HP's Limited Edition Ferrari PC: 5 things you should know about one of the most exclusive laptops ever

Ferrari HP laptop photo. — (Image credit: Future)

Brand collaborations in tech often end with disappointing results. You might get an extra name plastered over a phone camera or a PC’s speakers, with little substance to show for it — and no doubt a good few quid added to the price.

The HP Limited Edition Scuderia Ferrari PC is not one of these. It’s possibly the least half-assed laptop brand collab we’ve seen to date and is the fruit of a two-year project between PC masters HP and the Ferrari Design Studio.

Granted, most of us can’t afford one. At $5599, the HP Limited Edition Scuderia Ferrari PC is one of the most exclusive, or at least most expensive, ultraportable laptops in the world.

That shiny-but-invisible touchpad

Your first reaction to the HP Limited Edition Scuderia Ferrari PC may well be: where’s the touchpad? There is one here, but it blends seamlessly with the shiny, reactive red glass that extends across the entire bottom of the laptop’s inner area.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen a pad style like this, and it’s made possible thanks to haptic touchpad tech. A trad laptop pad has a mechanical clicker that actually moves under your finger as you press. This one emulates that kind of mechanism using haptic motors — as used in Apple MacBook pads.

Some folks don’t like the idea of a purely non-visible pad, but HP also guides you with a subtle LED strip, which shows where the pad ends.

A true limited run

Part of the Ferrari concept is in not making quite enough cars to satisfy demand. The cheeky devils. It’s trying to pull off the same trick with the HP Limited Edition Scuderia Ferrari PC, which is strictly limited to 4999 units worldwide.

You can see which number in the run yours sits at because it’s printed on the heat pipes visible on the underside of the thing. And that takes us to the most eye-catching part of the laptop of all...

Hole-y window inspired by an engine bay

The part of your laptop you see most is the inside. The lid is what passers-by see most. But it’s arguably the bottom of the HP Limited Edition Scuderia Ferrari PC that’s actually the most exotic area.

The lower half is a carbon fibre panel, used in cars like the Ferrari Le Mans 499P to keep weight low. Up top is a transparent section inspired by Ferrari engine bays, one that lets you get an eyeful of some of the key components, including the cooling system.

And because that cooling system needs fresh air, the Ferrari x HP team had to work out how to carefully drill 2000 holes into the panel, which is a piece of Corning Gorilla Glass. Not, as you might see in a cheaper laptop, plastic.

You can even see a little map of the Ferrari private test track printed on the inside. This laptop is absolutely packed with Ferrari touches.

Ferrari keyboard with a gamer twist

One of the worries with a laptop like this is it will be made all for style and impact, with not enough attention paid to what it’s like to actually use. That hasn’t happened here. Case in point: the keyboard.

The HP Limited Edition Scuderia Ferrari PC has keys with far more substance than expected. It’s not the wafer-thin, ultra-light style that for years has been fashionable in the style-driven end of the PC space.

The key font used here is Ferrari’s own, while the keyboard also has per-key lighting we usually only see in the higher-end tiers of gaming laptops. This is a true hybrid keyboard style, and we’re here for it.

Maxed-out specs

A big chunk of the HP Limited Edition Scuderia Ferrari PC’s cost comes from its lavish materials and, yes, the Ferrari brand involvement. But it is also a high-spec PC.

You get the latest third-generation Intel X7 Ultra chipset, with a 1TB SSD and 64GB RAM. To spec up a MacBook Pro to this level, you’re looking at spending £3000. Does that mean the HP Limited Edition Scuderia Ferrari PC is good value? Absolutely not, but “value” isn’t the point here. And as that Intel chipset is brand new, you are getting about as future-proof a laptop as you could ask for at this point.

Worth it? We’ll leave that one to you. But if you’re already a Ferrari owner, perhaps $5599 for a limited-edition Ferrari laptop sounds like a steal — its new Ferrari Luce electric car costs more than a hundred times that at $640,000.

The HP Limited Edition Scuderia Ferrari PC will be available in a handful of countries, including the UK, from 12th June.

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Andrew Williams has written about all sorts of stuff for more than a decade — from tech and fitness to entertainment and fashion. He has written for a stack of magazines and websites including Wired, TrustedReviews, TechRadar and Stuff, enjoys going to gigs and painting in his spare time. He's also suspiciously good at poker.