Wide, high-resolution 15.4-inch screen; great performance; multipurpose flash card slot; trayless double-layer optical drive; 1GB of RAM
Lacks instant-start media player; more expensive than comparable models; oddly curved keyboard
To get a full day of computing out of the Ferrari, you'll need an extra battery pack
Acer's Ferrari 4000 is a fairly obvious piece of promotional tie-innery, and its looks are clearly a matter of taste. But if you're willing to pay more for the go-faster stripes, you won't be disappointed with a reasonably powerful laptop
6.8 Good
Reviewed by Brian Nadel
A by-product of Acer's sponsorship of the Ferrari F1 team, the Acer Ferrari 4000 will turn heads with a matte black carbon-fibre case, a prominent rearing stallion Ferrari logo and accents of race-car red. Looks aren't the only similarity between the laptop and the sports car, however: at £1,199 (as of August 2005), the Ferrari 4000 costs significantly more than the competition. Still, if you have the need for speed, the Ferrari 4000 will leave lesser notebooks in the dust -- although you may look like you're having a mid-life crisis.
Design
Built with lightweight materials, the 2.85kg Ferrari 4000 occupies the middle zone between thin-and-lights and desktop replacements. It's a few grams heavier than the Toshiba Satellite M35X, but much smaller and lighter than the Qosmio G20 Media Center laptop. Measuring 363 by 34 by 265mm, the Ferrari 4000 is thinner than both the Satellite and the Qosmio. Add in the Ferrari 4000's large, 500g AC adaptor, and you have a system that's portable enough for the occasional trip but too heavy for regular travel.
While we like the Ferrari 4000's large keys and sturdy keyboard, the slightly curved ergonomic layout took us a while to get used to. The laptop's wide touch pad matches the large mouse buttons. A central button controls scrolling and Web browsing. Above the keyboard are four instant-start buttons that can be programmed to launch the applications you use most frequently.
Among the Ferrari 4000's strengths is its attractive 15.4-inch wide-screen display, with a 1,680x1,050 native resolution. While we prefer the brightness and contrast on the HP Pavilion dv4000's shiny screens, the Ferrari 4000's display is among the richest and sharpest we've seen. It's a shame the Ferrari 4000 lacks an instant-start media player and dedicated controls for playing videos.
Features
The Ferrari 4000 is also strong on connections for both work and home uses. With four USB 2.0, unpowered FireWire, S-video, VGA, and -- something of a rarity on laptops -- DVI ports, as well as headphone and microphone jacks and a Bluetooth radio, this machine can connect to a variety of peripherals. You also get a slot for Type II PC Cards and an excellent flash card reader that supports Secure Digital, MultiMediaCard, Memory Stick, and even tiny xD modules. The Ferrari 4000 can race online via modem, Ethernet or an 802.11g Wi-Fi radio, which, in our casual tests, was able to stay online approximately 30m from our base station. The machine also features a great, slot-loading, multiformat, double-layer DVD burner.
In addition to Microsoft Windows XP Home (Professional is available for an extra £90) and a handful of Ferrari-branded desktops and screensavers, the Ferrari 4000 comes with a few useful utilities, such as Acer eManager for viewing or changing basic system settings.
Though the Ferrari 4000 ships with a 2GHz Turion 64 processor, our preproduction unit ran a slightly slower, 1.8GHz Turion 64 ML-34 processor. Otherwise, our review unit is identical to the model currently available, with a quick, 5,400rpm 100GB hard drive, 1GB of slower, 333MHz RAM and the latest ATI Mobility Radeon X700 graphics processor.
Performance
Even with the slower processor, the Ferrari 4000 performed admirably in our benchmark tests, coming in just behind the 1.86GHz Pentium M-based ThinkPad T43. The Ferrari 4000 was slightly faster than the Fujitsu LifeBook N3510, which has a slower, 1.73GHz Pentium M processor. On the other hand, the Ferrari 4000's battery lasted 3 hours, 27 minutes in our drain tests -- 42 minutes longer than the LifeBook N3510, but not in the same class as the 5 hours, 6 minutes offered by the ThinkPad T43's slightly larger battery.
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BAPCo MobileMark 2002 performance rating |
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BAPCo MobileMark 2002 battery life in minutes |
System configurations:
Acer Ferrari 4000
Windows XP Professional; 1.8GHz Turion 64 ML-34; 1024MB PC2700 DDR SDRAM 333MHz; ATI Mobility Radeon X700 128MB; Seagate ST9100823A 50GB 5,400rpm
Fujitsu LifeBook N3510
Windows XP Home; 1.73GHz Intel Pentium M 740; 512MB 400MHz; ATI Mobility Radeon X300 64MB; Fujitsu MHU2100AT 100GB 4,200rpm
ThinkPad T43
Windows XP Professional; 1.86GHz Intel Pentium M; 512MB DDR SDRAM 333MHz; ATI Mobility Radeon X300 64MB; Hitachi Travelstar 7K60 60GB 7,200rpm
Edited by Michelle Thatcher
Additional editing by Nick Hide
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