Last year HP was the number one maker of laptops in the world, according to shipment numbers from research firms IDC[1] and Gartner[2]. But it’s safe to say HP laptops don’t always get the same amount of attention enjoyed by the unibody aluminum or ultra-lightweight models made by its competitors.
Here’s one way to get attention: Make a leather laptop.
The structural support for the computer’s components is made of metal, but its exterior clamshell is all cow.
That’s what HP did with its new HP Spectre Folio, a high-end laptop that’s bonded with leather, and that HP is marketing with the cringeworthy term manucrafturing. It’s a convertible, which means it can be propped up, turned into a tablet, tented, or just used like a regular laptop. That part of the Spectre Folio’s design is slightly different from other laptops too. Rather than folding the display backwards, you’re supposed pull it forward, directly over the keyboard, where magnets latch the display into place either at the base of the key tray (if you’re tenting the display) or at the edge of the laptop’s bottom half (if you’re laying it flat).
HP is using 100 percent genuine, chrome-tanned leather for this new machine, and is shipping it in two tones, warm brown and a deeper bordeaux. HP says it’s the world’s first leather laptop, and I have no reason to doubt this: WIRED has evaluated plenty of leather accessories for consumer electronics, but never a leather-bonded laptop. The structural support for the computer’s components is made of metal, but its exterior clamshell is all cow.
Josephine Tan, HP’s head of product management for consumer notebook, said the company went with leather for...