HP OfficeJet 7000 Wide Format
This is a fairly conventional design for HP, with a telescopic feed tray at the front and an output tray positioned directly above. There's no single-sheet feed and there are no card or PictBridge sockets. The four ink cartridges make this small-business-based printer straightforward to maintain and it comes with network as well as USB connections. The top speed we measured was 8.8ppm, though HP claims 33ppm in draft mode. Since the printer can take up to 52s before starting a print job, this is more daft than draft. Print quality is not up to HP's normal standard, though print costs of 1.8p and 5.7p for black and colour are good.
Reg Rating 60%
Price £179
More info HP
HP Officejet Pro K8600
This printer uses HP's high-capacity ink system, where the cartridges sit behind a smoked cover at the front of the machine and are attched by tubes to the print head. This means its running costs of 0.9p and 3.6p for ISO black and colour are easily the lowest in this group. The machine itself is conventionally designed, using a front feed tray with an exit path on its top cover. We saw a maximum speed of 11.3ppm, which is comparatively fast and print quality from the 1200dpi heads is well up to general SOHO use on both plain and photo paper. A discount price of around £200 makes this a good A3 printer for higher workloads
Reg Rating 80%
Price £292
More info HP
Next page: Brother MFC-J5910DW all-in-one
COMMENTS
The Brother J6910Dw is incredible
I got the brother J6910DW on sale for < $250 just before Christmas at newegg
amazing printer:
- can use "3rd party" cartridges (<$2 each on amazon)
- prints AND scans at the same time (found out by accident -- expected one to wait until the other was done)
- will print in black and white if the one or more of the color cartridges is out (try that with any of the other printers)
- paper path makes it easy to clear a jam (remove paper tray/open door on back and access the entire paper path)
- the duplex scanner scans quickly and would probably scan a brick if you could get it to fit (I haven't been able to make it jam, even with odd-size and odd-weight originals that were in "less than perfect condition") Since it scans both sides "at once" it doesn't have to feed the paper back and forth to scan the back, it works so much better at scanning odd-size/weight paper
- does everything (duplex printing, duplex scanning, ledger-sized flatbed for scanning, etc...)
I have a canon PIXMA Pro 9000 mark II that I got just for printing large photos (and it was on sale for < $200 after rebate) and it prints gorgeous pictures (on the canon paper), but the capabilities and speed of the brother beat it to death for anything else
I used to use hp officejets, but i'm done with them -- the build quality, the pickiness with cartridges (sometimes they won't even take original HP cartridges) and the "trust us--it's empty" attitude to rip you off on ink
K8600 - just don't.
I've installed two of these in long term locations, and both have had massive problems with Windows 7 drivers and physical problems with the head assembly/train, and HP business support have been utterly useless.
Long story short, both printers were replaced - one with an A3 colour laserjet, and one with an A3 Brother B+W laser (the customer never bothered using colour in the end - the colour cartridges running out stopped him from printing black though...), neither of which have been any bother, really.
There's an Officejet 7500 on another site that comletely refuses to deal with envelopes, either - constantly multifeeds and jams regardless of the stock used, on it's second replacement printer within warranty now as a result.
I realise one persons experience is not representative of everyone, but personally it's going to take a metric fuckton of convincing to make me recommend that one of my customers get an Officejet - especially after fiddling with a Canon Pro 9000, which felt like it was solid as a rock in comparison to the flaky, cheap feeling Officejet K8600, even though (without discounts) they both rock up at around the £300 mark.
Posting Anon as my management may recognise these patterns of events and read here....
Epson
Or reject *any* cartridges after a dozen or so, claiming it "needs cleaning" because a cartridge counter ran out.
I wonder if it has HP's "legendary" build quality?
In *legend* HP's build quality was excellent.
Whereas today I've always found it a bit s**t with a real nasty tendency for cartridges to report empty when half full and not permit re-fill.
Missing info
All very well, but:
(1) How are they supported on various OS? Linux in particular for me, but also MacOS versions, etc.
(2) Any offer postscript?
(3) Do they allow 3rd party ink as well, or like the Epson I got rid of, throw a wobbly and reject its *own brand* cartridge after a few pages were printed?
