Nice all round printer (HP Officejet J4680 All-in-One)

Member Name: mutoid

Product:	HP Officejet J4680 All-in-One
Date:	25/02/09 (378 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Reasonably economical with great wireless and copying features

Disadvantages: No card slot

After a few years of frustration with my cheap Lexxmark all-in-one scanner/printer I decided to upgrade to a slightly more expensive but supposedly much more economical on ink HP Officejet. Just for reference I'm using this printer with my 6 year old Windows XP PC.

I paid around £80 for the Officejet from PC World in late 2008 and I've had no problems and have found it satisfactory for my home needs. One of the selling points for me was that you can buy regular inks (either black or colour cartridges) in a standard size, or get the "XL" version which works out a much better deal. The regular black "901" is currently £16.64 at PC World, with the "901XL" £27.45, but you can find them slightly cheaper with free postage at the HP website. According to HP the page yield for the regular 901 is 200, and 700 for the XL version. I still find the ink runs out faster than I would have hoped but this is something I've experienced with every home printer, and it's a definite improvement on my previous printers (sorry but I don't remember model numbers for comparison).

I bought this printer after reading reviews describing "laser quality printing". This is not quite the case but it's a definite step up from my previous printers, the text is nice and crisp and colourful images print pretty clear and decent. I haven't used it for photo printing as I find it much cheaper to go to my local Boots for that.

The scanner is good, it's quick and very sharp and clear. It also works as a photocopier independent of the computer so if you need to quickly copy a letter or bill you won't need to turn on you PC. A nice feature is being able to scan multi page documents by loading them into the tray at the top and leaving them to automatically feed into the scanner. I had a slight problem with creased paper feeding in but that's not really a complaint.

The printer loads from a front tray very smoothly with very little jamming occuring. That's always been a problem with my previous printers so it's a definite plus for me. Once printed the pages feed out onto the same tray where they loaded from. I've read some negative opinions about this but I don't have a problem with it, I think it's a good space saver.

This machine also works as a fax, but I haven't tested this.

One final excellent feature I should mention is this printer's wireless capability. You can send to print from any wireless enabled computer in your house and I've found this to be a very handy feature.

To sum up, I would say this is a very good, fairly priced home printer for general use. If you're looking for a photo printer this may not be the best choice, but if you want to print letters, homework and other day to day items this would be a great choice.

PROS:

- Economical compared to some printers
- Fast, quiet, high quality printing
- Good, sharp scans
- Stand alone copier and fax capabilities
- Multi page feeding into scanner
- No problem with jams!
- Good software included

CONS:

- Not quite up to laser print standard
- Still not as economical as I would like
- No memory card slot

Summary: Great general use home printer

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