Big, bad and brilliant............. ...................... .... (HP Deskjet 1120c)

Member Name: theanarchistkid

Product:	HP Deskjet 1120c
Date:	17/09/00 (1303 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Prints A3, quick

Disadvantages: Confusing cartridges.

This printer is very big. There is actually little else to say about it. It can print on A3 paper which is twice the size of normal A4 so the printer is also about twice the size of your average A4 printer.

Like most modern printers it can take colour cartridges and black cartridges at the same time so you don't have to swap them around like you would have had to on a cheaper printer. A quick note about the cartridges is that some of them are 21ml and some are 42ml. There isn't much price difference so always go for the 42ml ones. This is a clever ploy by HP because the labelling on the packaging is fairly discreet so the first time I picked up a cartridge for this printer I bought a 21ml one because I didn't know that they made them in different capacities.

The cartridges do actually last a very long time however so that was quite impressive. I managed to print out a graphics project using one cartridge and the project consisted of about 100 full colour A3 sheets. The black cartridge also lasts ages.

Unlike Epson cartridges, they contain the print head in the actual cartridge rather than the print mechanism. I used to have an Epson and after not printing anything for about 12 weeks, the print head was well and truly clogged up and no matter what I did it wouldn't unclog. A new print head costs as much as a printer in the case of Epsons so I would always recommend a printer with the head in the cartridge.

The quality of the printer is pretty good. Colours are accurately represented and gradients are very smooth. The resolution at 600x600 isn't the highest in the world but on plain paper it looks very good. The print driver is very easy to use and offers the facility to stretch an A4 sheet to A3 which proved very useful to me. The printer is very quick at black and white but slows down a bit in colour.

Reliabilty for printers has always been a problem for me in the past. Having gone through 2 Epsons wit
hin 18 months I decided to go back to trusty HPs. I have a HP Deskjet 540 that I've had for 5 years and that still works perfectly. So to conclude, HP printers seem to offer the best reliabilty and cartridge quality even if the overall package costs a little more than an Epson or Lexmark.

Summary: