Another great one? (HP Deskjet 3650)

Member Name: mysteryshopper2

Product:	HP Deskjet 3650
Date:	05/05/04 (1561 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good print quality, good speed, low price,Reliable, durable

Disadvantages: Not for high volume use, not specifically a photoprinter, expensive cartridges

On returning to work after maternity leave, I discovered in my absence the IT department had purchased new printers for each member of the admin staff ? yippee ? no more sharing printers.

At a cost of £89, the Hewlett Packard DeskJet 3650 is a compact and economical printer for personal (or in our works case) light use. I have been using it now for a few months and am very satisfied with it.

~ What's in the Box & Set up ~

HP DeskJet 3650 colour inkjet printer, HP no. 27 (C8727A) black inkjet print cartridge, HP no. 28, (C8728A) tri-colour inkjet print cartridge, printer driver CD-ROM (PC and Mac), reference guides, set-up posters, additional software and Internet links.

The DeskJet 3650 has a single USB port (not included) for connecting to your PC or Mac, and comes with separate Windows and Mac reference guides and set-up posters. The printer is backed by a one-year warranty on parts and labour.

The installation was simple and easy (a dream our IT expert told me lol). Simply follow the instructions on the convenient quick install poster & go. Note: you must install the drivers FIRST before connecting the printer to your PC via USB. The only thing they weren?t too keen on was the lack of control over what is installed. If you want drivers only, you need to be prepared to delete several HP folders, which are automatically installed. Furthermore, if you do not want to print photos, you'll need to remove several entries in your registry but being ?experts? I am sure they had no issues tailoring the printer software lol.

The software has all the usual head cleaning and calibration stuff. It also shows estimated ink levels. The printer can also multiplex (print multiple sheets on one page) which is very good for paper saving, and works a treat.

The power adapter supplied is bulky, and could easily block your outlets, so make sure you have room before buying this.

~ Design~

I
9;m rather fond of the design; one of its best features is the compact (overall dimensions of 17 inches wide, 8 inches long and 6 inches high) design. The printer fits nicely on top of the tower at the side of my desk. As a front loading unit, it has the potential for the 100 sheet paper tray to catch on someone's leg, I was quite pleased to find the entire tray folds neatly up into the printer housing, condensing it from small to smaller. Brilliant!!! Granted, whenever I want to print something I must reopen the front cover & unfold the tray, insert paper, & the reverse when finished. Yet, for space economy it's well worth the minimal effort. The paper tray easily handles a wide range of media, including plain & photo paper, envelopes, transparencies, cards, and more in a variety of sizes and weights.

This printer also has a very sleek and attractive design, a great bonus for any office. With it weighing only a mere five pounds it is extremely easy to move around. However, comparing it with my home printer (DJ930c) it does feel a little flimsy.

Onscreen controls let you select from five print modes (speed/quality), and monitor ink-levels, all of which help you maximise your time and money.

The printer controls are basic, with just a power and cancel button -simple, but this is fine by me! I'd like to add the "X" button on the printer is a true godsend - it's for cancelling print jobs. Rather than going to the Control Panel to manually cancel a job, I can stop print jobs with one touch of the print cancel button and it clears from the queue without any problems.

~ Print quality ~

The print quality is where this baby really shines. The HP 3650, draft quality prints are pretty good & the high quality option produces very professional papers, very close to LASER quality while the speed is incredible. It is a champ when it comes to printing important documents. For instance, I needed a flowchart, to
talling 8 pages, a network diagram along with a 25 page document. Using the high quality output option the unit took its time producing the assignment but the results were lovely, well worth the wait! The flowchart was crisp & laid out perfectly, the text was easily readable despite its small font size & most importantly everything was aligned to perfection, the network diagram rendered neatly, & last but not least, the text was almost mid-grade LaserJet quality!

At work I don?t do any serious photo printing on this printer, but I do sometimes print casual photos and pictures on plain paper. For this purpose, the DeskJet 3650 has been more then antiquate. Using normal quality, the colours are vibrant, accurate and the shades are smooth. However, the quality isn?t prefect; I can sometimes see horizontal lines in the darker areas. Printing in maximum dpi mode (up to 4800dpi) brings a small improvement to raise the overall image quality to near photo level. The 3650 shares HP PhotoREt III colour technology with more upscale printers. I think the 3650 would be sufficient for some photo printing, but I feel serious photo printers will probably want to look at something else. I don?t think it was intended to be used as a photo printer, although it can perform this task.

What was important was the ease of changing cartridges just pull the lid and the cartridge holder comes into changing position ? halleluiah lol!

The DeskJet 3650 is also a very quick printer. Obviously, real world speeds will vary from the advertised 17 pages per minute, particularly in the higher quality modes. I haven?t timed my printing speeds with a stopwatch, but I would estimate I usually get around 5-10 pages a minute. The only instance in which the 3650 is slow is when it is in maximum dpi mode, where one photo could take several minutes.

One nuisance, if you run out of ink, the last document can get "stuck" in the printer without printing and Windows
XP won't let you cancel it. It's stuck there until you replace the cartridge.

Did I mention who quiet it is? A good thing for a busy office lol. I'm impressed with the quietness of the printing mechanism, a hushed hiss while printing & the standard gear rotation sound upon page ejection. However, loading the first page is noisy. Feeding of further pages is a couple of clicks & nothing else until the last page is ejected, & the resulting reset of the print head & guide arm is short & sweet.

I occasionally have problems with the printer feeding through more than one sheet of paper at a time but overall the front feed design works pretty well. I have never experienced a paper jam although a work colleague has and commented that removing jams is not easy, due to the fact here is no button on the printer itself. This printer is not intended for heavy use (the tray holds only up to 100 sheets). HP recommends it is used for up to 1000 pages a month.

~ Replacement Cartridges ~

The DeskJet 3650 uses three cartridges: "27" (10ml) which is a dedicated black, 58" which is a mixed colour/black used for printing photographs and "22" (8ml) which is dedicated colour. The colour cartridge is tiny, holding a miniscule 8ml of ink! They are expensive too for such small things (aren?t they all lol?). TIP: I read the No.57 cartridges are compatible (which hold 17ml ink), but I've not tried them yet... Unfortunately, you have to remove the black to use the photo cartridge. The whole process takes several minutes, so this is a poor choice for someone intending to do a lot of mixed black and high-quality colour printing.

Savings can be made if you refill, which I've successfully done. The print head is incorporated into the cartridge, so the worst that can happen is you need to buy a new cartridge ;-)

This printer is a hungry Horace and ?eats? ink fairly rapidly, so if you intend to do a lot
of printing perhaps you should look elsewhere. If you only print occasionally, and swap cartridges on a regular basis, this is a fine printer for the money.

~ For the technically minded (taken from manual) ~

Printer technology: Ink Jet

Black Print speed: 17 pages per
minute (ppm)

Colour print speed: 12 ppm

Paper Media: Envelopes,
transparencies, Labels,
Plain paper, Iron-on
transfers, Photo paper,
Cards

Max Sheet Capacity: 100 sheets

Operating system: Microsoft Windows 2000
Professional , Microsoft
Windows 98/ME,
Microsoft Windows XP,
Apple MacOS 9.1 or later

Weight: 5.07lbs

Dimensions: 5.7 in x 16.9 in x 8.1 in
(HxWxD)


~ Bottom Line ~

HP's DeskJet 3650 colour inkjet printer offers a great package of basic features perfect for either home or light office use.



Thank you for taking the time & trouble to read my review :-)

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