HP Deskjet 3820 - Noisy but reliable! (HP Deskjet 3820)

Member Name: Kepler

Product:	HP Deskjet 3820
Date:	13/02/04 (588 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Sharp text, Easy to set-up and use, Low running costs

Disadvantages: Quite noisy, Fairly heavy

The Hewlett Packard Deskjet 3820 was my first foray into the realm of HP printers and cost me £89.99 about a year ago from Dixons. It can now be purchased from www.lowestontheweb.com for just £70.18. The printer is packaged with all the necessary software to get the printer up and running and also comes with a USB cable and both black and colour ink cartridges.

The first thing I noticed about this printer when I took it out of the box was its incredible weight. Having not purchased a HP printer before (usually Lexmark) I?m not sure whether this is normal but it felt like I was trying to lift a bag of cement. It is definitely one of the heaviest printers I have ever come across so if you plan on moving the printer around your house this might be something you want to take into consideration. Having unpackaged the printer I plugged it in and started up my computer. Upon start-up Windows XP immediately found the new hardware and I was taken to the set up wizard where I was prompted to insert the printer drivers. The printer drivers are supplied on CD and set up is very straight forward as you are taken through the various steps required to install the drivers. All in all it took me about 5 minutes to set up the printer and I was ready to print. I would definitely recommend this printer to anyone who has a somewhat irrational fear of technology as it was very easy to set up and even the most ardent technophobe would struggle to get it wrong.

After setting up the printer I decided to print a test page to make sure that the printer was working properly as I didn?t have anything else that needed printing at the time. I loaded up the HP software that came with the printer and I was presented with a multitude of options. All of the choices are fairly self explanatory and include support, printing ideas, links for buying new ink, an interactive Users guide and utilities. A further click took me to the test page icon, I clicked the round shiny button and wait
ed. Then I waited some more and finally with a horrendous noise that can only be described as ear shattering the printer burst into action. After about another 15-20 seconds of noise and various mechanical whirrs and clicks the test page began to print. At first this had me worried because the noise was so loud that I thought the printer might have been faulty. But no, the test page finished printing and it came out perfectly, an adequately sharp picture of a butterfly and the HP logo. Again, I?m not sure if all HP printers are always this noisy but it is certainly noisier than any other printer I have ever used.

The quality of the picture was fairly good, though on closer inspection the edges were a little blurred. However, this can also be due to the type of paper you use and subsequent printing with better quality paper has lessened the blurring to some degree and at normal distances it is not noticeable. The printer manages about 8 pages per minute when colour is involved (HP quote 10ppm) and about 10 pages per minute for black text (HP quote 12ppm). These speeds are perfectly adequate for the everyday users but for someone who prints out large documents it could become a little tiresome as its not exactly super fast. The printer set up menu allows you to change quality settings such as the print quality and even ink volume and ink drying times. There are three options when it comes to print quality and they are draft, normal and best. As a rule I keep my setting on draft unless it is a piece of work that I have to submit, in which case I usually set it to normal. I have printed off in excess in a thousand pages from this printer and the text had always been sharp and crisp on normal setting and even on draft setting the text is still fairly sharp. I have never bothered trying the best mode as I have always been satisfied with the normal setting and I see no reason to needlessly waste ink.

The ink cartridges for this printer are more reasonabl
y priced than most and the cheapest prices I have found for the branded cartridges are £20.26 for a black cartridge and £23.83 for a colour cartridge from www.inkfactory.co.uk. You can expect the cartridges to last for about 4-6 months even with heavy usage and so they are very economical in this respect. An even better option is to buy the remanufactured cartridges also from www.inkfactory.co.uk which are recycled and refilled. Not only is this better for the environment they are also much cheaper, coming in at £14.69 for a black cartridge and £18.80 for a colour cartridge. Using these cartridges I have noticed a very slight reduction in the sharpness of the text but not really anything to worry about considering you have just saved yourself fiver!

Overall I would definitely recommend this printer. Its low running costs combined with good quality printing make it an excellent choice for most home users. The only down side is that it is really quite noisy and sometimes it takes a while for the noises to abate and the printing to get started. Other than this there are no other faults that have come to my attention and I have now been happily using this printer for over a year.

Specifications

Product Description - HP DeskJet 3820 - printer - colour - ink-jet
Printer Type - Personal printer - ink-jet - colour
Max Media Size (Standard) - Legal, A4
Max Media Size (Custom) - 216 mm (Legal) x 356 mm (Legal)
Dimensions (WxDxH) - 44.5 cm x 38 cm x 19.7 cm
Weight - 3 kg
Max Resolution ( B&W ) - 600 dpi x 600 dpi
Max Resolution ( Colour ) - 1200 dpi x 1200 dpi
Interface - Parallel / USB

Summary: