An excellent home and office printer (HP Deskjet 840c)

Member Name: GR-Design

Product:	HP Deskjet 840c
Date:	04/04/01 (258 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Clear prints, reliable

Disadvantages: Cartridges could be expensive

The HP Deskjet 840c printer has been around for a while but has recently dropped in price due to newer models being produced. You can now find the printer selling on the high street for under £100 and could possibly find it on sale in some stores. I know someone who recently got one for around £60-70.

If you are familiar with the HP deskjet series of printers you will know that the popular 500 and 600 series were commonly used for home printers but the 840c which is a step above those printers could be a better printer for you to think about purchasing. The printer has a resolution of 600x1200dpi which gives a very good, sharp photo quality print. But if you just want to print out those letters in plain ink, it speeds along and produces just as good results.

The printer is dual cartridge which basically means if you don’t have any colour in your document it will only use the black but if you have a black and colour document it will use both cartridges unlike the single cartridge printers which tend to give you a dark green on those types of documents!

So what about speeds? Well, you can print out up to 8 pages per minute of black & white documents, this all depends on the type of documents you are printing out though. Colour documents take longer, but are quicker than what I am used to on my older printers. However, its definitely worth that extra couple of minutes for the quality of print you will be supplied with! One of the things I did notice about this printer is that it keeps itself quiet when churning out pages. Unlike other printers, if you set them up to ‘speed print’ you’ll hear them make a noise, this one makes minimal noise and its not a high pitched sound either, its more a smooth, low noise that you won’t recognise to much.

The drivers and software that come with the printer are also top notch. You get it all neatly put onto one CD (don’t ask me what you do if you don’t ha
ve a cd-rom drive!!) You then install the drivers which will also install the software (the installation is easy by the way). The software includes tools to get the best out of your printer including the aligning tools, cleaning tools and printer test page. It also holds the user guide on your computer for if you loose your manual!

Whats it like to actually set the printer up out of the box? Well its simple, so long as you have remembered to buy yourself a printer lead (why don’t printer manufacturers ever include a printer lead!?). It’s a case of 2 wires, the power and printer lead, installing the printer cartridges and that’s it! It can’t be any easier!

All in all, an excellent printer which is great for the price and a good all round home and office printer.

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