Great Quality Budget Printer (HP Deskjet 840c)

Member Name: aljones

Product:	HP Deskjet 840c
Date:	07/12/01 (806 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Cheap to own, Quiet, Good quality

Disadvantages: Not a lot

If you are looking for a great printer, keep reading. If you are looking for a cheap printer keep reading. Get the idea? Yes, that's right, the HP 840C inkjet is a pretty good printer that should keep most users happy. It's not the best on the market, but for the price I doubt it could be beaten on quality and reliability.

So why is it so good. Well firstly it from the well established Hewlett Packard, who seem to have become the most popular company for printers. I've never owned anything else, and when I use quality products like this one, I know why. First off they feel robust. The plastic casing is solid, as well as looking pretty good, which while not essential is always a bonus.

The print quality is there as well. Some may say at only 600 x 600 dpi (dots per inch) that is isn't as good as the 1000+ dpi available on some Epson printers, but personally I don't think the quality could look much better. In black the quality is nearly as good as what you would expect from a laser printer. In colour while it is not superb, the PhotoRet II enhancements seem to do their job and produce very pleasing results, especially on better quality paper. But even on Tesco's Value inkjet paper the quality is pretty good, and for most purposes such as documents you wouldn't want much better.

Speed wise its not the best, though it can spit out the black and white pages at 8 per minute, which is a pretty accurate claim by HP from my use of it. The specified 5 pages a minute in colour is a bit optimistic though. I've found that if they've got a little bit of colour on then you can expect about 3 or 4 pages a minute, but if you've got a full colour page, then you'll only get about 1 and half pages a minute. It is pretty quiet though, which is an advantage, though on the shelf unit mine is one it does tend to shake it a bit, just like my older 710C printer (which my sister now has).

I only ever use the prin
ter on the economy setting (the lowest of the three available). But personally I don't think that makes much difference to the quality. If you put an economy and a normal printout side-by-side, you'll see a difference, but on its own, the economy printouts are perfectly acceptable for most purposes. As you increase the quality, the speed drops considerably, possibly the only downside to this printer. It will easily take 5 minutes to print out a full colour page if you have the quality set to the maximum. A long time hence I rarely use it.

I've got the printer set up on a Windows 98 system. Installation of the drivers and software off the supplied CD was very painless, and everything set up great first time. You do have to align the cartridges by printing out a few sample pages, though this takes just minutes and ensures everything prints where it is supposed. The software is also pretty good for all the maintenance tasks, and debugging on the odd occasion that its needed. The printer connecting via the USB port, which is a welcome change from the chucky parallel port plugs that I have always used, though in everyday use I haven't noticed any real advantages, though I think it is slightly faster at starting printing than my old printer.

Currently (6/12/01) you can get this printer for less than £80. I paid just under a £100 for it, and was very pleased then. Unless you need top quality printing, this has to be the printer of the moment. Its good quality, well built, and produces good results at an affordable price. The ink cartridges seem to last forever, though can be expensive when you do need to replace them. I have to recommend this printer. It really is good and well worth the money.

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