Do ya think I'm CXi? (HP Deskjet 895cxi)

Member Name: ben-lloyd

Product:	HP Deskjet 895cxi
Date:	22/04/09 (169 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Cheap, does what it says it will - prints!

Disadvantages: Better models available, out of date and aged

The HP DeskJet 895CXi is a perfectly adequate personal inkjet printer which does what one wants from a personal printer well; it prints.
At my workplace we have had several of these printers in use by single users for some years now without any major issues to note. Once installed and setup correctly, the 895CXi continues to run and run only ever requiring attention when out of ink.

In terms of physical appearance, the 895CXi looks no different to the raft of desktop inkjets Hewlett Packard produced in the late 1990s and early 2000s. A simple enough beige unit houses the printing wizardry and sits atop the paper tray. Paper is fed into the lower paper tray (capacity approx 100 sheets of A4) and once printed is ejected into the upper tray where the paper can sit while the ink dries. There is also a small slot provided for manually feeding envelopes, and nine times out of ten this too works without jamming!

At the rear of the unit is a door with twist-lock which can be opened to remove the odd paper jam (I have not found them to be a common occurrence with this model) an input jack for the supplied power supply, a USB port and a parallel port for connecting the printer to a computer. Although it is possible to connect this printer to a print-sharer for use on a network, it is not designed for heavy workloads and I would therefore suggest that this course of action is avoided; if you want a network printer there are far more suitable options out there.

In terms of print quality, the 895CXi is nothing special. A resolution of 600 x 600 is nothing special these days making this particular printer best for printing letters and very simple graphics on a small scale. Photo printing technology has moved on considerably since the 895CXi was first released, so if printing your prized family album, the 895CXi is not going to meet your expectations. The printing speed is again, nothing special at 6-8ppm, although this may be due to the relatively small internal memory (2MB) which cannot be upgraded or improved upon.

Thankfully, the print cartridges used by this printer are widely available, and re-manufactured versions can be picked up very cheaply. One of the biggest advantages of these old-style inkjets is that the printheads are incorporated into the ink cartridges, thereby keeping maintenance costs low. More up-to-date HP printers often require replacement of printheads and ink cartridges at extortionate prices.

There really is nothing out-of-the-ordinary or special about this printer; it just does what it says it will relatively efficiently and cheaply. This model of printer should now be available quite cheaply secondhand, and if looking for a simple-to-use device, then the 895CXi may be what you are looking for.


© ben-lloyd 2009. This review appears on other websites under the same user name.

Summary: If you're desperate for a temporary printer, this may be answer...

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