Mark assesses HP's new multifunction office friendly inkjet
Multifunction office printers usually have all the styling of a breeze-block, so I was pleasantly surprised when the well-rounded HP Officejet 5740 turned up. Having been an IT Manager once, I have a very ingrained aversion to inkjet printers in the workplace, but HP has managed to back plenty of functionality into what is a relatively inexpensive device.
Along with printing, the 5740 can scan, copy, print Web pages and Fax (don't, please), and it can be spliced into an existing network infrastructure using either wi-fi or 10/100 Ethernet. The scanner occupies the whole top section of the unit, and it incorporates a 25 sheet document feeder. Scanned images can then be sent to a remote PC, attached to an email or pushed on to an inserted SD Card/USB flash drive. HP kindly bundles IRIS OCR in with this printer, so scanned pages can be turned back into editable documents relatively easily.
The scanner isn't anything special, but it's more than adequate to support the copy and Fax functions that are also offered by the 5740. It doesn't support capturing transparencies or have any film adapter, but at this level of kit I'd have been surprised if it had.
It also seems unable to work out what is a document and what is the scanner, as it almost never identifies the extents of a scanned image. This leaves many files containing additional white areas that need to be trimmed.
Printing is reasonable speed for an inkjet, with a quoted speed of 12ppm mono and 8ppm colour - though those speeds don't seem to include the local processing of image data that the Officejet must perform. My testing revealed that 10ppm is a more accurate number when dealing with text documents, and 4-5ppm f is about right for colour graphics. However, it can get really slow if you print duplex, as the printer adds a drying delay before printing the second side.
While the print speed might not break any records, the results are crisp and colours are bright. It is also quiet in operation and it will print to the edge of the paper.
Where I have an issue with this design is the control interface that HP has built into the printer so it can be operated without a PC. I'm not sure where HP sourced the touch screen it's used, but it needs to be bigger, clearer and require less forceful finger jabbing to get a response. Often, I would select an option, see the button invert under my finger, but not generate the desired action. Other occasions it worked fine
Also, this touch interface only offers a subset of what the printer can do when PC controlled - and there's often no obvious reason for the difference. For example: when scanning, the touch interface only offers JPG and PDF file options, whereas PC initiated scanning allows for PDF, BMP, JPG, GIF, TIF and PGM formats. Why? Who knows?
I get the feeling that if the screen had only been a little bigger it might have been substantially more useful, and perhaps included extra features. There is a large border around it on the printer, part of which has been subverted as an NFC hot spot. Even if this increased the cost marginally, a bigger screen with a better sensor could easily revolutionise this design into something much slicker.
Another area where this design rubs this reviewer the wrong way is (predictably) in the ink cartridge department. This is one of those designs where the three coloured inks are contained in a single reservoir, almost guaranteeing that it will be thrown away with unused ink in it. This wouldn't be a problem if the amount in them wasn't so low to begin with: just 4.5ml in the colour (1.5ml each), and 4ml in its black counterpart.
HP will happily sell you XL sized cartridges, that hold 11.5ml and 12ml respectively, for roughly the price of two original carts. However, even using XL packs at roughly £50 for one of each, the 5% coverage page printing cost of around 10p for colour or 4p mono doesn't make this printed output cheap by anybody’s standards.
If you are deploying this hardware you might want to consider that the person furthest away from the laser printer might always use this instead. And, you also need to ask yourself if you should be encouraging physical copying, faxing and other anachronisms of the digital age?
I accept that some businesses, for whatever reason, do need these facilities - though the vast majority of businesses that use them simply don't.
There were things to like about the Officejet 5740, like the elegant hiding place for the USB and SD Card ports, and the admirable print quality. Though, these highlights are overtaken by the aspects where it could have been better, especially in respect of the ink resource management.
Those who don't print often, but want a printer that does it all, be attracted by this design. They just need to be mindful that, should their circumstances change and their print demands increase, this isn't ideal if you generating more than 100 pages per week. Mark Pickavance
A well designed printer, twinned with an average scanner, that uses expensive ink.