Filter
Top Products
130
Entire Contents © 2006 Prog
ressiv
e Business Pub
lications
.
Copying of Pages Prohibited.To Order: 800 247 2185 or www.betterbuys.com
These machines print at 10ppm in what HP calls “laser
quality” color, which would appear to be at 1,200dpi. HP
h
as come up with a technique involving large arrays of
color printheads built into a single chip that allows these
printers to print quickly with minimum movement from
side to side.
There are three models in this family:
● The Officejet Pro K550 ($199) comes with a 250-sheet
input tray, a USB port, and optional duplexing.
● The Officejet Pro K550dtn ($299) adds an extra 350-
sheet tray, standard duplexing, and Ethernet.
● The Officejet Pro K550dtwn ($349) adds a Wi-Fi con-
nection.
All thr
ee models have a decent 300MHz processor and
are rated for a duty cycle of up to 7,500 pages per month.
32MB of memory is included. PCL is supported as well
as Mac OS X or Lin
ux host-based printing.
The design is elegant and compact.
The ink cartridg
es
are easy to pop in and out, a big improvement over many
earlier designs. The paper path is very simple, so paper
jams are no pr
ob
lem. Even better, this machine is very
quiet. Between its quiet operation and its compact size,
this is a nice machine that can reside comfortably on
someone’
s desk (not the case with most low-end color
laser printers).
There are two input trays, a 250-sheet tray and a 350-
sheet tray (standard on all but the base model). Output
maxes out at 150 sheets.
While this is a solid office printer, it also has a photo
mode for printing color photos. Photo printing is slower,
but not as painfully slow as with some other inkjets.
HP has de
veloped high-capacity cartridges for these
models. That’s a big plus over most ink jet printers. The
high-capacity black cartridge will run for up to 2,350
pages, and the color cartridges can yield up to 1,200
pa
ges. Better yet, HP indicates the price of a color page is
around 7.7¢ per page, far below those of similar laser
printers. The black cost per page is stated to be as low as
1.5¢.
Be aware that this is an ink jet printer. This means that
unlik
e a laser printer
,
it will slow down as the pages get
more complex and more ink gets laid down. But on nor-
mal office documents, the speed does very well against
comparable laser models.
What’s remarkable about this series is that it is only the
fir
st v
er
sion of this technology. We know HP plans to
b
uild on it, both in terms of speed and features. The tech-
nology will doubtless disrupt the low-end color laser mar-
ket; w
ha
t will be inter
esting to see is w
hether it can
reshape the larger workgroup market as well.
Pros: Everything, including price, design, running
costs, and features.
Cons: None really, unless you need PostScript.
Better Buys for Business