Product Reviews

The multi-function device (MFD) market has gone from strength to strength in the past couple of years. As consumers and business users recognise the benefits of combining their most frequently-used peripherals in a single device, the principal manufacturers of such devices - most notably HP - have produced ever better MFDs.

As with the PSC 2110 (see Reviews, 15 November 2001, p21), the Officejet 6110 combines HP's latest printing technology with a high-quality scanner. But the Officejet series is designed for an office environment, so it is more versatile than the 2110. The advantage of a device which incorporates a printer and a scanner is that it also works as a photocopier, and this is where most of the differences between PSCs and Officejets are found.

To this end, the Officejet 6110 has a built-in automatic document feeder (ADF) unit, allowing you to copy up to 35 pages without having to load each one separately. There's also an advanced panel with a large LCD display and most of the buttons you'd expect to see on a standard office photocopier.

The Officejet 6110 also has a built-in fax modem, which combines with the ADF, to enable you to send multiple-page faxes unattended. The front panel of the 6110 has the full range of standard fax machine buttons on it, including a numeric keypad, auto-answer mode and six-speed dial buttons.

Plug and play

As with most recent HP printers, setup is a breeze. A setup poster is the first thing that comes out of the box, with step-by-step instructions for attaching accessories, installing ink cartridges and installing the driver software on your Mac.

The setup assistant for the driver software is well designed, helping you to configure the 6110 appropriately for your office setup. For example, it takes into account whether you'll be using it on the same phone line as you take voice calls or use an answering machine.

A major limitation of

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the 6110 is the size of its input tray. This product is geared towards relatively high-volume office environments, with features like the ADF and advanced copying capabilities, yet it can only hold 100 sheets of paper, so it will often need to be reloaded. There's no option for an additional paper tray, either.

However, this is a product built around an inkjet printer, which is not as well suited to high-volume environments as laser technology. Inkjets give you more versatility, and excellent-quality reproduction of colour images, for a fraction of the initial outlay for a laser-based device. But lasers work out more cost-effective in the long run, on a cost-per-page basis. Also remember that this is a USB device, so is best for use with a single computer, although Mac OS X does allow you to share a USB printer over a network.

Print resolution is up to 4800 x 1200dpi, if you use top-quality glossy photo paper. Photo output is good, although not the best we've seen. Photo output is improved if you swap the standard black ink cartridge for an optional photo cartridge.

The resolution of the scanning bed is 1200 x 2400dpi with 48-bit colour depth, which is plenty for general office use. The scanner has default settings for common functions, such as scanning a TIFF into Photoshop, a JPEG to attach to an email, or to perform an OCR operation on text, then send it to Word. These are accessible from the front panel, but if you want more control over scanning operations, you can use the HP Photo and Imaging Director software.

All copy functions can also be controlled either from the front panel or from the driver software. The latter has an easier interface than the fiddly menus on the LCD displays of the copier panel.

Print speed is as expected for a relatively low-cost inkjet device. The 6110 manages about 5ppm for text-only printing and mono colour copying, which is just bearable in a working environment. This figure rises to about 9ppm in FastDraft mode, which is nowhere near the maker's quoted speed of 19ppm.

The Officejet 6110 succumbs to the 'jack of all trades, master of none' epithet. Its price pushes it out of the domestic market, and limitations such as its small input tray and slowish print speed mean it would not be up to the task in a busy office.

However, there will undoubtedly be some small business customers for whom the ADF, the advanced photocopying features and the built-in fax machine provide just the right balance of features and value for money.