Product Reviews

HP's bid to rule the roost in the inkjet printer market shows no signs of letting up. It seems to release another device almost every week. The deskjet 960c is the latest off the production line, and represents the mid-range in HP's new line-up of 900 series deskjets. It looks like it has picked up a few tricks from its big brothers.

The 960c replaces the 959c seen earlier this year (see Reviews, 23 March 2001, p39) and there appears to be little difference between them. Both are compact and attractively designed. They both feature a lift-up out-tray for easier access to an extendable 150-sheet paper tray. There's also little difference in their output qualities.

It's not until you see the 960c in action that the differences become apparent. The 960c features HP's High Performance Architecture (HPA), which effectively moves a lot of the processing from the Mac to a dedicated processor in the printer. This results in faster print times and frees up your Mac for other tasks.

HP has rated the 960c as a 15ppm (page per minute) printer, which is almost 50% faster than the 959c. As well as utilising the HPA, the 960c achieves the increase in speed by using relay paper feeding. This means that as the printer finishes one page, the next page is already being fed into position.

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15ppm quoted by HP is merely a theoretical maximum. In testing, we achieved around 7.5ppm printing a SimpleText document on plain paper in draft mode. Although text output was surprisingly good in draft mode, it won't be good enough for most purposes. In its normal setting, the 960c delivers better results at a speed of 3.4ppm, which drops to 0.8ppm in its best setting. However, the wait is hardly worth it, as the quality is only marginally better than in normal mode.

Photo printing is also impressive. Using glossy photo paper in best mode, a 25Mb A4 Photoshop document took eight and a half minutes using HP's PhotoREt III technology, and nine and a half minutes in high-resolution 2400dpi x 1200dpi mode. The output of these setting is almost identical: both produced vibrant colours and realistic skin tones. Faint banding was observed in some areas and, when compared with the original, output did look slightly faded. This isn't a proofer, though, and there can be few complaints for an inkjet of its class.

The 960c also has an automatic paper-type sensor, which scans the paper before each print job to detect whether it's glossy photo-paper, or bog-standard inkjet paper, before adjusting its settings accordingly. If you often switch between document and photo printing, this could save a lot of wasted prints. Unfortunately, detection takes around 18 seconds, so it might end up being more of a hindrance than a help. This feature can be turned off.

Its improved print speed puts the 960c on a par with the more expensive 980cxi. The only real difference between them is that the 980cxi features a duplex unit as standard instead of as an option. The 960c is significantly faster than its predecessor, the 959c, has some nifty features, and, at £126, it's £30 cheaper. HP's deskjet 900 series printers have always delivered high-quality results. With the 960c, they now deliver outstanding value.