Product Reviews

In the ever more confusing world of consumer inkjet printers, it seems that manufacturers have resorted to trying to outdo each other on how frequently they can bring out new models. Hence HP's entire line-up was revised this autumn, and leading the charge is the HP Deskjet 5550.

Unlike some manufacturers, who produce different printers that specialise in different tasks, HP's inkjets tend to be all-rounders equally suitable for printing business documents or photographs. The Deskjet 5550 is no exception.

The most noticeable aspect about this printer is its design. It's rather a squat beast, at just 15.6cm high, but with a surprisingly large desktop footprint of 45.6cm x 38.5cm (w x d). These proportions, combined with its stylish silver curves, help it to look good. However, it seems to be a rather odd design, given that desk space is usually at a premium, whereas you're rarely limited by the amount of height available.

The printer looks large because the paper input and output trays are incorporated into the main chassis, rather than sticking out the front like most HP printers. Another consequence of this design is the disappointingly small input tray, which only holds 100 sheets of standard paper. We think that the form favoured by other manufacturers, with paper loaded vertically into the top of the printer, is more practical for home use.

In terms of use, the Deskjet 5550 offers few surprises. Setup is very simple and straightforward, thanks to the installation poster provided and the driver software on CD. The printer works with Mac OS 8.6 or above, although if you were running Mac OS X 10.2, you'd be advised to download the latest driver updates from HP's Web site.

Draft copy

The Deskjet 5550's standard print resolution is more than adequate at 1200dpi x 1200dpi, and provides excellent quality text output, even on standard copier paper. There are four output modes: FastDraft, Everyday, Normal and Best. However, we couldn't think of a situation where we would need an output level

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between Draft and Normal - the latter is good enough for you to rarely need Best, for text output at least.

For photo-quality output, you can go one stage further and raise the resolution to 4800dpi x 1200dpi, but given that you wouldn't be able to see the dots on the page without a magnifying glass, even at the standard 1200dpi x 1200dpi resolution, this is unnecessary.

Photo output is excellent for such a low-cost device. You can swap out the black ink cartridge for an optional photo cartridge, which adds light cyan and light magenta for six-colour printing, providing a wider range of colours and more subtlety in photographs. HP's PhotoREt IV technology is enabled with the photo colour cartridge, which uses complex algorithms to optimise ink droplet size and colour layering to provide the most accurate output possible.

If any of the ink cartridges run out in the middle of a job, and they're likely to given their unimpressive capacities, the print driver has a clever mode whereby it can continue to print using the inks available, reproducing colours in greyscale, or overlaying colours to produce black. The relatively low capacities of the cartridges (450 sheets for the black at 5% coverage, 400 for the colour, at 5% coverage a colour) means this is not intended as a high-volume device. The cost of replacement cartridges would soon far outstrip the small initial outlay for the printer.

As with all inkjets, you'll get the best results from dedicated inkjet paper, as there's less possibility of the ink running, causing blurred edges and less colour purity. If you're using different paper types, you can select the desired type from the rather baffling list of choices in the print driver, or select Automatic and the Deskjet 5550 will use a laser to detect the paper type, adding a few seconds to the beginning of your print run.

Speed limit

If speed issues are a concern, then the Deskjet 5550 almost certainly isn't the device for you. HP's quoted print speeds sound very impressive indeed, up to 17 pages per minute (ppm) in black and 12ppm in colour, but in our tests the Deskjet 5550 came nowhere near these figures. Even in draft mode, we couldn't achieve more than about 6ppm, while in normal mode this dropped to a sleep-inducing 2ppm.

The Deskjet 5550 is a more than adequate all-rounder that produces high-quality output for a low price. But it's not outstanding in any respect, and some of its drawbacks, such as its speed, large footprint and relatively high cost of ownership, could well outweigh its benefits. This is a handy printer for light home use, but nothing more.