Product Reviews

Despite most areas of technology getting smaller, there's still one area where larger size is an important factor - business printers. There's a limit to how small you can make something that holds hundreds of sheets of paper, particularly if, as in the case of the HP cp1700d, it's A3 paper. It's a huge beast of a machine that will need a fair bit of desk space, but it has the look of a printer that can cope effortlessly with continuous printing demands - an admirable achievement for an inkjet.

Lasers are still the undisputed kings of business printing, but with the superb photo and colour quality offered by cheaper inkjets, it would be a missed opportunity for businesses not to take advantage of them. The main advantage laser printers have to business is the high-yield toner cartridges, which last for thousands of pages. Most inkjets such as HP's Deskjet 995c (see Reviews, issue 88, p146), which boasts only 833 mono pages at 5 per cent coverage, simply can't compete.

To combat this, HP has revised its cartridge system for its business inkjets. There are four individual print heads at the back of the cp1700d, and four individual ink tanks at the front, all of which are replaceable separately and have individual capacity indicators on the LCD panel. We first saw this system in HP's Business Inkjet 2250TN (see Reviews, issue 75, p169), but in a £434 printer it's now also affordable. The biggest bonus is the improved page yields, which HP quotes as 1,750 pages for each cartridge at 5 per cent coverage - an enormous improvement over standard inkjets. Plus, this also makes for economical running costs - 1.6p per A4 mono page at 5 per cent coverage and 5.7p per A4 colour page at 20 per cent CMYK coverage, comparable with some colour lasers.

With a viable cartridge system in tow, the cp1700d just needed to prove it had the performance and quality needed for business printing, and that's precisely what it did in our tests. Our 25-page draft text test was completed in just one minute, 50 seconds, equating to a laser-rivalling 13.6ppm. The quality in this mode is also

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adequate, although it lacks the deep black and sharp characters you get when printing at the standard settings. A more strenuous 25-page text test was completed in five minutes, 32 seconds in standard mode - still respectable at 4.5ppm and with the quality to match.

The bigger advantage of a colour inkjet, though, is that you can use the colour and photo printing capabilities to produce fantastic-looking flyers, brochures, photos and, with the cp1700d, you can even produce A3 posters. However, there's another advantage to A3 printing, which is complemented by the supplied automatic duplex unit. This means you can produce a proper A4-sized booklet using folded A3 paper, print both sides automatically and just leave it running for you to staple together later. We managed to print an eight-page A4 double-sided booklet in the best printing mode in just ten minutes, seven seconds, and the quality on plain paper is good.

What's more, the cp1700d is adept at photo printing. We printed a full-size A4 photo on HP's Premium Glossy Photo Paper in just two minutes, seven seconds using HP's PhotoREt III technology, and the print quality was great. It won't rival Epson's Stylus Photo 890 (see Reviews, issue 79, p178) or Canon's S800 (see Reviews, issue 81, p151) due to noticeable grain and banding, but it's more than enough for most people, and it's a blessing for businesses with its fast print speed. This is faster than the four minutes, 16 seconds that the HP Deskjet 995c took to complete the same task, although the print speeds on all the other tests were almost identical. This isn't a problem, as the 995c was quick in most tests, and the added bonuses of improved cartridge longevity and A3 printing make the cp1700d even more viable as a business printer.

There are other optional extras that make it more tempting. You can add HP's Jetdirect 200 print server for an extra £172, making the cp1700d networkable, and you can also include a second 250-sheet paper tray for £133 extra.

The cp1700d shows promising potential for business inkjets. Our main criticisms of the Business Inkjet 2250TN were the high price at £810 and relatively slow print speeds, but neither of these are an issue with the cp1700d at £434, and you have the added bonus of A3 printing. The only redundant feature is the infrared port on the front, which isn't going to see a lot of action in an office workgroup, but at least it's there if you need it. The cp1700d is a great breakthrough for inkjet printing, which makes the technology realistically viable as a laser alternative and brings the advantages of inkjet printing to business without losing functionality or costing the earth.