Product Reviews

Colour inkjet technology might not be developing at the same frantic pace as other hardware markets just now, but that's not to say there isn't any competition. Hewlett-Packard's new DeskJet 880C has taken up the baton from the DeskJet 720C (reviewed issue 47, p125) in the running battle with Lexmark and Epson to produce the best colour printer for the SoHo market - an accolade that is currently held by Epson's Stylus Color 740 (reviewed issue 50, p171).

While Epson is generally considered to have the edge in photographic reproduction, HP printers have a reputation for being solid, capable units with a greater emphasis on speed. The paper handling of the DeskJet range has always been the most elegant of its peers, and the 880C is no exception. The front-mounted paper input/output tray has been retained, but it's now recessed even further into the body of the printer to reduce its footprint. If you've ever used an inkjet where the paper input tray stands half upright at the back of the unit, supported by a flimsy central support, you'll know that after a month or two the paper tends to curl backwards and become discoloured by dust. This doesn't happen with HP's system.

Unlike most of its rivals, the 880C is a four-colour unit. It uses two cartridges: one containing black, while the other has cyan, magenta and yellow ink chambers. Installing the cartridges is a breeze and takes less than a minute. As far as printing technology goes, HP has officially shunned the 'more dpi is better' philosophy and is now busily promoting its PhotoREt II technology as a superior approach to improving photo quality. As the individual drops of ink that can now be fired are so small (as low as eight picolitres), it's feasible to vary dot intensity by firing more than one drop per dot, effectively varying the pixel radius and allowing intensity control similar to that used in newspaper printing. HP claims that by using up to 16 drops of ink per dot, and using each of the base colours (cyan, magenta, yellow or black), it can achieve more than 650 colours per pixel before any halftoning schemes are brought into play, thereby reducing the need to go for ever higher pixel resolutions. Consequently, where Epson printers deliver 1,440 x 720dpi and Lexmark 1,200 x 1,200dpi,

The 880C's output is rated at 5ppm of text in standard quality mode, although our text test document gave a result of 3.9ppm; using coated paper in the high quality setting saw this reduced to 2.9ppm. Although this isn't fast by laser standards, it's still significantly faster than the Stylus Color 740, which gives 3.2ppm and 1.2ppm respectively. Quality of mono text was predictably high, although there were still a few stray dots that prevent it from being classed as true laser quality.

On its home territory - printing business documents with colour graphics - the 880C is an impressive performer. The separation between adjacent areas of colour was excellent, with almost no bleed when coloured text was printed on a coloured background. Banding was non-existent, even in areas of 100 per cent black, although black density wasn't as high as the Epson's despite the 880's use of pigmented black ink. While HP may be against winding up its dpi figures, the Stylus Color 740 surpasses the HP in the halftoning stakes by virtue of its higher resolution. Areas of solid colour that appear smooth with the 740 are obviously halftoned by the 880C.

When it came to the photographic tests, the story was repeated. A full A4-sized photo on glossy paper at maximum quality took the 880C just over ten minutes to produce. This is around two minutes faster than the Stylus Color 740's photo reproduction mode, and is no doubt a result of the lower resolution. However, the results, although very good, weren't quite so convincing. Colour balance was skewed too far towards reddish hues and, once again, many areas were marred by fairly obvious halftoning. Fine detail also appeared a little blurred in places, an area where the Epson 740 delivers cleaner results.

One of the 880C's few really novel features is its dual-interface support. In addition to the standard parallel connector, you'll find one of those increasingly familiar square USB ports round the back. However, connecting the unit via USB wasn't the euphoric experience it's supposed to be. When using the USB interface, HP's setup program insisted on installing a foreign language version of the drivers (I think it was Czech), but then after the usual reboot the unit refused to work. I eventually had to install the 880C as a parallel device and rerun the USB setup several times before I was able to get the thing running - and it still had the foreign language drivers. This teething problem aside, however, the 880C performed identically under USB and parallel port control. It's the printer itself, and not the interface, that is the limiting factor as far as speed is concerned.

There's no doubt that the 880C is capable, fairly fast and well-priced. But for the moment at least, HP won't be wresting the crown from Epson's hands.