Product Reviews

While colour lasers are getting cheaper all the time, there's still a place for inkjets in business. For printing graphics, especially photographs, they're hard to beat on quality and they also benefit from a lower unit cost.

HP's Business Inkjet 1100dtn is a solidly constructed machine for small workgroups and comes complete with two paper input trays, a 400-page capacity and quoted print speeds of up to 23ppm in draft.

In Fast Normal mode, our 25-page pure text document took four minutes, 55 seconds to appear, about a minute of which was spent processing. Once it started, though, the pages appeared at a more reasonable 6.5ppm. The results were disappointing, however, with distinct ink bleed around text edges, and in some cases they were visible from arm's length.

Dropping down into Draft mode bumped the speed up to 11.8ppm, but quality was again below what we'd have expected, with text feathering and even the occasional malformed character. It was still legible, but not suited for anything other than internal rough copies.

Adding colour and graphics into the equation caused a further dent in performance, with our 12-page Excel workbook taking an excruciating 17 minutes, 14 seconds to print at normal quality, and Draft mode barely making a difference in the duration. Again, the output exhibited slight bleeding, but we also found solid blocks of colour appeared grainy

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and speckled. High-contrast areas and white text on a coloured background were handled well, however, and the results would be sufficient for most purposes, but the flaws are all too obvious.

We had more problems with our mono-quality document. Contrast was well handled, but there was a slight green tint to the result, even after a recalibration. Reproducing the tests using various inkjet papers, including HP's own, didn't overly improve matters either.

Things looked up with our photomontage, though - resolutions of up to 4,800 x 1,200dpi are possible on special media, and printing onto HP's glossy photo paper gave impressive results. Despite some graininess, the overall effect was natural and well balanced, even on difficult colours such as sky blues and skin tones.

It's a shame about the overall disappointing performance, as the 1100dtn offers some useful features, including networking, an option for 802.11b and even a duplexer. There's also a useful set of driver options, including banner, tiled, booklet and page index prints. A status application provides useful feedback too on the current state of consumables, as well as offering diagnostic tools. Another piece of software monitors print usage and gives an in-depth analysis over time, although you have to go online to access the information.

The unit itself gives at-a-glance information on the state of both print heads and ink reservoirs via warning LEDs. The controls are simple too, with just three buttons adorning the front panel, dealing with power, job cancelling and paper feed.

Despite all this, the lacklustre performance means it isn't possible to recommend the 1100dtn. Given its price, compromises are inevitable, but if text quality is important it's worth looking at a laser. The Kyocera Mita FS-1010 will cost you £170 or, for colour, the Epson AcuLaser C900 will give better quality on general-purpose graphics work for £399, as well as offering lower running costs and more speed.