HP Officejet 4215

The biggest market for all-in-one devices is clearly the small or home office, although it's fair to say that some offices are busier than others. The Officejet 4215 has been created to suit occasional use; for example, alongside a domestic computer or in a home office where sending and receiving faxes isn't necessarily a daily task.

Designed with an unusual arrangement of hinged paper trays, this all-in-one is much smaller than most of its fax-capable competitors. Paper for printing is loaded in a small 100-sheet tray at the bottom that folds out at the front; printed sheets are delivered face-up directly on top of it. Another tray hinges upwards from the carriage cover to act as a 20-sheet document feeder for the fax and scan functions, while yet another tray hinges open at the front, above the paper feed, to collect documents as they exit the scanning slot.

All digital copies, scans and faxes must be conducted through this sheet-fed slot: there's no flatbed, so you can't copy, scan or fax 3D objects or sheets that are bound together such as in a book or magazine. This arrangement is fine for common faxing operations but does rather restrict the device's usefulness as a colour copier and scanner. That said, it does offer some handy features such as a Photo Fit To Page button, which lets you feed in a photo print of any size and have it automatically resize and print to fit whatever media you have loaded in the paper tray.

Additionally, HP has built a full fax keypad plus speed-dial buttons onto the device so that you can use it as a fax machine directly without having to switch on your PC. The Officejet 4215 supports colour faxing and incorporates its own modem and cable, while offering a passthrough port for you to attach a standard telephone handset if you want. If your line-rental service includes different ringtones for voice and fax calls, the unit will switch automatically between fax-receive and phone-call modes.

HP has been sensible about the corners it has chosen to cut in order to keep the unit small and inexpensive. Without an optical sensor on the printhead, for example, there's no automatic paper-quality sensing, but automatic printhead alignment is still possible by passing the calibration sheet through the scanner slot. Real-world performance is slow at around 4ppm for even simple text documents, which is in line with budget domestic inkjets and not far from the 7.5ppm officially quoted for the Normal output setting. Print quality isn't bad and you could use the Officejet 4215 as an acceptable photo printer.

Arguably the best feature is the way you can close the document feeder and catch trays flush with the unit when not in use. This covers the fax numeric pad but leaves the LCD status window visible, letting you use the device as an inkjet printer. When you need to make a copy or deal with a fax, you just open the trays again.

The price makes this compact all-in-one an attractive prospect, but do be aware that this model is suited only to small offices.

Author: Alistair Dabbs