Desktop model outclasses the competition, but portable printer falls short.
Tony A. Bojorquez
HP DeskJet 850C
Rating: Very Good/Outstanding (4.5 of 5 mice)
HP DeskJet 340
Rating: Acceptable (3 of 5 mice)
THE BATTLE OF THE INKJET printers continues, with the latest salvo coming from Hewlett-Packard. Two new low-cost color printers fortify the company's inkjet line -- the DeskJet 850C is a top-notch performer that's sure to win applause from home and small-business users, and the DeskJet 340 is a somewhat lackluster upgrade to the company's older portable printer, the DeskWriter 320C.
HP DeskJet 850C
HP's latest desktop color inkjet printer impressed us not only with its bargain price -- it's street-priced at about $500 -- but also with its speed and output quality. Even documents printed on plain paper look good. The DeskJet 850C resembles its more expensive sibling, the DeskJet 1600CM, but it's a QuickDraw printer rather than a PostScript device. It prints at 600 dpi for black text and line art and at 300 dpi for grayscale and color images. The printer handles plain, coated, and glossy paper as well as transparencies.
Setup is a snap. Lift the printer's front cover, and snap the two high-capacity ink cartridges into the carriage. One cartridge contains a separate reservoir each for cyan, magenta, and yellow; the other cartridge contains black. An installer places all the printer software in the right locations on your hard disk. Two buttons on the front of the printer make operation simple -- one turns the power on and off, and the other resumes printing after an interruption.
The DeskJet 850C prints either over a LocalTalk connection -- for network use -- or via a serial connection. It's also equipped with a parallel port, which means you can connect both a Mac and a PC to the printer simultaneously. For setting print quality, you can choose one of three print modes (Econofast, Normal, and Best) with the software. HP's ColorSmart technology is an added plus -- it lets the printer make smart decisions about color and dithering based on each element on a page -- text, graphics, and photographic images.
HP DeskJet 340
For on-the-road printing, the portable DeskJet 340 -- street-priced at about $300 -- is light and compact, but it can't match the print quality and speed of its chief rival, the $400 portable Apple Color StyleWriter 2200. For starters, the HP printer comes with a black cartridge, but to print color, you must buy a separate $49 color cartridge that contains cyan, magenta, and yellow inks. And unlike the Apple printer, the HP printer can't accommodate both the black and the color cartridge. This becomes a problem if you want to print a document that contains both black text and color graphics. To do so, you have to use the color cartridge, which creates a composite black, using all three colors, that's muddy-looking at best. The printer's lackluster speed results are due to its lack of a PowerPC-native driver.
In addition to the black cartridge, the DeskJet 340 comes with a portable 30-sheet paper feeder, software, a power adapter, and a rechargeable battery. Because it's equipped with only a parallel port, Mac users will also need to buy a $39 Mac Adapter Kit.
HP touts the DeskJet 340's infrared capabilities for wireless printing, but unfortunately, Mac users are left out in the cold when it comes to this hot feature. Apple's new infrared-equipped PowerBooks aren't yet compliant with the IRDA standard, which is what HP uses.
Color Wars
To see how the new HP printers measure up to the competition in terms of print quality and speed, we printed several types of documents at various print settings. We compared the DeskJet 850C results with those of Apple's low-cost desktop inkjet printer, the $400 Apple Color StyleWriter 2400, and the DeskJet 340 results with those of Apple's $400 portable Color StyleWriter 2200. We connected our test platform, a Power Mac 6100/60 running System 7.5.1, to each printer's serial port.
For both color and black text quality, the DeskJet 850C was the hands-down winner over all the other printers we tested. It produced fine, clean text -- even when printing subtle serifs -- as well as vibrant saturated color business graphics. But the DeskJet 850C, with its use of HP's proprietary Color Resolution Enhancement Technology, really shines at printing color photographic images. HP's technology allows the printer to produce fine dots, resulting in crisp, sharp details.
The DeskJet 340 was better at printing text than the Apple portable printer when we used its black cartridge, but for color documents, the DeskJet's text quality suffered from the use of composite black. The DeskJet also fell short of the Apple printer for color documents -- grays and blacks suffered from a blue cast, again due to the use of composite black, that affected the overall quality of the images.
The DeskJet 850C bested its rival in two out of four of our speed tests. It was much faster at printing black text than the Apple desktop printer, taking less than three minutes to print our ten-page Word document, compared to almost five minutes for the Color StyleWriter 2400. Printing a one-page Word document that incorporated text and color graphics, the HP printer edged out its rival by just 14 seconds, producing the document in under two minutes.
With the exception of the DeskJet 340, all of the printers had similar times -- about 16 minutes -- for printing our five-page color PowerPoint presentation. The DeskJet 340 equipped with the color cartridge took almost twice as long to print the same file.
The one test in which Apple's desktop printer really outperformed the DeskJet 850C was in printing our one-page FreeHand document, which contained a photographic PICT image, small type, and lots of color. The Color StyleWriter 2400 finished printing the document in just under ten minutes, whereas the DeskJet 850C took 40 minutes. We suspect that the speed hit is the price you pay for HP's Color Resolution Enhancement Technology. For portable printing, the Color StyleWriter 2200 bested the DeskJet 340 in all of our speed tests by a wide margin.
The Bottom Line
You can't go wrong with HP's affordable DeskJet 850C -- it's a great color printer for the home or small office. The DeskJet 340, on the other hand, isn't much of an improvement over its predecessors. For those who are looking for a portable printer, the Apple Color StyleWriter 2200 is still the best bet.
Price: HP DeskJet 850C, $658; HP DeskJet 340, $345 (list). Company: Hewlett-Packard, Santa Clara, CA; 800-752-0900. Reader Service: Circle #408.
Good-looking text and color images are hallmarks of HP's new low-cost color inkjet printer, the DeskJet 850C (left). The portable DeskJet 340 is less impressive -- type comes out a muddy brown when you're printing documents that contain both black text and color graphics.
Inkjet Derby / HP printers versus Apple rivals
10-PAGE WORD 1-PAGE WORD TEXT/ 5-PAGE POWERPOINT 1-PAGE FREEHAND
