HP OfficeJet 5610 Review
Reports on the HP OfficeJet 5610 have shown it to be very usable machine for the home office, but CNET warns that some compromises will have to be made on performance and convenience should you choose to buy one. Priced at around $140.00, the 5610 is a multifunction machine with photo printing capabilities. As for overall functionality, this machine does it all - prints, scans, copies, and faxes. When just judged on general use alone, it does the job. Here’s where it gets in to trouble.
Photo printing. As mentioned above, the machine does have the capability to print photo quality prints. Only problem is that users have reported mixed results in the quality of their prints. And they complain of a slow print speed. Those more proficient in the photo printing world have reported that those looking to buy a new printer should opt for ones with memory card slots.
Overall print speed. Those looking for a machine to quickly print black and white documents would be better opting for a multifunction machine that uses a laser toner cartridge. The cartridges for the OfficeJet 5610 are quite expensive and won’t last you all that long when compared to the page yield you will get out of a laser cartridge.
And, the CNET bottom line: “The HP OfficeJet 5610 is affordable and provides most of the home-office basics, but it doesn’t stand out from the crowd of better-equipped multifunctions.” They rated it a 6.1 out of 10 (which is a “Good” rating). The 5610 is inexpensive and small. It prints well and should be considered for those on a budget who just need basic functionality and print quality. And the negatives — It uses expensive ink cartridges, has poor scan quality, prints slowly, and has not memory card readers. On the other hand, Yahoo! users have rated it 4.5 stars out of 5 (this is only on 3 reviews though).
Here are the printer vitals:
| Type | Multifunction (fax, copy, print, scan) |
| Print Speed (Black) | 20 ppm |
| Print Spped (Color) | 13 ppm |
| Max Resolution (BW) | n/a |
| Max Resolution (Color) | 4800dpi x 1200dpi |
| Duplex Printing | No |
| Paper Handling | US Legal (8.5 in x 14 in), US Legal (8.5 in x 14 in), US Legal (8.5 in x 14 in) |
| Input Sheet Capacity | 100 pages |
| Warranty | 1 Year Warranty |
| Network Connectivity | None |
| Network Type | None |
| Also Known As | HP Officejet, Hewlett-Packard 5610 All-in-One, Hewlett-Packard Q7311A, HP Officejet 5610 All-in-One |
What are the users of this printer saying?
Pros: Print, Scan, Fax, Color copies, Inexpensive
Cons: Expensive ink, Slow, Poor scan quality, No memory card readers, Automatically starts application on your computer
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Buy the HP OfficeJet 5610 Printer  |
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Buy HP OfficeJet 5610 ink cartridges |
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One Comment about “HP OfficeJet 5610 Review”
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June 5th, 2007 at 3:53 pm
I owned this printer for a year and here is my experience with it.
Faxing: Good. However, you can fax documents directly from your computer programs such as Word, but but it will not receive fax directly into your computer. The HP Solution Centre, therefore has a copy of your fax sent, but not received.
Scan: Very good. It can scan directly into popular formats such as pdf, jpg, or text (via an ocr program). The OCR program that come with it is rather basic. If you want to retain the document format, you need to buy a better software such as Omnipage.
Copy: Good. But, there is no button to “shrink” or enlarge your document as in the more expensive units. To do so you need to set the unit with HP Solution Centre on your computer. As in fax, you can scan the documents into popular formats that you choose.
Text Printing: Quality is good and comparable with a Laserjet. But, operating the printer is expensive, because it consumes some colour ink even when you print in black. Print speed is dependant on the software you use. Spreadsheet printing is slow but Word documents and pdf files are quite fast. It takes about 5 minutes to print a typical income tax return (say 20 to 25 pages) at “normal” setting.
Photo Printing: Quality is very good when you use HP22 tricolor and HP58 photo cartridges, comparable to what you get from a photo lab. But, since the HP22 tricolor cartridge only holds 5 ml of ink, it will cost you an arm and leg to print photos. The HP22 can only print about 25 to 30 4″x6″ photos when used with HP58 (nowhere near to the 70 photos as mentioned on HP’s website). Thus, you can expect to use three HP22’s with one HP58 to print a hundred 4″x6″ photos. It takes about 4 to 5 minutes to print one photo.
In addition, the HP Photosmart Premier software is not very smart when it come to handling 4″ x 6″ photo papers. Every third photo or so, it will print off-centre and the fifth photo will be completely off page. There is however no problem when printing on letter-size photo paper.
Conclusion: The name Officejet implies that it is good for a small home office, but you are better off using a photo printer such as Canon Pixma to print photos.