HP's Officejet L7780 All-in-One Printer

Hewlett-Packard's alternative to the laser printer is easy-to-use and plenty fast—a good choice for small offices

by Cliff Edwards

Editor's Rating:

The Good: Solid print, fax, and scan performance; built-in memory, duplex features, and media card slots

The Bad: Confusing photo printing; long setup process

The Bottom Line: Good, less-expensive alternative to a laser printer for small offices with moderate printing needs

Reader Reviews

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With all the competition in the printer business, industry leader Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) has been forced to step up its game. The new Officejet Pro L7780 does a great job of meeting the challenge. Designed for those who have moderate to heavy print workloads, but don't want to shell out for a laser printer, it's an all-in-one inkjet that packs lots of extras in with the print, fax, and scan basics.

At $400, the L7780 is the most expensive of the Officejet Pro line. It features a 50-page automatic feeder that lets you copy, scan, or fax a pile of documents at once with the press of a few buttons. Geared for small offices, the L7780 offers both Ethernet and Wi-Fi wireless networking, so multiple computers can connect to it at once. It also has built-in media card readers that allow you to insert a storage card from a digital camera and print directly without using a computer. Another nifty feature: A duplex function enables double-sided printing to reduce paper use and help save a few trees.

Easy Operation

This is a printer meant for hefty tasks—and it looks that way. Weighing in at more than 35 pounds, the mostly matte-black printer was a chore to get out of the box and set up because of its bulk. But once you snap all the pieces into place, getting started is relatively easy. You slip ink cartridges into slots behind a panel on the left-front of the printer and print heads just above. The L7780 comes with an extra paper tray that holds up to 600 sheets, more than twice the 250-page capacity of the main tray that comes with this machine and lower-priced Officejet Pro models (which don't come with the extra tray).

HP touts the L7780 as a laser printer replacement because it prints relatively cheaply and is superfast. Indeed, when I started printing documents, they shot out in no time. The company achieves this in part by keeping the print head separate from the ink cartridge, thereby enabling it to move more quickly over a page. And by using individual ink tanks, you don't have to toss everything when a particular color is low. The most-used black cartridge, costing $35, is good for an estimated 2,300 pages. That equates to less than 2¢ a page—a relative bargain compared to other inkjets in the class and a good bit less than a laser printer, which requires expensive cartridges.

The L7780 also ups the ante when it comes to scanning. Using a feature HP calls "digital filing," you can scan a document or image and then store that file directly to a folder on your network without ever turning on your computer, even formatting it for popular applications like e-mail, Microsoft (MSFT) Word, and Adobe (ADBE) Paint and Photoshop. Novices might be turned off by the complexity of doing this, however, since you must determine the printer's Web address, set up a shared folder on a computer, and then set access approvals. If you're the home or office IT geek, though, everyone else will love you: All they'll have to do after you've set it up is press the digital filing button on the control panel and choose the application or folder.

Complex Photo Printing

The Officejet Pro also offers a wealth of photo-printing features to accompany the media card reader, including the ability to print proof sheets straight from the card. But unlike dedicated, easy-to-use photo printers, using some of the L7780's features require arduous menu navigation.

Overall, the Officejet Pro performed ably, offering crisp and clear copies and prints. I did have one negative experience: I had to return the first test unit after a few weeks when a faulty sensor refused to acknowledge the paper was feeding properly, rendering the main printing function useless. While such a problem falls under warranty, the hassle of boxing up the first machine and setting up the new one nearly put me off of the project.

That said, when this Officejet Pro works, it works well.

Check out the BusinessWeek slide show for a roundup of recent printer reviews.

Edwards is a correspondent in BusinessWeek's Silicon Valley bureau.