Buy Now

Only £157.90 from

HP DeskJet 460
Available for £182.13

Printers come in all shapes and sizes.  I have to say that the HP DeskJet 460 series, dedicated label printers aside, ranks as one of the smallest printers I have seen.  This thermal inkjet printer, with its appealing silver casing, measures a compact 13.4 x 6.45 x 3.17 inches (W x D x H).  Weighing around 4.5lbs, it is eminently portable as you move from location to location.  While there are versions of this printer supporting features such as Bluetooth, WiFi (802.11) and direct access from CompactFlash media, this review is based on the basic model (460c) offering USB 2.0, a CompactFlash media slot and PictBridge connectivity.

Setting up the printer is fairly straightforward as you insert the two cartridges (black and colour); install the supplied software; and attach the USB lead when prompted by the set-up wizard.  A test sheet will be printed and there is an option to set the print head alignment to get the optimum results.

See also: Printers

more

Controls on the printer are kept to a minimum.  Apart from LED lights used to indicate various status conditions, there are buttons for power, resume and cancel.  All other activities and settings are managed from the computer.  Paper enters via a rear-mounted fold-up paper tray that can hold up to 50 sheets and ejects from the front of the printer.  The output opening is protected by a fold-down flap when the printer is not in use.

Warm up from a cold start takes 35 seconds which, while not the instant-on facility we all wish for, is reasonable for a printer of this type.  HP claims speeds of up to 17 pages per minute (ppm) for monochrome and 16 ppm for colour documents when using this printer.  I was prepared to take these claims with the proverbial large pinch of salt but my tests proved this was not necessary. 

While a 100 word document could only manage 9 pages in default mode, the number of pages jumped dramatically to 22 when switching to draft mode.  Apart from a slight lightening of the printer text, you would be hard pressed to distinguish between draft and normal text mode.  Adding a 768 x 510 full-colour image to the text reduces the number of pages to 16 in draft mode.  A full-colour A4 size image was printed in 34 seconds using the printer's default settings.  I was impressed with the speed, quality of output and low noise level of the DeskJet 460.

This printer has 32MB of RAM and has been rated at 500 pages per month duty cycle.  It has eight built-in fonts and makes use of HP PCL3 printer language enhanced with HP High Performance architecture.  A wide range of paper types and sizes are supported.

The basic model of this printer for the mobile user has been priced at £199.  Replacement cartridges should cost £11.75 for black (estimated yield of 450 pages) and £14.71 for tri-colour (yield of 260 pages).  For its size and weight, this portable printer is a great machine for those requiring printing-on-the-go or the ability to use the printer in a variety of locations.

Available for £157.90 from Amazon : http://www.amazon.co.uk/HP-DeskJet-460c-Mobile-printer/dp/B000BCCTX8

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/uk/en/ho/WF05a/5043-5047-5287-5287-5143-12232740.html