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An Office All-in-One
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Decked out in a combination of lacquered black and charcoal grey, the Officejet Pro 8620 has a sturdy appearance. With dimensions of 499.3 x 468 x 314mm (including the Duplex module), this device follows the standard layout pattern adopted by such devices. Forming the base of the unit is the paper input/output module which feeds the inkjet printer that makes use of four inkjet cartridges (black, cyan, magenta and yellow). An A4 flatbed scanner topped off by the ADF module completes this All-in-One.
The protruding enclosed paper input tray has a capacity of up to 250 sheets. As the tray has no cut-out window to show when paper is running low, you need to regularly check to avoid the situation of running out of paper during a print job. Positioned on top of the paper input tray is a pull-out extension platform which acts as the paper output option and has a 150 sheet capacity. Situated to the left of this area is a front-mounted USB port for attaching a flash stick with appropriate content.
The inkjet printing element of this product features an area for NFC (Near Field Communication) for setting up a link between the printer and a smartphone/tablet. Next to the NFC feature is an adjustable control panel that can be set at an angle to suit the user. This touch screen display combines buttons for Home, Back and Help options with available options and status feedback information.
The top section of the Officejet Pro combines the flatbed scanner with the ADF feature. The ADF feature has a capacity of 50 sheets which can be passed through the scanner before being sent to the printer when the unit is acting in photocopier mode.
Tucked away, out of sight, at the rear of the Officejet Pro are ports for fax, Ethernet and USB plus mains power. There is also a slot into which you can insert a Duplex module for when you need the double-sided print facility.
Setting up this product is fairly straightforward although I did encounter one problem which I will return to shortly. Appropriate videos can be displayed on the control panel screen to help with various tasks. After inserting the four inkjet cartridges (a check is made to ensure they are genuine products) and some paper, a calibration process will be carried out and a text sheet printed. This process takes approximately three minutes.
When adding the Officejet to an established network you can opt for a wired or wireless connection with the latter supporting WPS for automatic network linking. Unfortunately, despite three attempts, I was unable to establish a link using WPS. However a wireless link was quickly created with the manual approach which required the entry of the network password.
A software CD provides drivers for print, fax and scan facilities. You also have access to utilities dealing with product improvement, updates, IRIS OCR and Help. A wizard will lead you through the process of setting up the fax plus registering and activating the unit. The fax facility supports auto redial, delayed sending, message forwarding and has a 100-page memory. Capable of sending faxes at 4 seconds per page, monochrome faxes have a resolution of 300 x 300 dpi with colour faxes at 200 x 200 dpi.
The Officejet’s supplied print driver offers a range of options including Draft, Normal and Best print quality. Depending upon the choice of quality, other options, including Duplex, Fast/Economy and either borderless or bordered photo printing are made available for a particular print run.
When printing a basic 101-word document with the three print qualities, the results are shown in the following table.
| Draft | 28ppm |
|---|---|
| Normal | 25ppm |
| Best | 10ppm |
While Draft quality would be fine for internal use, there was a distinct darkening of print with both Normal and Best settings with the latter approaching laser quality.
With the Duplex option turned on, a 10-page (5550-word) document was printed on five pages in 58 seconds. Fed through the ADF, five pages were photocopied in 37 seconds. A single full-colour A4 pages was scanned and printed in 14 seconds using the 24-bit scanner with a resolution of 1200 x 1200 dpi.
As well as ordinary documents, the Officejet Pro can produce photographic images from content stored on a computer or attached flash stick. It was noticeable that the print speed was faster when images were sourced direct from on a computer. The following table shows the timings for A4 and 10 x 15cm images.
| Stored on Computer | Stored on Flash Stick | |
|---|---|---|
| A4 | 2 min 2 seconds | 2 min 21 seconds |
| 10 x 15cm | 29 seconds | 56 seconds |
Replacement high yield inkjet cartridges are priced at £25 for black and £18 for each colour. There is also a value pack, containing the three colours, priced at £52.
Apart from the problem I had with WPS, this product performance was of a reasonable high standard. It produced good quality printing at a reasonable speed with a range of options. Check out the Ebuyer website for more details and special offers.
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