A worthy nominee printer for a starter?

For those who are frustrated at the quality of the low cost printers, you know how painful it is to really pay for extra high ink prices or that you have to swap cartridges whenever you need to use color or black. But no more of the sacrifices with the HP DeskJet 825c, since it's better than many of the low cost printers. Although the DeskJet 825c looks similar to the DeskJet 845c, but the 825c is essentially a stripped down version of the 845c.

Print Quality

The printer basically retains the same design as its cousin, the DeskJet 840 series, but remember, this is basically a stripped down version of the 840 series. Since it's the stripped down printer, it means the printer is slower and it's lesser equipped than its 845c sibling as a result of the price cut. But for the print quality, it's better than expected for a printer at this price. I would of thought that the photos would turn out lifeless and dull, but because of the HP quality in the printers alone, I knew that I can count on their print quality every time I use it, from the moment of my first printout to the final printout before replacement. With a maximum of 600x1200 dpi on a photo printout, I can really see a major difference between other budget printers in their printouts. The blacks on the DeskJet 825c we're smooth, legible and smear free. The colors we’re bright and very appealing, what I've expected from an HP printer. With the PhotoRET 2 technology inherited from the 840 series printers, it really makes photos a lot better than most printers offer for their color photos.

Media Handling

For paper handling, the printer features a 100-sheet tray, allowing me to use up to a legal sized sheet and the tray extends to make loading paper easy. Plus, the dedicated envelope feeder allows me to print envelopes without emptying the main paper tray, a convenience. The feeding mechanism is unlike most printers that are offered on the market as it takes the paper into the back of the printer, loop it out and then print it. What’s great about the design of the feeding mechanism is that it automatically sorts the pages for you and the printouts are in the correct order, so you don't have to find where your first page is or even your 3rd page is and resorting them manually. Plus, with the design of the mechanism is that it prevents dust build up in the rollers, which can really wear out the rollers quickly.

Speed and others

The speed of the printer is not very appealing, but it is acceptable for a budget printer though with a print speed of up to 6.5 pages a minute (with the optional black cartridge) and up to 4.5 color pages a minute (with the optional black cartridge). Don't really be fooled by those figures as it only applies when you’re using the ink saving mode, which allows you to use slightly less ink on the printout, ideal for preliminary drafts. But for most of us, we would like to use the normal quality printout mode, which the printer can churn out up to 4.7 pages a minute in black and up to 3.4 pages per minute in color.

Despite these print figures in a budget printer, the printer really prints quietly, unlike the Canons and some Epson printers, which tend to make a dot matrix like noise. This is great, because I can really start a conversation with my colleagues while the printer is doing its job.

With the 2MB buffer featured in the printer, it allows the printer to really depend less on the computer's memory and it allows the user to tackle some of the most complex printouts like a high quality photo that you’ve snapped out of your digital camera for example. With a duty cycle of 1000 pages, it allows users to really printout about 30 pages a day on average without any major breakdown.

With ink cartridge changes, it's easy as the cartridges automatically slide out when you open lid and it does it quickly, unlike Canon printers that you have to wait for that and for the Epson, it requires you to press a button before you can change the cartridge.

Cons

There isn't a whole lot of cons, but the major ones include basement dweller support and warranty and the ink prices. With the warranty and support limited to just 90 days, plus they even charge you for that, it really makes me avoid this printer as much as possible. But do purchase extended warranties from the retail if available though. That is what you really get for a budget printer, well it isn't really true though with Epson or Canon though. This is only a result of the company trying to cut down on prices on their products.

The ink prices are just horrendous, it costs up to $30 for a black cartridge and $33 for a color cartridge, it really adds up to the expense of operating a budget printer.

Even though at a price of $80, you have to buy the black cartridge separately in-order to achieve a higher printing speed and make your blacks less brownish. But it's really worth it for the quality printouts though.

However for compatibility, it's limited to USB, which means that your parallel port could be wasted and for Windows 95/NT 4.0 or below, it means that this printer is not compatible for computers using those operating systems. Other than that it's much faster to use USB compared to the parallel though.

Conclusion

In conclusion, it the printer includes a user guide and set up poster to really make it easy for starters to install the printer. But don't expect any software bundle other than the printer drivers themselves. But for those who aren't concerned about the rather short warranty and toll support, by all means go for the printer.