15 out of 15 people found this review helpful.
Excellent value, quality performance
Date of Review: Oct 11, 2006
The Bottom Line: Highly recommend to anyone looking for a four function machine without spending a lot of money.
After suffering through a year of using a loathsome Brother all-in-one product, I finally got wise and decided to check some epinions reviews before buying another printer. A little research brought me to try an HP this time around. Cost was a major consideration, which is why I chose the 4315. It lacks some of the bells and whistles of several other HP all-in-one models, but it has the features I need most, and came at under half the cost of the Brother oversized paperweight I purchased a year ago. I run a small business from home, and my wife telecommutes as a medical biller, so the fax machine is used pretty often, and a fair amount of printing is done as well. I'll break down my assessment of the four functions of this machine individually.
Printer - The print quality is very good for an inkjet printer. Perhaps my favorite part is that, compared to most printers I've used, this machine seems to go through less ink. It uses two print cartridges - one black and one color. This is refreshing for me, having gone from the ridiculous Brother ink setup, which uses 3 or 4 different cartridges for color. This machine also operates perfectly fine black and white if the color cartridge is empty. This may seem typical, but again, my Brother didn't do squat if only one cartridge was empty. This machine isn't going to win any speed contest - it's pretty slow, even for an inkjet - but for most regular home use, or even light office use, it is fine.
Fax - Works great. Never had an issue with it missing faxes. The only drawback I can think of is that, if you don't utilize a separate phone line for your fax, I don't believe this machine has the ability to differentiate between voice and fax calls. This means that you need to switch it to phone mode if you are not expecting a fax and fax mode if you are awaiting a fax. I normally disconnect the phone line from my machine when I'm not using it, so this isn't really an issue for me. I've never really gone through the manual to see if it is possible to make the fax determine voice or fax calls automatically. Like the printer, the fax send and receives pretty slowly, but is fine for most common uses.
Scanner - I've only used this function once, and it worked fine.
Copier - This isn't really a machine that you'd use for heavy duty copying, but it works fine if you are just needing to make a couple copies. It's too slow to copy dozens of pages, and it isn't very economical for the ink it would use.
