First Look: HP OfficeJet Pro K8600

 

Gallery

Posted on 18 Apr 2008 at 18:14

HP's latest business inkjet has lower print costs than even the most economical colour lasers. Office inkjets have seen recent improvements in quality, cost, and speed - allowing them to compete with laser printers in the small and medium business markets.

One of the main selling points of the latest business inkjets is their low running costs. HP seems to have lived up to all expectations with the K8600's high yield print costs of just 1p per page of mono A4, and just over 3.1p for a tri-colour page. That's a total page cost of 4.2p, far cheaper than even most workgroup colour lasers.

HP claims A4 print speeds of up to 35ppm for mono and 34ppm for colour prints in draft mode, with high quality print speeds of 13 and 10 pages per minute respectively. We tested these claims using our own real-world print tests, which are timed from the moment we start the print on our test PC.

We got print speeds of 17.6ppm in our 24 page draft quality text print test, which is well below what HP quoted, but our draft prints looked good enough to use for most day to day tasks. Normal quality prints weren't quite laser sharp, but were a shade darker than draft. A presentation quality greyscale print looked good and printed in just under a minute.

This printer is designed to handle anything most businesses are likely to do in-house, from everyday document printing to producing glossy brochures. It has a 250 sheet paper tray, can take media types including transparency sheets and photo paper, and has a maximum monthly duty cycle of 6250 A4 pages. Network and duplex versions of the printer will also be available.

We'll be testing to see if HP's claims of laser-like speed and quality match the K8600's ultra-low print costs. The printer is due out on March 1st at around £299 for the basic model, and you'll be able to read the results of our full tests in Shopper 245.

Author: Kat Orphanides