HP DeskJet 695C review

One of the most popular consumer inkjet printers ever has finally come to the end of its life.

The systematic revamp of the DeskJet range, which has already seen the 890C replaced with the excellent 880C, has now pushed the 690C into retirement.

Or has it? While its replacement, the 695C, looks different, with a more subtly sculpted and rounded case than before, under the skin it's actually the same, two year-old printer. The maximum resolution remains at 600x600dpi for black and white prints, and 600x300dpi for colour; it still uses a two cartridge printing system, one black, one CMY colour; and, like the 690C (or the Canon BJC-2000 also reviewed this issue), the 695C can still be turned into a photo printer using an optional photo cartridge.

But don't dismiss the 695C yet. These specifications aren't too far off today's pace, and HP have made one big change for the better: the price has dropped to just £109. So, given that the 695C is now one of the cheapest colour inkjets you can buy, is there life in the old boy yet?

Although it is bulky and fairly loud in operation, this printer bears all the hallmarks of HP build quality - a plus, considering how flimsy most inkjets in this price range are. The 695C feels well capable of taking some serious stick.

Like the rest of the HP DeskJet range, the 695C uses a flat paper input tray that sticks out of the front of the printer. This system means the paper stays perfectly flat, no matter how long it sits in the tray. However, it also means that the paper is pulled through a pretty tight, U-shaped path on its way through the printer. That said, I had no problems with the printer's paper handling with plain or stiffer, photographic media.

As soon as I'd got the 695C connected, and its driver software loaded - a painless enough procedure - I ran a few tests to see just how well, or badly, the printer had aged. On plain, 80gsm copier paper the results were encouraging. Using the 695C's default settings, I printed a five page, plain text document, which slid into the output tray in 2min 18s. It's not particularly nippy at 2.2ppm (pages per minute), but exactly the same speed as the Canon BJC-2000, and the text looks pretty good, the solid characters exhibiting only slightly jagged edges and very little ink bleed.

The cracks began to show when printing a more demanding document on plain paper - one that features charts, mastheads and simple graphics. Although the prints didn't exhibit the same serious level of ink bleed as the BJC-2000 on plain paper, there was a lot of banding and the 690C took much longer - 7min 11s for the page. As is the case with all inkjet printers, things improved significantly on coated paper: the banding disappeared, as did a small amount of ink-bleed, while colours became much more vibrant. But this also highlighted one of the 690C's main shortcomings: photographic images and, in particular, smoothly shaded graphics looked extremely dotty when sat next to the BJC-2000's output.

In its own right, the 695C is a competent colour printer, but even compared to the BJC-2000 its output on quality paper stock is nothing to write home about.

While it's dirt cheap, and costs significantly less to run than the BJC-2000, no amount of restyling or marketeering is going to disguise the fact that the technology behind the 695C is now a generation old.

Author: - Jonathan Bray