HP DeskJet 460c review

The choice of notebooks available for computing on the move is mind-boggling, but your options are more limited if you need a mobile printer.

HP's DeskJet 460c is in direct competition with Canon's PIXMA iP90, which we reviewed in What's New, Shopper June 2005. These two ranges offer the only widely available portable A4 inkjets.

The DeskJet 460 is available in three models, all of which can use a CompactFlash wireless networking card that costs £55 including VAT. The 460wbt comes with a Bluetooth card and a lithium-ion battery. The 460cb includes the battery but not Bluetooth, while the 460c has neither. These extras are available separately, though, so you can upgrade later if you find you need them.

This compact printer weighs only 2kg. HP's £45 battery snaps securely on to the printer's back and adds only 200g. There are slots for CompactFlash, SD and MMC cards. When not in use, the paper input tray folds across the top surface to protect the control buttons and ink compartment.

The DeskJet 460 is about 30mm taller than the PIXMA iP90, but its extra height enables it to use most of HP's standard ink range, including the grey and colour photo cartridges. This makes it cheaper to run. Using the standard-yield black cartridge each mono page costs 2.4p, around six times cheaper than the iP90. Colour pages from the high-yield three-colour cartridge work out at around 4.2p - over three times less than the Canon.

The 460's paper tray can just about take 50 sheets, so we were able to run our full-length print tests. It delivered our draft text document at 12 pages per minute (ppm) and our mixed colour test at 1.9ppm. Both times are better than those we recorded from the iP90, but at 4.1ppm the 460 was slower to print our formal letter test.

Print quality was as good as that from other HP inkjets we've tested. Text was solid black, with clean outlines at all but the fastest quality settings. On plain paper, colours were more solid and vibrant than those from the iP90, although there was a trace of banding at the Fast Normal and Fast Draft settings. Photos printed with the standard four-ink setup looked fine for most purposes, but when we used an optional three-colour cartridge they were very impressive for a portable inkjet.

The 460 is more expensive than a regular inkjet, but similar in price to its only real competitor. Although slightly bigger than the PIXMA iP90, it is a better printer and costs far less to run.