HP DeskJet 6940 review

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Verdict:

HP's DeskJet 6940 is a smart and fast printer. It's cheap to run and comes with high-yield black and colour cartridges that will print plenty of pages before you need replacements. The PIXMA iP4300 is better if you don't need an Ethernet connection, but the 6940 is great value if you do.

Review Date: 20 Oct 2006

Price when reviewed: inc VAT

Reviewed By: Simon Handby

Our Rating 5 stars out of 5

Review
Specs

HP's DeskJet 6940 is the most expensive printer in this test, but it's the only one with a wired network port.

This makes it one of the cheapest ways to share a printer between several users. For details of other ways to share a printer, see this month's Upgrade Workshop on page 170.

The 6940 looks like a squarer version of the 5940. Its paper trays don't fold up in the same way, but they feel more substantial. It has a second single-sheet paper feed. This is handy for envelopes and small sheets of photo paper, but not as useful as the motorised tray found on the Photosmart D7360, reviewed on page 28.

HP supplies the 6940 with an Ethernet cable. You can connect this directly to a free port on your home network's router or just use a USB connection if you don't have one. The 6940's installer offers only a 450MB Full installation or a 200MB Express setup, but it did find the printer over our network and completed the installation without problems.

HP says the 6940 can print up to 36 pages of draft text per minute. It didn't get anywhere near that figure in our tests, but at 23.1ppm it's still one of the fastest inkjets we've seen. Its fast-moving print heads and paper feed mechanism make it sound like an excitable sniffer dog, but it leaves printed pages tidily stacked in the output tray.

At its Fast Normal setting, text was less crisp than from the DeskJet 5940. We used its Normal setting to print our formal letter and colour document tests. Though still quite fast, it lagged behind the 5940 and Canon's PIXMA iP4300 in both. It was quicker than the 5940 when printing our photo tests, producing near-identical results.

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