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HP Officejet 5740 review

HP officejet 5740
Our Rating :
Price when reviewed : £79
inc VAT

The Officejet 5740 shows that looks alone don't make a good small office MFP

HP’s Officejet 5740 is essentially the great looking Envy 5640 inkjet multifunction peripheral (MFP) with a fax modem and a compact, 25-sheet automatic document feeder (ADF). It’s not quite as sleek, but has similar colour touchscreen controls and the same excellent build quality: the scanner tilts up on heavily-damped hinges to grant access to the ink cartridges, while the USB and SD card slots are hidden behind a neat rotating door.

We’re not a fan of captive paper input trays positioned in the printer base, but it’s not too hard to load the 125-sheet one found here. It also includes a second tray for 6×4″ photo paper that automatically engages when needed. Printed pages collect in an output tray which extends automatically, although you need to push it in yourself to close it again. Automatic double-sided (duplex) printing is standard.

Using HP's All-in-One Remote Android app to control the Officejet 5740

^ HP’s iOS and Android apps offer a better experience than its PC driver software

Touchscreens on printers have come a long way, and the system used here is superb. The sharp colour display is perfectly responsive, controlling an intuitive menu system that uses a mix of tap, drag and swipe gestures to control web features as well as core functions. The feature set isn’t exhaustive, however, as you can’t scan to or print from cloud storage services.

Using the web admin interface to configure the Officejet 5740

^ Use the printer’s web admin interface to monitor supplies or configure web features

The Officejet 5740 looks and sounds promising, but unfortunately it’s disappointing to use. It’s not an especially fast text printer, delivering our letter test at 11 pages per minute (ppm). Colour prints were more competitive, with our complex graphics document arriving at a healthy 7.7ppm. The scanner wasn’t particularly fast, needing 23 seconds to capture an A4 page at 300 dots-per-inch (dpi). The glacial ADF slowed things down further; a 10-page photocopy took two minutes and 22 seconds in black, and in colour the job needed a further two minutes.

HP's print driver settings, Officejet 5740

^ HP’s print driver is a bit too simple for our tastes, but it’s fine for everyday jobs

Advanced print settings, Officejet 5740

^ You need the advanced settings to print photos at the maximum dots per inch setting

It’s hard to fault the quality of prints and photocopies on plain paper, and its photos aren’t bad either. Unfortunately we can’t say the same for its scans, which are fine at low resolutions, but seemed processed and artificial at 600dpi. This is compounded by HP’s over-simplified scan software which, among other things, doesn’t offer auto-exposure. As with the Envy 5640, we couldn’t complete our 150dpi scan as the resolution isn’t available, and our test scan at 1,200dpi came out as a completely black image.

HP's TWAIN scan interface, Officejet 5740

^ We’re bored with complaining about HP’s over-simplified TWAIN scan interface

After the Envy 5640, the Officejet 5740 became the second printer ever to run out of ink during our standard tests – it’s a good job it’s compatible with HP’s Instant Ink, where the printer itself orders more cartridges as needed. While it ships with cartridges rated for 200 black and 165 colour pages, the former expired with little warning after 50 pages of text, 34 pages of text and graphics, 22 black and colour photocopies and two A4 photos.

Extra large replacements have three times the capacity and equate to running costs of around 7.3p per page. That’s reasonable, but it’s not low enough to offset patchy performance elsewhere. We’d spend more on the Epson Workforce WF-3520DWF. If that doesn’t suit your needs either then check our reguarly-updated Best Printers and Buying Guide.

Hardware
TechnologyThermal inkjet
Maximum print resolution4,800×1,200dpi
Maximum optical scan resolution (output bit depth)1,200×1,200dpi
Number of colours (cartridges)4 (2)
Maximum number of colours (cartridges)4 (2)
Quoted photo durability (source)
Standard interfacesUSB, Ethernet, 802.11b/g/n wireless
Optional interfacesNone
Dimensions (HxWxD)193x452x410mm
Weight7.7kg
Duty cycle (pages per month)1,000 (maximum), 300-400 recommended
Paper handling
Maximum paper sizeA4/legal
Maximum paper weight250gsm
Standard paper trays (capacity)2 (140)
Maximum paper trays (capacity)2 (140)
DuplexYes
3525
Photo features
Borderless printingA4
Direct (PC-less) printingUSB, SDXC
Memory card supportSDXC
Supported operating systemsWindows Vista or later, Mac OS X 10.7 or later, Android, iOS
Other features6.75cm colour touchscreen
Buying information
WarrantyOne year RTB
Price£79 inc VAT
Consumable parts and prices62XL black ink 600 pages (ISO/IEC 24712) £17, 62XL tricolour ink 415 pages (ISO/IEC 24712) £19
Quoted life of supplied black cartridge(s)200 pages (ISO/IEC 24712)
Quoted life of supplied colour cartridge(s)165 pages (ISO/IEC 24712)
Cost per ISO/IEC 24712 A4 page inc VAT7.3p
Cost per ISO/IEC 24712 A4 page inc VAT (colour part)4.5p
Cost per ISO/IEC 24712 A4 page inc VAT (mono part)2.8p
Supplierwww.hp.co.uk
Detailswww.hp.co.uk
Part codeB9S79A