Fine print
PRINTER | £204 from Printerland www.snipca.com/49121
If HP’s OfficeJet 9012e looks familiar, it’s because a lot of the company’s inkjet printers now have a near-identical design, with the same boxy dimensions and grey/white colour scheme. There are differences if you delve into the specifications, however.
At its base there’s a 250-sheet paper cassette, while on top HP has placed a 35-sheet document feeder for the scanner. In fact this versatile machine can print, scan, copy and even fax – all controlled via a 6.9cm colour touchscreen that’s offset slightly to the left-hand side of the front panel and very easy to use.
During installation the printer lets you sign up to HP+ (which is free) and HP’s Instant Ink subscription service. HP+ requires you to keep your printer connected to the internet so HP can keep an eye on it, but provides automated updates, cloud-based printing from the smartphone app, an additional year’s warranty and six months of free ink in return. Opt out and you can still get two years’ cover with an online registration. As for Instant Ink, note that HP has just increased the price to £1.49 a month (Light plan) and £3.99 (Occasional).
If you choose the third option of simply buying replacement cartridges when they run out, it’ll cost 1p per mono page or 4.2p colour, which is pretty good for a cartridge-based inkjet. To get similar value out of the subscription service you’d need to be printing 300 pages a month (and mostly in colour), which would be a stretch for most of us.
The printer takes its time to get started on multi-page print jobs, but is fairly nifty once it does. It managed 21.1 pages per minute (ppm) of black text, and 6.9ppm of colour graphics. It’s relatively slow when printing double-sided, though – dropping to 3.4ppm for colour graphics.
It doesn’t hang around when copying, with mono pages taking nine seconds and colour 10 seconds. It rattled off 10 mono copies in 71 seconds, and took 79 seconds for colour. Copying 10 colour sheets on both sides took five minutes, however.
The printer isn’t great at reproducing photos, with its pigment inks drying to a dull, semi-matte finish. We were also disappointed with its slightly dark and dingy photocopies. Otherwise, it’s hard to fault, particularly on typical office jobs such as text and colour graphics.
SPECIFICATIONS
4-in-1 printer, copier, scanner and fax • Two-cartridge system • 250-sheet paper capacity • 4800x1200dpi print
