HP 1100D Review

HP 1100D

MSRP $167.95

Score Details

“The HP 1100d is a great product and would fit the bill perfectly for a small business environment.”

Pros

• Fast print speed
• individual ink cartridges

Cons

• Expensive ink cartridges
• mediocre documentation

Summary

The HP 1100d is a great product and would fit the bill perfectly for a small business environment. Its ability to handle text, graphics and photos with speed and quality also make a nice fit into the home office market.  Medium to large businesses would find it less than desirable when compared to color laser printers.  While setup of the printer was easy as an experienced user, the inexperienced may have difficulty if the setup poster and getting started guide isn’t enough as there is little troubleshooting information or day-to-day usage information provided.  To keep things in perspective, it is a $199 printer and at that price has a ton of features.

Introduction

The HP Business Inkjet 1100d printer offers great performance and exceptional color and black-and-white print quality for high-productivity individuals.  The 1100d is packed with a host of cost-saving features, including a low purchase price, automatic two-sided printing, modular ink-delivery system, and a user-friendly design.  These features allow budget minded small businesses or home offices to add color to their documents without sacrificing speed.

Performance Enhancements

HP has done their homework on the 1100d as it incorporates several performance enhancements.

• High Performance Architecture – Enhanced driver language (faster print speeds, enhanced print quality, improved network performance).
• Faster Carriage Motor – Up to 60 inches per second (ips).
• Larger Printheads – Four individual ink cartridges deliver up to 8 drops of ink in a single dot.
• Draft Mode Improvements – Improvements in the way the printer handles paper significantly reduces paper release time.
• Software and Firmware modifications
• Laser-quality speed – LQ speed of up to 4 pages-per-minute (ppm) black and color.  Prints as fast as entry-level color laser printer with comparable print quality.
• Modular Ink Delivery System – Four individual printheads as well as individual ink cartridges for black, magenta, cyan and yellow inks.

Design

The 1100d has a typical inkjet printer footprint at 19.48 W x 17.95 D x 8.46 H (inches) and weighs in at roughly 20 pounds.  The control panel is well laid out and clearly labeled.  It features out-of-ink indicators and three buttons: power, print-cancel, and resume.  The standard paper tray holds 150 sheets and is expandable to 400 sheets with

an optional 250 sheet tray.  The output tray can handle 80 sheets and has a convenient envelope slot.  The 1100d has two opening compartments, one over the printing area and one that covers the ink cartridges and printheads.  One feature we would have liked to see was a window over the printing area.  My personal preference is to take the occasional peek at the progress of the print.  The labels that adorn the underside of these doors are a nice touch.  The sticker underneath the print area door provides a legend for the different situations that may occur such as jammed paper, empty ink, almost empty ink, etc.  The sticker beneath the ink cartridge door provides graphical instruction on proper installation of the cartridges as well as the HP code numbers for the different cartridges.  This is very convenient if you’ve misplaced the manual or have already tossed the empty cartridges.

Setup

The HP 1100d was extremely easy to setup.  Install the included driver, plug-in the power cord, plug-in the USB or parallel cable, and you’re finished.  The setup poster is useful as it points out where all the shipping tape is located and the correct orientation of the 4 printheads and 4 ink cartridges.  A separate insert is included to provide more detail on how the locking mechanism for the ink cartridges works.  If you require further documentation from HP regarding usage or troubleshooting you’ll need to head the HP support website as the supplied documentation does not provide that.

Testing

All tests were timed with a stopwatch.  Timing started when the click-to-print button was clicked and stopped when printing was complete and the completed document on the output tray.

The first round of tests for the 1100d were to time the printing of a typical 10-page MS Word document (black text, no graphics).  We used typical office inkjet printer paper.

MS Word Test 10 Page document results:

You may notice something peculiar about the fast normal and normal times – the normal print quality is faster.  We redid this test 3 times using the same document and the elapsed times (for fast normal and normal) were all within 1 to 2 seconds of what’s reported here.  We’re not sure what to attribute this to so perhaps HP can provide some insight.

The 1100d is very fast in all modes.  Quality ranged from good to excellent depending on the mode selected and all modes present crisp black text with no fading, or hollow spots.

Second round testing involved printing a 12-page PDF document that contains images, graphics and color/black text provided by HP as a sample document.

Adobe PDF 12 page graphics/text document:

The draft quality in this round of testing was truly draft.  The images all had slight banding evident.  Fast normal mode presented better graphics with richer colors and the text in both modes was crisp and sharp.  The difference in the normal and best modes is best seen in the quality of complex graphics.  The color in best mode was richer and contrast and saturation seemed better, other wise they were very comparable.

Third round testing involved printing of color photos. HP included a Sample photo CD that contained 8×11 images that were used in this test.  Print media was HP Premium Photo Glossy Paper.

Photo Printing:

We were quite surprised at how well the 1100d handled photo printing.  The quality was right on but the elapsed time was very good.  The best of both worlds!  All edges were crisp and smooth with no jaggedness and there was no evidence of ink blurriness or bleed.  We asked several other people to examine the print for quality and color and all expressed favorable reviews.  The print was viewed under incandescent and fluorescent lighting with no visible change of quality.

Phase two of three-round testing involved printing a family photo on 8×11 print media.  Print media was HP Premium Photo Glossy Paper.

Photo Printing:

Again, the 1100d performed admirably.  The print ejected in just over 3 minutes and the quality was very nice.  As in the above test, no imperfections we found and it is indeed suitable for framing.

Printer Supplies

Putting the 1100d through all these tests consumed a lot of paper.  Approximately 150-200 pages of office type paper and about 12 sheets of premium photo paper were used in this test and we were curious to see how the ink cartridges had held up.  A neat feature that HP has included is myPrintMileage.  This consists of a program that runs in the background and monitors your printer usage information, such as ink and media usage patterns, and then autosends this to the myPrintMileage website.  This can help you plan your purchase of supplies.  The myPrintMileage consists of two parts:

– myPrintMileage website

– myPrintMileage AutoSend

From the myPrintMileage website, you can find out the following information about your printer:

– The amount of ink that has been used. myPrintMileage forecasts how many print cartridges you might use in one year.

– Whether you use more black or color ink.

– The average quantity of media you use per month for each media type.

– The number of pages that have been printed and the estimated number of pages that can be printed with the amount of ink remaining.

This utility will be enabled on your system if you accept the terms in the disclaimer on the software installation screen.  For those with privacy concerns, the ability to turn AutoSend off is available as well.

The first screen from the website shows the following:

Clicking on analysis corner displays the following:

As you can see, this information can come in quite handy when budgeting for office expenses.

Note:

These figures are based on paper and ink usage from performing two HP printer reviews and miscellaneous document printing from our offices.

If you’re concerned with sharing information with HP through myPrintMileage you can always check your ink levels locally.

Costs of printing

The printheads provided with the printer yield 24,000 pages but should you ever need to replace them current list is at $39.99 apiece.  That’s $159.96 for all four.

The ink cartridges will yield approximately 1750 pages (per HP) and cost $38.99 for each of the black, cyan, magenta and yellow cartridges.  That’s $155.96 come refill time.

Support

The 1100d comes standard with a one-year, return-to-HP, limited hardware warranty, which includes 24-hour, 7-days-a-week phone support.  In addition, upgraded service and support options are available, including installation and maintenance support and extended and on-site warranties.

The HP Customer Care program (http://www.hp.com/go/support) provides excellent support as well.  It provides customers with free, one-stop access to technical support.

Conclusion

The HP 1100d is a great product and would fit the bill perfectly for a small business environment. Its ability to handle text, graphics and photos with speed and quality also make a nice fit into the home office market.  Medium to large businesses would find it less than desirable when compared to color laser printers.  While setup of the printer was easy as an experienced user, the inexperienced may have difficulty if the setup poster and getting started guide isn’t enough as there is little troubleshooting information or day-to-day usage information provided.  To keep things in perspective, it is a $199 printer and at that price has a ton of features.