HP OfficeJet 100 Mobile Printer

We have a computer and a laptop in our household and my husband who works for himself also has a laptop for his business work. We needed a new printer after the old one packed in and we decided on the HP officejet 100. This is a small, portable printer that is really easy to set up store away. We did not want a printer permanently set up next to the computer as most of our pictures and documents are on the laptop or my husband’s laptop. This printer is easy to store away and set up with whatever piece of equipment you want, it even has Bluetooth so you can connect and print via a smart phone.

COST

The printer was bought from PC World for £199.00. It was a very extravagant purchase but we cannot cope without a printer as my husband has to print spreadsheets and invoices out for his work.

In relation to the print cartridges, they can be bought from between £19 - £23.00. The black cartridge is cheaper than the colour one but both are equally easy to find in stores and widely available online. HP recommends that you will get 400 sheets out of the black cartridge and 330 out of the colour ones. The cost of a colour sheet is broken down to a figure of 3.5p and a black one for 3p. I think these are more than reasonable numbers.

LET’S TAKE A LOOK AT THE MACHINE...

First of all I should point out that this is not a heavy duty printer, it is not designed to be used ferociously in an office and continually pumping out documents. It is designed for occasionally use and designed to portable so that you can print wherever you like, you do not need a plug socket thanks to the built in battery. The printer is small and measures 84x348x175mm. The printer weighs 2.5KG and it is black and grey and is made from smooth curved plastic. The case feels a bit cheap considering it cost 200 pounds to buy and the lid feels like it needs to be treated with care. The printer can take 50 sheets of A4 at once, which is not much but we never leave buckets of paper in the machine anyway. We always close the lid after use and store it a way, it is not portable if you have paper loaded in the tray. As I have made note of above, the printer comes with a lithium battery so you can transport the printer and use it without mains. This is great feature and really makes the printer portable and easy to use. The battery slots into the back and you charge it up by plugging it into the mains supply, the battery has yet to let us down and you get a good few hours out of the battery before it needs charging. We tend to charge it up quite a lot though, if we use it with the computer there is an abundance of sockets so it is just as easy to plug it in. When we use it with the laptop we will more than likely use the battery. The printer can connect via USB or Bluetooth to your computer or smart phones. I think that a portable printer should really have WIFI to completely make the printer wireless but never mind. The printer will attach to most USB devices and certain cameras can be connected this way if they support PictBridge printing. There is also a lack of SD card slots unlike most new printers that have these as standard; this model does not have it. A bit of a disappointment to us as it would have been much easier to be able to insert the card and print directly from here. The layout of the printer is simple and uncomplicated and the controls are easy to navigate around and there is no fancy colour screen to confuse things! The inkjet cartridges are easy to load and click into place under the casing. The printer takes two cartridges black and colour. I much prefer it when printers need a separate black as this always needs replacing first and it is a pain when you have to replace a whole cartridge because one colour has run out.

TELL ME ABOUT THE PRINT QUALITY

This printer was the most easy, uncomplicated piece of equipment to set up and right from the beginning we had perfectly printed documents and photographs. If we are talking about black word documents then the printer is exceptionally quick at printing these and it takes hardly any time at all. The documents are printed crisply, the ink is dry and there is no smudging or any unwanted lines. The words are crisp and clear and of a very high standard. In regards to pictures and photographs, we were really impressed with the printer and we did not expect it to print to the high standard it did. We saw a couple of test images in the store when we bought it but I always think they alter them in some way to make them look more impressive. The colours and the clarity of images are wonderful. The colours are rich, true to life and have depth. Not one of our pictures came out too dark or had a hue about them. They are of an outstanding quality that surpassed our expectations and the image we saw on screen when deciding to print looked even better on paper. We have dabbled with different photo papers and the best results have been on photograph paper. They have been that impressive that we have given some prints out to my daughter when we have taken some great pictures of the children. The only downside to the photograph paper is that it takes quite a while and sometimes it even sounds like it is having a little break in the middle of printing! You think it has finished or the paper has got stuck and then it starts again. This happens more frequently when using the battery power alone and printing takes longer when using the battery for some reason. There is only a marginal difference though in timings and is not a major concern. Photographs on photo paper need to be left for a few minutes as the ink appears to be a little wet at first. I believe that this is down to how porous the paper is though.

SO WILL I RECOMMEND IT..

Most certainly, I will recommend the printer. I find it so easy to use and it connects and starts to print really quickly. It does not seem as noisy as other machines and seems to seamlessly take the paper and print the required document. I like the fact that the printer is small and portable as it allows us to discretely store it away rather than having ugly pieces of equipment on show. The printer seems to be good value for money and we are pleased with how long the ink cartridges are lasting us. We went through the first two cartridges really quick as we experimented with different styles, printing and trying various different papers. Now we have got over the novelty of having a new printer we are being a bit more conservative with what we print and making the cartridges last longer. If I had to list the negative aspects to the machine, it would be that it feels quite flimsy and tends to get a little bit hot when we print photographs as it takes quite a while. This means that I am reluctant to store it away immediately after use and prefer to let it cool. This is a minor point though and consumers should not be put off, the flimsy design has yet to cause me any problems and the overheating does not impact on the quality of the prints once printed.