Lovely sharp colour photo printing ideal for newsletters
Disadvantages:
Sometimes multiple page faxes get stuck going out
Recommend to potential buyers:
yes
Full review
The HP Officejet 7310 is an all-in-one colour printer, scanner, copier and fax machine. With built in networking capabilities so that multiple users can access it's a pretty good all rounder. I'd say it's primarily best for office use where you have multiple users sharing the same machine for colour printing, faxing and scanning needs.
It's advertised by HP themselves as being designed for "small and micro business users who need to share high performance duplex print, fax, scan and copy tools over a wired network of up to five users, with the ability to print remotely via the Internet" but we use it in a networked office of up to 20 users and we've never had any problems with that many people having the ability to print to it. Not that we would all print at the same time as we have a couple of networked monochrome laser printers available too but the 7310 serves well our colour printing needs within our office.
DAY TO DAY USE
I use the 7310 to print off internal new briefings and random colour copies. This is not a heavy duty machine for bulk printing but I do use it sporadically for other things like reports, spreadsheet, graphs, signs for the office, notices for displaying on the notice board in the office and the odd colour photograph. I can't complain about the quality of colour printing and have to admit to being most impressed by the quality of printing when it comes to colour photographs; far better than my Epson C48 at home. Then again, the 7310 costs 6 times as much so I would definitely expect better quality as well as the fact that it's made by HP -who I've always had faith in when it comes to printers! Until I'd used this particular all in one, I'd never experienced a HP colour printer and I'm glad to say my faith wasn't shattered in HP. I recently had to copy an A4 fire evacuation notice in colour to put up in our office as we needed two signs and I couldn't be bothered to order and pay for a new one and I was amazed at the fact that I could barely tell the difference between the original and the copy.
I've printed newsletters with photos of staff and was most pleasantly surprised at the quality and clarity of the end product. They were really crystal clear! By the time I've sent a page to print and walked across the office, my document is already printed or practically finished. I've never experienced any paper jams when using the print or copy feature and this is important to me, I don't want a machine which is constantly jamming and then having to open it up to pull out bits of paper stuck in rollers, etc. I really like the fact that you can print excellent quality borderless photos to A4 size.
The 7310 is so easy to operate it's almost child's play (keep children away though, it's too tempting for them to press the multitude of buttons)! To make a black and white copy, put your document on the glass and press black or colour under "start copy". The two sided copy option is fairly easy to use too; it's just slightly fiddly compared to some bigger laser photocopiers. It also has a 6.4cm LCD so you can see what you've pressed and what the machine is doing at any time. It's actually quite user-friendly compared to other all-in-ones I've come across to date.
It's just as easy to send faxes; put the pages you want to fax face down in the external top tray ensuring there are no staples in any of the pages (come on, how many of you have sent faxes or made photocopies through a feeder tray forgetting to remove staples?), type in the number you want to fax to and press black or colour under "start fax". I'd say it was safest to go for black when sending faxes unless you know for a fact that the recipient has a colour fax machine too, otherwise you'll end up letting 10 or so pages going through and the fax will fail telling you that the recipient only has facilities for black and white fax printing! Believe me, I've done this a few times by accident, you'd do well to heed my warning and save yourself precious time! Oh and one rather nice feature with the fax option is that you can store over 100 fax numbers to use! The auto redial feature is quite handy if your recipients fax machine is busy, you can walk away and it will try again a few times till it goes through (it's up to you to set how many times you want it to redial if engaged).
One thing that quite bugs me about sending faxes is when you're sending more than 10 or so pages. About 50% of the time some of the pages get sucked in together and this is really quite annoying. The only way I've managed to get around this is to physically stand there and make sure the pages feed in one at a time, which in my mind, defeats the object of being able to do multi-page faxing. Saying that, I've actually yet to come across a fax machine in an office where multiple pages don't get stuck from time to time. I'd have to admit that the scanning feature is the one I've least used on the 7310 as I have a scanner on my desk which I use most of the time. When I have used the scanning feature on the 7310 I found it fairly easy to use. My desktop Canon scanner is much easier for me personally as it's the one I use almost on a daily basis and its right next to me.
One thing I didn't want to not mention is that the 7310 is a fairly quiet machine. It is rather far away from me in this office but even when I send multiple pages and am standing by the machine waiting for them to finish printing; I am not bothered by any excessive noise. It's a fairly polite machine in terms of not being noisy to disturb the harmony of the office!
CARTRIDGES
One thing to seriously consider when buying an all in one with colour capabilities is cartridge life. You can get standard black cartridges for this machine which will print up to 450 pages (based on 5% page coverage in normal mode) or the higher spec cartridge which will give you 800 pages. Colour cartridges will give you 260 and 450 pages respectively for standard and higher spec based on an average coverage of 15% of your page. Cartridge prices vary so do shop around - from about $30 - $40. I'd also mention that it couldn't be easier to change the cartridges on the 7310. An operation which is nowhere near as messy and fiddly as can be with some inkjet printers!
WHAT'S IN THE BOX?
When you buy the 7310 you get the all-in-one machine in the box as well as black and colour cartridges to start you off, imaging software, reference guide, power supply and cord and Ethernet cable as well as a 2-sided printing accessory. It comes with a 1 year limited hardware warranty.
TECHNICAL SPECS (skip to rating section if you don't need to know the techie bits)
The 7310 uses HP Thermal Inkjet print technology - basically this means it's more cost effective, easier to use, higher quality, more flexible, faster and more reliable to use than other inkjet printers. It has a built in 802.3 Ethernet for easy reliable office networking and the ability to print remotely via the internet using HP Instant Share. The standard memory that comes with the machine is 96Mb and this is also the maximum memory. The 7310 is compatible with MS Windows 98, 98 SE, 2000 Professional, ME, XP, Windows Vista and Mac OS v9.1. Minimum requirements are basically Intel Pentium II or Celeron processors with at least 128Mb RAM
It weighs in at just below 12 kilos and is about 55cm wide, 23cm deep and 44cm high and consumes up to a maximum of 75w during use. The 7310 prints up 30ppm (pages per minute) for mono printing (i.e. just using black ink) and up to 20ppm for colour printing. The standard colour copy resolution for this machine is 4800 x 1200dpi (dots per inch) with black printing at 600 x 1200pdi. For black and white copying you can get up to 30cpm (copies per minute) and colour up to 20cpm. You have the option to reduce or enlarge when copying too. All buttons are very clearly marked and it's pretty difficult to misunderstand what any of the buttons or options mean! The auto-feeder tray holds up to 50 sheets for copying or faxing and the paper tray holds up to 150 sheets.
It has an automatic paper type sensor which is really handy when using plain or photo paper and an indicator which tells you when the ink is low. You can even print via card slots such as from your Bluetooth camera phone.
This all in one uses a 33.6k fax modem and faxes up to a resolution of 300 x 300dpi and has a memory of up to 150 A4 pages (I sincerely hope I never have to send a fax THAT big)!
When scanning the 7310 uses flatbed scanning (i.e. you lay your document to be scanned flat and face down on the screen) and the depth is 48 bit colour with an optical scanner resolution of 2400 x 4800dpi (which is quite detailed scanning).
RATING
Printing - for my colour and black and white printing needs the 7310 gets a strong 9 out of 10. Personally I prefer to use the laser printer for black and white printing. Colour printing itself is pretty much perfect on this printer!
Scanning - not having used this feature too much I'd still give the scanning option a strong 7 out of 10. Not as good and convenient as my Canon scanner but that's mostly because it's sat on MY desk and easiest to access.
Copying - a strong 9.5 out of 10 for this feature; for both black and white and colour copying. I really can't fault this feature at all apart from being a tad fiddly to make double sided copies.
Faxing - for this feature I can't rate it more than 7 out of 10 - mostly due to it having got stuck sending multiple pages a few times for me. It's not really a big issue as in this day and age we tend to scan documents and email more than faxing them, but when you do need to fax a largish document, the fact that it gets stuck some of the time can be rather annoying.
OVERALL
Overall I'm giving the HP Officejet 7310 a strong 8.5 out of 10 as I've used it now for 2 years with no real problems. As I use it mostly for colour newsletters and things like that; I'm perfectly happy with the quality of output for those items so I'm happy to recommend this for any small business which has colour printing and copying needs for multiple users. At the $600 price range it might be slightly expensive for the average home user to purchase and use - it really is more of a machine for networked users to best take advantage of! Another thing which is really impressive is how long the cartridges last. It really has been rather irksome for me in the past about how often you have to change cartridges in deskjet printers. This is not so with this machine; the cartridges really do give you their all!
More details
Range of Features
Excellent
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