5940

The everyday printer that enjoys printing photos at bargain prices with supplies of ink and inkjet cartridges available at discount prices make this a cheap printer to own.

HP DeskJet 5940 Review

While it might not be part of the Photosmart collection, the DeskJet 5940 is one more strong all-rounder from HP. The truth is, HP claims you can print whatever you desire with the 5940, including borderless photos anywhere up to A4 size.

Getting the 5940 out of the box, we could instantly see that construction was obviously a step higher than just about anything else within the entry-level category. The top is made of brushed aluminium and the durable front-mounted paper trays flip upward in order to leave a minor footprint if the printer's not in use. There's also automatic cartridge alignment and a paper sensor, which finds what type of paper is inserted and will adjust print quality automatically.

The 5940 is not the most expensive entry-level printer. Admittedly, there's no TFT or card reader - just about all you get is a PictBridge port for printing pictures from a digital camera. Behind is a USB 2 port.

The majority of HP's Vivera cartridges happen to be supported. In the box, there is a 339 black along with a 343 tri-colour for PhotoREt III but swap the black for a 348 photo cartridge and you will then move up to PhotoREt IV.

We're quite familiar with this specific system, and yes it was not surprising to observe the 5940 generate some superb photos with the 348 installed. In fact, aside from faint banding, the 5940's 6 x 4in and A4 photomontage prints ended up being on a par with the Photosmart 8450's, a printer that costs more than double. Meaning prints revealed authentic skin tones, well-saturated colours as well as outstanding amounts of depth.

You will need to print on Premium Plus photo paper to obtain the top quality, but it is readily worth every penny. We had simply no issues with the HP's mono picture quality either - features weren't missing within dark areas and also simply no grain was noticeable.

For text, the DeskJet ended up being average. It printed at 3.5ppm in normal mode however draft speed was superb; at 13ppm it turned out to be the third speediest on test and also quality was very fair. A 6 x 4in picture printed in best mode in just below one minute, 30 seconds, whilst the A4 montage required three-and-a-half minutes.

On the software front, there is HP Image Zone. Including an elementary picture editor along with a printing wizard. The driver is actually simple to use while offering all sorts of things bar a print progress indicator. Nevertheless, we appreciated the Real-life Digital Photography tab, which supplies quick fixes for typical problems including red-eye, powerful backlighting as well as blurry images.

The device uses a pair of HP DeskJet 5940 ink cartridges - either black as well as colour for everyday printing, and also a colour/photo combo for high-quality photos. Between them, the photo and colour cartridges possess six colours - the C, M and Y mixture in the high-capacity 344 colour cartridge, as well as black, light cyan and light magenta in the 348 photo cartridge.

HP's well-priced paper helps make the 5940 a much more desirable proposition. Also consider HP value packs, since these occasionally include 'customised' versions of the cartridges which feature a reduced amount of ink. The HP DeskJet 5940 is commended.