HP Envy 100 e-All-in-One review

£224
Price when reviewed

HP’s Envy brand is mainly known for its sleek, aluminium-clad premium laptops, but now it’s branching out. With the Envy 100, HP wants to inject an unlikely shot of glamour into the world of printing, scanning and copying.

It’s rare for a multifunction device to stir our loins, but this squat block of patterned glass, gloss black and smooth contours gives it a good go. Brush the touch-sensitive power button and it glides into life: the front panel swivels upward and a 3.5in touchscreen takes centre-stage. There’s a slight delay after each dab of a finger, but beyond that it makes for a luxurious experience, with a simple interface and access to a variety of web-enabled applications.

HP Envy 100 e-All-in-One

With the choice of traditional USB or 802.11n Wi-Fi you can print out travel guides, colouring sheets, posters and tailored print-outs of web blogs and news sites, all without even turning on your PC. The same applies to the direct USB port and memory card slot hidden behind a flap on the Envy 100’s front edge. It also supports HP’s ePrint service, for printing when away from home.

Squeezing all the features of an all-in-one into such a compact chassis does have its downsides. The lone paper tray is small, holding just 80 sheets at full capacity. And at this price we’d hoped to find a five- or six-colour print engine, but HP has opted for black and a single tri-colour cartridge.

Draft quality prints are poor, but Normal gives crisp, bold text and strong colours. There’s a slight lack of focus on fine text and a tendency to leave blocks of colour a little streaky, but it isn’t bad at all. Photos, however, don’t even come close to the vibrancy and sparkle of the A-Listed Canon Pixma MG6150; colours look muted and a little grainy, with none of the punch you’d expect from a consumer printer.

That’s all the more disappointing since the Envy can’t use speed as an excuse. With mono and colour print speeds of just 3.9ppm and 2.5ppm respectively, it lags way behind its far cheaper rivals. A 6 x 4in photo took 1min 51secs and a full A4 photo nearly five minutes, so patience is a necessary virtue. The only compensation is its discreet operation: it’s one of the quietest all-in-ones we’ve tested.

HP Envy 100 e-All-in-One

Go back to that touchscreen for copies and scans, and it doesn’t do much better. Whatever you task it with, the Envy 100 takes appreciably longer than the average all-in-one: five copies of a colour page took a lengthy 3mins 9secs, while scanning a 6 x 4in photo at 1,200dpi took 2mins 14secs. Scans looked crisp and accurate but colour fidelity was noticeably reduced in our copied photograph, with over-saturated tones bleaching out subtle gradations.

Thus, those hoping for speed and quality to match the Envy 100’s gorgeous looks are in for a letdown. Despite costing almost twice as much as Canon’s Pixma MG6150, and at over 10p per colour page being even dearer to run, it simply can’t compete. Whether that will put off punters remains to be seen. It will look superb anywhere in your home, won’t disturb the peace while it prints and, as the success of Samsung’s ML-1630W proved, that’s all many people are looking for.

Details

Speed ratingN/A

Basic Specifications

Colour?yes
Resolution printer final4800 x 1200dpi
Integrated TFT screen?yes
Rated/quoted print speed27PPM
Maximum paper sizeA4
Duplex functionyes

Running costs

Cost per A4 mono page7.0p
Cost per A4 colour page10.6p
Inkjet technologyThermal
Ink typeDye-based colour, pigment-based black

Power and noise

Peak noise level56.0dB(A)
Dimensions427 x 336 x 102mm (WDH)
Peak power consumption29W
Idle power consumption7W

Copier Specification

Copier rated mono speed27cpm
Copier rated colour speed22cpm
Fax?no
Fax speedN/A
Fax page memoryN/A

Performance tests

6x4in photo print time1min 51s
A4 photo print time4min 53s
Mono print speed (measured)3.9ppm
Colour print speed2.5ppm

Media Handling

Borderless printing?yes
CD/DVD printing?no
Input tray capacity80 sheets
Output tray capacity25 sheets

Connectivity

USB connection?yes
Ethernet connection?no
Bluetooth connection?no
PictBridge port?no
Other connectionsN/A

Flash media

SD card readeryes
Compact Flash readerno
Memory Stick readeryes
xD-card readerno
USB flash drive support?yes
Other memory media supportMMC

OS Support

Operating system Windows 7 supported?yes
Operating system Windows Vista supported?yes
Operating system Windows XP supported?no
Operating system Windows 2000 supported?no
Operating system Windows 98SE supported?no
Other operating system supportMac OS X 10.4 and up

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