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.
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.
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 rating | N/A |
Basic Specifications | |
Colour? | yes |
Resolution printer final | 4800 x 1200dpi |
Integrated TFT screen? | yes |
Rated/quoted print speed | 27PPM |
Maximum paper size | A4 |
Duplex function | yes |
Running costs | |
Cost per A4 mono page | 7.0p |
Cost per A4 colour page | 10.6p |
Inkjet technology | Thermal |
Ink type | Dye-based colour, pigment-based black |
Power and noise | |
Peak noise level | 56.0dB(A) |
Dimensions | 427 x 336 x 102mm (WDH) |
Peak power consumption | 29W |
Idle power consumption | 7W |
Copier Specification | |
Copier rated mono speed | 27cpm |
Copier rated colour speed | 22cpm |
Fax? | no |
Fax speed | N/A |
Fax page memory | N/A |
Performance tests | |
6x4in photo print time | 1min 51s |
A4 photo print time | 4min 53s |
Mono print speed (measured) | 3.9ppm |
Colour print speed | 2.5ppm |
Media Handling | |
Borderless printing? | yes |
CD/DVD printing? | no |
Input tray capacity | 80 sheets |
Output tray capacity | 25 sheets |
Connectivity | |
USB connection? | yes |
Ethernet connection? | no |
Bluetooth connection? | no |
PictBridge port? | no |
Other connections | N/A |
Flash media | |
SD card reader | yes |
Compact Flash reader | no |
Memory Stick reader | yes |
xD-card reader | no |
USB flash drive support? | yes |
Other memory media support | MMC |
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 support | Mac OS X 10.4 and up |
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