HP OfficeJet J5780 – A Compact, User-Friendly, But Flawed Printer

Pros

The HP OfficeJet J5780 is a compact, user-friendly and affordable printer. It offers great quality color scans and has munificent support options.

Cons

The text prints from HP OfficeJet J5780 could certainly use some improvement.

Introduction

If you are looking for a printer for you light home or office printing needs, and which should be affordable as well, then the HP OfficeJet J5780 is a nice option to consider. It’s an affordable multifunction inkjet printer. Though, the absence of an Ethernet jack, limits the use of OfficeJet J5780 in larger networked offices, whilst the absence of media card slots restricts its appeal for casual home printing use. The printer comes with the perfect blend of features for a home office like fax, scan, print and copy, and to make it even more tempting there is the $150 price tag of the printer.

As far as the print speed and quality is concerned, the OfficeJet J5780 is neither too bad, nor exceptional. As a matter of fact we think that the home office users will be more than satisfied with its print quality. But still, we like the Canon Pixma MP530. Although it’s slightly expensive than the J5780, but the print quality here is excellent, especially with black text. So, if you don’t have problems in spending additional $50, then we would recommend go for the Canon.

Design

The compact all-in-one printer the HP OfficeJet J5780 measuring 18 inches x 15.2 inches x 9.3 inches (W x D x H), will easily tuck into the corner of any office desk, and with weight less than 15 pounds it surely wont be a problem to move the printer as well. On the top of the scanner lid of the printer there is a 35-page automatic document feeder that covers an A4-size scanner. Though, despite having the ADF, the maximum document size for the printer is A4.

The printer has two trays serving as the output and input trays. The lower input tray can store up to 100 sheets of ordinary paper. While the output tray comes with a pullout arm to let you keep the larger paper sheets under control. Though the input tray can hold the legal-length paper comfortably, but it doesn’t have a support arm, as a result of which some part of the paper will always be resting on your desktop.

The control panel for J5780 is a tad busy, but surely is well-organized. The buttons are grouped by task, around a two-line text LCD. The printer has separate button for common options such as speed dial and redial for fax and enlarge/reduce for copy, in addition to out-and-out start buttons and menu buttons (in both color and black). Completing the control panel is five one-touch dial buttons and an alphanumeric keypad.

The J5780 makes use of two-tank ink system for printing: one black and one tricolor. The J5780 has almost the same set of features for a work-oriented all-in-one printer, which you will get in any similarly priced printer. The only exception we found here was of a USB connection. Unlike a lot of the other office-oriented all-in-one printers, this printer also lacks media card slots and a built-in duplexer.

System Configuration

Price: NA
Manufacturer: HP
Part Number: Q8232A#ABA
Printer Type: All-in-one printer
Inkjet Technology: HP Thermal Inkjet
Operating System Supported: Microsoft Windows XP , Apple Mac OS X 10.3 , Microsoft Windows 2000 , Microsoft Windows XP Professional x64 Edition and Apple Mac OS X 10.4

Dimensions (W x D x H): 18 x 15.2 x 9.3 in.
System weight: 14.6 lbs
Microsoft Certifications: Certified for Windows Vista
PC Connection: Hi-Speed USB
Power: AC 110/230 V (50/60 Hz)
Supported Media Type: Labels, Cards, Photo paper, Envelopes, Transparencies, Plain paper and Iron-on transfers
Ink Type: HP Vivera Inks

Performance

In our performance testing against some of the all-in-one printers ($50 in both side of the price scale), the HP J5780 delivered middle-of-the-road performance. The HP J5780 delivered black text at the rate of 6.0ppm (pages per minute), and was a tad behind the Lexmark X5470 and the Canon Pixma MP530. Though, it was quick in 4×6 photo printing, and scored 0.7ppm for a single print and for the batch of 10 its average speed was 0.77ppm. The printer was sluggish in the scan speeds, with scores like 2.9 for color and 2.8ppm for grayscale.

While the print speed delivered by HP J5780 was decent enough for most of the times, but the printer disappointed us with its print quality. The characters in the text prints appeared swollen and had jagged edges. Though, the color graphics appeared comparatively decent, but still there were some flaws in it. But the printer did pretty decent job in scanning and delivered decent quality scan outputs.

Support

The HP OfficeJet J5780 all-in-one printer comes with one year standard warranty, which is equivalent to the warranty offered by the competition. During the warranty period you get toll-free tele phone support 24×7. For additional support there is HP’s Web site offering downloadable software, manuals and drivers; some other support mode includes online chat and e-mail with tech support; a troubleshooting guide and FAQs.

Word from the Experts

The HP OfficeJet J5780 does suffer from certain flaws, like lackluster text prints and slow print speeds, but the printer makes up for all those drawbacks with its low price. Although the printer is decent for light home printing, but still we would suggest that you spend a tad more and go for the Canon.