HP OfficeJet Pro 8710

EXCELLENT BANG FOR BUCK.

THE BABY OF HP’s OfficeJet Pro 8700 series ticks all the boxes as far as functions go. We use the term ‘baby’ loosely, as it’s actually a bit of a beast at 49.9 x 40.5 x 31.6cm. It has print, copy, scan and fax modes, a 50-page automatic document feeder for duplex scanning and photocopying, two-sided printing, and 802.11n Wi-Fi for wireless printing.

Setup was quick and painless — which is more than we can say for most other brands. In less than five minutes, we had installed the printer cartridges, breezed through the setup wizard on the printer, and were ready to print. It produces black text documents reasonably quickly, at 8.5 pages per minute, and it’s faster than most rivals in this price range at printing colour documents, clocking in at 3 pages per minute.

The 8710 is a bit of a speedy Gonzales when it comes to scanning and copying as well, taking 4 pages per minute and 3.5 pages per minute, respectively. The print quality is reasonably good, but it won’t be putting a laser printer out of business any time soon. Text, in particular, looks noticeably fuzzy, which is one of the downsides of using an entry-level inkjet printer over a laser.

As far as value for money goes, the OfficeJet Pro 8710 comes out on top. As well as being one of the cheaper units on test, the running costs work out to be the most affordable at only 9c per page. The four-pack of XL cartridges is more expensive than average at $176.76 (street price), but it works out cheaper as it yields up to 2,000 black pages.