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HP Deskjet 5550
Price: £149

Features
Performance
Ease of use
Value for money
Overall

Reviewed By: Andy Shaw

This review updated: 14/08/2002
Featured in magazine:
Issue 36, page 47
Manufacturer Contacts:
Supplier: HP
Tel: 0870 547 4747
Web Address: www.hp.com


Printers don't need to be the most difficult of products to set up and get running, and this is a perfect example of how to do it. As well as illustrated poster-sized set-up instructions, there's an animated step-by-step guide to getting started on the supplied CD-ROM, which you can work along with as you go through the process. Once you've plugged in the cables and ink cartridges the printer goes through a series of automatic set-up checks using its own sensor to ensure optimum printing. This removes the potential for human error and is a welcome addition.
Once you start printing there's an intuitive piece of software to help you change the printer's settings for each print job. This includes a handy option for printing multiple document pages on a single sheet of paper, so you can preview your finished results in miniature without wasting reams of paper.
The printer comes with a four-colour system, though you can swap the black cartridge for a photo-enhancing colour cartridge, allowing more sophisticated six-colour printing if you're expecting to do a lot of photo work. We would have counted this against the ease-of-use factor, since swapping cartridges is something of a bind, if it wasn't for the fact that the printer produced such good results without resorting to the extra colours.
This is the newest printer in this test and HP has stolen a march on the other manufacturers in terms of print quality. The 5550 produced excellent detail in all our tests on both photo and plain paper. Subtly coloured areas such as flesh tones suffered a little from too much colour without the use of the photo colour cartridge but it still rivalled output from the other printers. Text documents came out super-sharp, making it difficult to tell the difference between this and laser printed work.
Versatility is probably the best thing about the Deskjet 5550, which proves itself an excellent all-rounder. Although more dedicated and more expensive photo printers have more features to play around with, this model is their equal in terms of quality and betters them in some other quarters.

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