Buy Now...

This is not the first MFU I have looked at that has the page feed and flatbed for scanning, several others have had both. Personally I would always want a flatbed for articles from magazines and books that you certainly do not want to mutilate to copy a page or two, also other items that are oversized you can copy or scan in more than one operation. As an example I recently purchased some music CD’s from a shop I often use, they had no sleeves or cases, just a rock bottom price. Using the copy mode set to fast I placed two at a time face down on the flatbed and 15 seconds later I have a track listing that can be viewed while the CD is playing.

It is 43x37x29cm but if you consider that’s for a printer, a scanner, and a colour copier should you already own all three then I doubt even two of them would take less space.

See also: Multifunction printers

more

One of the main selling points of these units is the ability to copy without need for the PC to be turned on or even connected. My old black and white copier hardly ever gets used as something like this is far more convenient and of course not only can it copy in black and white but also in colour.

The front edge has a total of 39 buttons 5 LED’s and a 6.5x1.5 two line LCD display. However do not think it is complex it really is not. For a standard copy you press one button either colour or black, yes reduction and enlargement are possible but probably easier to do from within Windows. It can be switched off from a single button – something a lot of fax units cannot be – and not by having to pull out the plug at the mains or from the rear of the unit.

Installation of files for Windows is not that quick but you are warned roughly how long each section will take. Probably over 30 minutes from start to finish. HP provide a number of good software packages including something called ‘Director’ that has now matured into an excellent product. Another up and coming piece of software is ‘Image Zone’ that gives you a great deal of flexibility to print multiple images of different sizes on a single sheet of paper.

Printing is always going to be the overridingly important module and of course that is what HP are best known for. There are five different settings in Print Quality the fastest and the one most timings will be conducted with is Fast Draft, there are also Fast Normal, Normal, Best and Maximum DPI. No space to describe them all in detail I will say that the Fast Draft was better than most other manufacturers ‘Normal’ and I got 16PPM printing stupid 200 word documents and around 13.5PPM printing real pages both considerably better than other stand alone printers recently looked at. Please remember this is basically only a four ink printer. I am told other cartridges such a photo printing and a special grey are available. I did print a selection of A4 borderless and multi print per page offerings and even using the basic four ink offerings they were very good.

I mentioned it can do ‘other things’ and that is read a range of card types and has ‘Pict Bridge’ support this can be used directly without intervention of the PC to print output. As the blurb on the link below says ‘five slots, eleven formats’.

If you are in the market for a MFU either for space or convenience then the HP OfficeJet 7210 should certainly be on your list. However it’s not that cheap at around £210. 

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/uk/en/ho/WF06b/5043-5527-5563-5563-11541905-12087608-20378815.html