HP OfficeJet 9130 All-in-One review

Robert Vamosi CNET

Published: 24 May 2004

Officially, HP calls its 9100 series its 'five-in-one' series. In addition to printing, copying, scanning and faxing in both monochrome and colour, these printers also send files directly to a local network or the Internet without a PC, so you can auto-archive images and documents. For this review, we tested the 9130 model, which includes all the currently available bells and whistles for the 9100 series. The OfficeJet 9130 All-in-One is both Windows and Mac compatible and includes Ethernet connections, an automatic document feeder and connections for digital media cards. Unfortunately, the printer tested significantly slower than the vendor-rated speeds of 25 pages per minute (ppm) monochrome and 22ppm colour.

For small businesses needing direct-connect network capability for scanning and printing output, the OfficeJet 9130 makes sense; otherwise, small businesses can find faster and better-value inkjet multifunction printers elsewhere. For example, the HP OfficeJet 7130, without a print server, is half the price of the OfficeJet 9130.

Design

The HP OfficeJet 9130 All-in-One measures 57.4cm wide by 46cm deep by 46.2cm high and weighs 24.1kg -- a little too large and heavy for a home office; it will fit better in a network-enabled small office. The design is conventional, with a 50-sheet automatic document feeder and flatbed scanner on top, control panel and media card slots in the middle and paper input trays on the bottom.

We found the control panel well presented. On the left side sit six speed dial buttons with an extra button for additional contacts. In the centre lives a 4-line by 20-character backlit LCD, just underneath mode buttons for email, fax, scan, copy and print functions. Below the LCD, you'll find navigation buttons to scroll through menus and options. There's also a separate Help button to display troubleshooting tips on the LCD screen. To the right of the LCD is full numeric keypad for fax dialling or selecting copy counts. Buttons for PIN security, colour/monochrome, stop and start sit to the far right. In addition, the OfficeJet 9130 model includes a tiny keyboard for typing in Internet addresses that tucks away under the control panel when not in use.

But the OfficeJet 9130's advanced photo-imaging capabilities really set it apart from other office-based multifunction printers. The 9130 includes media card slots for SmartMedia, CompactFlash, Secure Digital, MultiMedia or Memory Stick cards -- a feature already common in home-based inkjet multifunction printers. If necessary, network administrators can disable the media card feature to prevent employee abuse.

Using an ordinary Web browser set to the OfficeJet 9130's IP address (via its HP JetDirect print server), system administrators can update fax speed-dial numbers, email addresses, and various other printer functions such as job accounting and colour usage controls from afar. There is built-in security for this Web access, requiring a secure PIN to access the configuration page, but sadly, the PIN requirement is not turned on by default.

Features

The OfficeJet 9130 All-in-One is packed with useful features and many hardware options. The standard configuration includes two trays: a 150-sheet tray and a replaceable 250-sheet tray and a 50-sheet automatic document feeder (ADF). That's a 400-sheet total native input capacity, which is OK for most small businesses. Additionally, you can replace the 250-sheet tray with an optional 500-sheet tray (£100 ex. VAT) for a maximum of 650 sheets, which is fine for small-business needs.

The OfficeJet 9130 comes with 128MB of memory that you can expand up to 384MB, which should do the trick for most small businesses. That's also enough memory to allow for multitasking, so you can, say, walk up, attach your digital camera media card directly to the printer, and print out your images while the 9130 simultaneously prints or sends a scan job to a network folder. The OfficeJet 9100 series also has the scan-once-print-many feature that's becoming popular on business-class multifunction printers, allowing you to scan a multi-page document once, and then print its individual pages from memory.

Both the OfficeJet 9120 and 9130 models include HP's JetDirect 620n Fast Ethernet print server for digital sending, which HP defines as the ability to send scanned images to network folders, email addresses or remote Internet addresses. On the 9120, this requires the use of the fax numeric keypad to type network folder addresses and Internet addresses, much like using your mobile phone keypad, where the number 5 key must be pressed four times to get a capital J. However, the OfficeJet 9130 model includes a tiny keypad, so if you plan to store images online regularly, it's worth spending £120 (ex. VAT) more.

The OfficeJet 9130 is a four-colour inkjet printer, not a laser printer, so the cost of consumables over the lifetime of this printer may be high in an office environment. A 1,750-sheet colour or black and individual colour cartridge costs only £21 (ex. VAT); however, for every 16,000 sheets printed, you'll also need to purchase new printheads at £23 (ex. VAT) each. This translates to 5.4 pence per colour page, or 1.3p per monochrome text page, which is not that much higher than laser costs, but your own usage will vary.

Drivers for the OfficeJet 9100-series printers work with Windows versions 98 through XP and Mac 9.2 and OS X (10.1.x and 10.2.x). The OfficeJet 9100 series includes HP's Photo And Imaging software for Windows and HP ImageZone for Mac. HP also includes ReadIris Pro OCR software for more advanced OCR features such as search and replace. The drivers included with the 9100 series support HP's own PCL and PostScript language emulation.

Performance

Printing performance
The HP OfficeJet 9130 All-in-One performed competently in our text speed tests, averaging 5.1 pages per minute (ppm) for text, which puts this printer second only to the Dell A960, whose score was 6.3ppm. Compared with other HP OfficeJets, the 9130 beat both the 7130 at 4.1ppm and the 4215 at 4.8ppm.

On the other hand, the 9130's photo print speed was slow compared with other inkjet multifunction printers, producing a high-resolution, 8 by 10in. colour test photo at a mere 0.2 pages per minute. This score, however, is typical of the OfficeJet family, with both the 7130 and the 4215 taking the same amount of time.

Unfortunately, the 9130's print quality is a bit mixed. The monochrome text printed well, but was too dark. Graphics printouts looked least impressive, with visible banding and dithering. On the other hand, the printer did very well with photos; our samples were sharp, with accurate colour matching.

Scanning and copying performance
On average, the HP OfficeJet 9130 All-in-One scanned slower than the 7130 but faster than the 4215. On the other hand, it copied faster than both. The 9130 scanned greyscale documents at 1.9ppm, as opposed to the 7130 at 3.3ppm and the 4215 at 1.5ppm. The 9130 scanned colour documents at a middling 1.8ppm, while the 7130 scanned at 2.7ppm and the 4215 at 1.5ppm. For copying speeds, the 9130 copied at a fast 2.6ppm, while the 7230 copied at 2.27 and the 4215 at 1.4ppm.

With scans, the test unit showed a similar problem with our greyscale and colour samples. Both suffered from high contrast, resulting in washed-out images and loss of fine details. We do not evaluate the quality of photocopies in our tests.

We tested the HP OfficeJet 9130 at the default factory settings, which can be adjusted to improve the output and address the above-mentioned issues.

Service & support

HP offers its standard corporate-level technical support for the OfficeJet 9130 All-in-One, which includes an industry-standard one-year warranty, plus phone support and one-day express exchange for the life of the warranty. HP also sells a three-year, next-day warranty upgrade.

HP's printed setup guide and detailed on-screen manual are both informative and useful. Online, HP provides for the OfficeJet 9130 a model-specific Web site, with an extensive knowledge base, downloadable drivers and links to email and chat access with HP technicians.

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