HP Color LaserJet 2840 review

Kristina Blachere CNET

Published: 27 Oct 2005

HP's affordable Color LaserJet 2840 all-in-one follows the non-multifunction colour laser Konica Minolta Magicolor 2430DL by furnishing memory card slots for direct photo printing. The HP 2840 lets you send scans directly to a network folder and includes software with extensive network management tools, as well as a document-management and image-editing application. The £559 (ex. VAT) HP Color LaserJet 2840 also supports Mac and Windows computers. We'd like it to hold more paper, especially to serve a busy workgroup, but bonus features and ease of use make the HP 2840 stand out.

Design

As you might expect from a colour laser multifunction printer, the Color LaserJet 2840 is no shrinking violet. Yet despite its majestic proportions (34.2 kg and 49.8cm wide by 53.2cm deep by 57.3cm high), the 2840 wears its functions well and includes carrying handles. The Color LaserJet 2840's well-designed control panel clusters buttons according to function -- menu navigation, copying and scanning -- alongside an LCD. The interface includes an alphanumeric keypad, one-touch access to the fax phone book and five speed-dial keys. But the 2840's most distinguishing feature is its bank of media-card slots that lets you print photos or proof sheets without using your computer.

The top panel of this device opens to reveal a flat scanner bed that accepts paper up to 216mm by 297mm. The scan lid itself houses a 50-sheet automatic document feeder (ADF) that accepts pages up to 216mm by 381mm. Under the scanner, the output tray holds 125 pages, and plastic arms catch collated copy jobs. The pair of paper input trays total 375 sheets of capacity -- not so generous for a busy workgroup, but average for a laser multifunction.

This large desktop machine best fits an office suite, because in a crowded home office, it may wake your baby. Blame the 2840's four-pass, carousel toner design that cycles each page four times through the machine to print in colour: the engine-rattling sounds as if the printer is holding a panicked ferret captive.

Features

The Color LaserJet 2840's exhaustive array of features should satisfy most busy offices. An affordable colour laser multifunction is rare, as is a laser printer that prints pictures straight from digital memory cards (CompactFlash Type I and II, Secure Digital, xD-Picture card, Memory Stick, Memory Stick Pro, SmartMedia, MultiMediaCard); the 2840 serves up both possibilities. And the 2840 covers the basics well: you can use it to print, copy and scan documents in greyscale or colour. Like other laser multifunctions, the 2840 lacks two-sided printing and skimps on paper capacity, but its roomy ADF lets you copy up to 50 pages at a time without having to lift the scanner lid. The built-in fax machine features a 120-number speed-dial phone book, along with broadcast faxing, fax forwarding and number blocking.

The HP Toolbox software, a bundled Web-based management application, provides a vast number of configuration options, such as a fax setup wizard and the ability to tweak print, copy and scan settings, as well as status information and alerts for errors, toner levels and paper usage. You can program the Scan keys via HP Toolbox to scan to email or a specific folder on your PC or network.

In addition to Toolbox, the HP 2840 comes with Readiris Pro 9.0 optical character recognition (OCR) software, to translate scans into editable text; HP Director, an umbrella interface that manages the functions of any HP peripherals; and HP Document Viewer, which organises scanned documents. You also get HP Image Zone, an image transfer, management, printing and editing program, with sophisticated editing functions such as the ability to add colour filters and shadows, adjust white balance and smooth out textures. It also has the old standbys, such as red-eye removal, cropping and resizing.

Performance

The HP Color LaserJet 2840's greyscale text print speed of 12.06 pages per minute (ppm) is average compared to that of other colour laser multifunctions. If you prize speed in a laser printer and you can meet your scanning, faxing, and copying needs elsewhere, the Dell 5100cn might better suit your office.

As far as print quality is concerned, the Color LaserJet 2840 performed well overall. Black text, legible down to 2-point size, was as sharp and bold-looking as we've seen. Black-and-white graphics were marred slightly by visible horizontal banding, but photo elements looked remarkably smooth and captured fine details well. Colour text was excellent; although we could see tiny dots in the subtler shades, blending was smooth overall. Colour graphics looked similarly smooth, especially in large blocks of colour, and were good overall despite some crosshatching.

Colour laser printers aren't destined to create archival photos, but our informal test prints of photos from a memory card were good. The photos looked dark and could have been smoother, but their quality should suffice if you're printing, say, snapshots from the field. The only other colour laser printer to date that includes memory card slots is the Konica Minolta Magicolor 2430DL.

The quality of the 2840's greyscale scans in our tests at the default settings (which you can adjust to improve results) was decent and smooth, despite low contrast. Our only complaint with the 2840's output was that its colour scans were somewhat pale and lacking in detail.

Service & support

HP offers some of the most comprehensive support options you'll find in the industry; they're especially good for business customers. The HP Color LaserJet 2840 comes with a standard one-year warranty that includes phone support between 8am and 6pm Monday to Friday (calls charged at national rate). Through HP's Care Pack Services, you can choose from a number of expanded warranty and service and support options. HP's Web site also offers email support, live chat with a tech-support representative, FAQs, documentation, searchable knowledge bases and white papers--all organised to correspond to your product. The HP Toolbox also houses a user guide, troubleshooting tips and a multitude of tutorials that cover printing photos, creating a fax cover page and scanning from the control panel.

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