Editors' Rating
| Service & support |  |
7.0 |
| Design | |
7.0 |
| Features | |
7.0 |
| Performance | |
7.0 |
Published: 13 Mar 2007
The HP Officejet Pro K5400 is a low-cost, high-quality colour inkjet printer targeted at small and medium-size businesses. The no-frills base model starts at a reasonable £79 (ex. VAT), and print costs are low, too. Many of the inkjets we've examined in at this price are multi-functional and print a bit slower than the K5400, but they do more overall, which makes if difficult to compare this printer to others in its class. For just a bit more money, you can get a monochrome laser printer — the type of printer most commonly found in offices — that prints faster and produces better text prints than the K5400, but you'd be hard pressed to get colour for that price, and a low-cost laser printer certainly won't produce photographs.
Despite its odd status, we found a lot to like about this office inkjet printer. It's reasonably fast, its text and graphics prints are impressive, while the ability to print photographs (alhough not great ones) is certainly a bonus. And it definitely fills a small niche. We recommend it for small offices on a tight budget that don't need certain features, such as copying or scanning, and prefer an inkjet printer over a laser because of the ability to produce photographs. It's also a decent choice for college students who need high-quality text prints and can afford more than a bargain-basement printer.
Design
The HP Officejet Pro K5400's black-and-white body looks sleeker and more stylish than HP's usual putty colour scheme, but it still looks stern enough for an office. The body is bulky, especially for a single-function inkjet printer; the base model stands 49.5cm wide, by 38.2cm deep, by 20.7cm tall, and weighs 8.8kg.
A single paper tray sticks out from the front of the printer and serves as the paper-handling centre. On the bottom is the 250-sheet input tray with adjustable paper guides. Atop the input tray sits the output tray, which has an extendable arm that helps keep long prints from floating to the ground.
The control panel is limited to four LEDs that correspond to the individual ink tanks and three buttons: power, cancel and feed. A front-mounted door to the left of the paper tray opens to reveal the four ink tanks. Instead of attaching directly to the printhead, as is common in most inkjet printers, the tanks sit in their small corral, and tubes siphon the ink from the tanks to the printhead. An advantage to this setup is that it makes changing the ink tanks even easier; you don't have to open up the body of the printer and wait for the printhead to move into position, and you can change the ink tanks when the printer is off. HP offers standard- and high-capacity tanks. A standard 820-page black tank costs £12 (ex. VAT), while a standard 620-page colour tank (cyan, magenta and yellow) costs £8 (ex. VAT). The high-capacity versions cost £20 (ex. VAT) for a 2,350-page black tank and £14 (ex. VAT) for a 1,200-page colour tank. Print costs work out at 1.46 pence per page for black (0.85p with high-capacity cartridges) and 5.33p per page for colour (4.45p with high-capacity cartridges). These per-page costs are low for an inkjet printer — especially for one this inexpensive to start with.
Features
Three pre-configured versions of the Pro K5400 are available: the £79 (ex. VAT) K5400 is the base model, as described above, while the £115 (ex. VAT) K5400dn, reviewed here, includes duplexing (double-sided printing) and built-in networking. The £173 (ex. VAT) K5400dtn includes these features and adds an extra 350-sheet paper tray. If none of these configurations works for you, you can customise the base model. The duplex unit costs £24 (ex. VAT), while the paper tray costs £33 (ex. VAT). All of the models, including the network-ready ones, can be connected directly to your PC via USB 2.0.
Performance
HP advertises two main sets of print speeds for the Pro K5400dn: 36 pages per minute (ppm) for black and 35ppm for colour, in draft mode; and 16ppm (black) and 15ppm (colour) in normal-quality mode. There's also a best-quality mode, in which the black speed is 5ppm (no colour speed in best-quality mode is quoted).
In our tests, black text printed at 10.16ppm. For comparison, the Canon Pixma MP510 multifunction printed text at a rate of 6.37ppm, while the Samsung SCX-4200 multifunction laser printed text at 13.42ppm. The Pro K5400 cranked out a PowerPoint presentation at a rate of 6.11ppm and a page of graphics at 6.21ppm. When printing a single 4in.-by-6in. photo, it scored 1.42ppm, but when printing a job of 10 prints it averaged 1.84ppm (processing time is split among the photos). By comparison, the Pixma MP510 printed a single 4x6 photo at a rate of 1.26ppm. In general, we were impressed by the K5400's print speeds.
Text print quality was very good for an inkjet printer. At first glance, we noticed that the text was a rich black and characters were formed well. Upon closer examination, we noticed some minor jagged edges and barely noticeable wicking. 'Near laser' is an appropriate description; the K5400's text prints were better than those of nearly all the multifunction inkjet printers we've reviewed. The graphics print revealed smooth colour gradients along with pleasing colour saturation and accuracy. The photo elements were a bit washed out, but otherwise showed nice detail. The printer had some difficulty with barcode-style patterns. The colour photographs were serviceable, but nowhere near display quality. We saw obvious graininess, particularly in colour blocks and skin tones, and the colour had an overall dullness to it. Again, this is an office-oriented printer, not a photo printer, so it's understandable that it produces less-than-perfect photos. That said, this printer is good for the occasional photo that may serve as a reference — perhaps for a small insurance company or an estate agent.
Service & support
HP backs the Officejet Pro K5400 with a standard one-year warranty, which is on par with the competition, although you can also pay to extend the warranty. While under warranty, you can get telephone support at 8p per minute between 8.30am and 6pm Mondays to Fridays; once your printer is out of warranty, telephone support costs rise to 60p per minute. HP's Web site has downloadable drivers, software and manuals, technical support via email and online chat, FAQs and a troubleshooting guide.
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