If you need a portable printer, the Officejet H470 isn't a bad choice. If you can endure the price, then you can expect a high quality portable printer.
Design
There is a certain corporate finesse to HP products that you don't get from any other vendor. Black, grey, simple design yet quietly well dressed, HP products mean business.
The Officejet H470 is no different. There isn't a lot to this printer; next to the paper feed are buttons for "cancel", "paper feed" and "power". There are several warning lights for both ink trays and power.
Port options on the H470 include a PictBridge and USB 1.0 port for a camera on the back, along with a second USB 2.0 port and SD card slot on the side.
At 2kg in weight, we'd describe this printer as semi-portable. You can take it on the road, but you wouldn't want to haul it around all the time. One annoying feature of the H470 is the paper feeder, which seems to have a tendency to jam when holding the maximum 50 sheets.
Features
Unfortunately, installation of this device isn't simple. It took us roughly 30 minutes, and it's hardly a one click affair. The total software package that comes with this printer is 291MB, which seems a little excessive for a printer of this size.
Colour printing on this device is acceptable, but pretty lacklustre. Colour prints had a grey overtone, and were a little fuzzy around the edges. However, we were very satisfied with black and white printing on this device — text came out clear and clean.
In order to test print speed, we printed a document with a combination of black and white text and colour graphs in high quality. This gave us a print speed of around two pages per minute, quite a solid result for an inkjet printer of this size.
The H470 comes with a detachable Lithium-ion battery on the back of the device. In the interest of saving paper, we didn't test the battery life, but HP says the device can print 480 pages per full charge. Considering how little power printers use on average (40 Watts maximum on this device), we see no reason to dispute this figure.
Verdict
Like all portable products, you pay a premium for a small device. At AU$550, you can comfortably get a nice multifunction device with the equivalent print quality. So if portability isn't your first priority, look elsewhere.
HP rates the tri-colour print cartridge that came with our device at 600 standard pages for AU$60 including GST. At 10 cents a page, this is average value.
The warranty on the H470 is one year, which is standard for an SMB device, but not generous considering its price.
If you need a portable printer, the Officejet H470 isn't a bad choice. Print speeds are good, as is document quality and battery life.
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