One look at its flimsy plastic, and you'll see the HP Deskjet 3820 for what it really is: one of the bargain offerings in HP's new, redesigned line of inkjet printers.

In this case, you can judge the printer by its casing; the HP 3820's unremarkable, somewhat disappointing, text and graphics output quality won't suit anyone who needs to print legible, crisp text for reports or presentations.

On the bright side, the printer's dirt-cheap price (AU$199) and beautifully rendered photos will please all but professional photographers. Thus, the HP Deskjet 3820 makes a perfect family-photo printer--as long as you don't mind that its ink cartridges cost almost half as much as the printer itself.

One of many
Although HP has supposedly revamped its inkjet line, appearance-wise, we found little corroborating evidence; the HP 3820 looks much like previous Deskjet incarnations. Its compact, rectangular shape looks like a big box of tissues, and its paper trays are flimsier versions of the standard HP configuration: a 100-sheet input tray on the bottom and a 50-sheet output guide on top. The retractable input tray, while perfectly usable, is made of cheaper-looking plastic than that of costlier printers, and the output guide, which extends only halfway out over the input tray and is more of a shelf than a tray, looks really low budget. The printer is both Mac and PC compatible and connects via the USB or parallel ports (cable not included).

HP's inkjet setup protocol is one of the easiest we've seen, and the Deskjet 3820 gets the same treatment. A colorful Quick Start poster walks you through setting up the printer, installing the ink cartridges, and troubleshooting basic installation glitches. If you need more help, just insert the included CD-ROM into your computer, and a series of animated screens helps you figure out what type of connection you're using, how to install the cartridge, and how to print your first test page.

What you see is what you get
With a printer this inexpensive, you won't find any software extras in the box, such as image- editing or management programs. Rather, the included CD-ROM installs the HP Printer Assistance icon, which sits on your desktop. When you click it, up comes a user guide with comprehensive printing, maintenance, and troubleshooting information. It includes printing ideas, such as how to get the best digital-photo prints, and links to supplies and driver downloads.

Manufacturers often try to recoup profits on cheap printers by way of replacement ink sales. The HP Deskjet 3820's standard two-cartridge system, one black and one tricolor, means that when one color runs out, you have to replace the whole cartridge to the tune of approx AU$139 and AU$66 for black ink. By contrast, it costs around AU$20-25 to replace one of Canon's single-color ink cartridges; by replacing one color at a time, you don't have to throw away other still-full color cartridges.

Photos are worth the wait
When it comes to everyday print jobs, the HP 3820's print quality failed to impress our jury. In our labs' tests, text on plain copy paper appeared very light and blotchy, with visible feathering at the edges of the letters. This lack of crispness made text hard to read at smaller point sizes. Fortunately, the quality improved significantly when we printed our test document on HP's Bright White paper. The letters were much darker and crisper around the edges, and they were more evenly saturated. When it came to printing graphics on both plain and Bright White paper, the 3820 printouts exhibited accurate color matching (an important feature for photo enthusiasts), but graphical elements looked grainy and dithered. We noticed significant horizontal banding throughout our test document, and the printer missed most of the finer details in the document, such as diagonal lines and curved elements.

Fortunately, the HP 3820 does a wonderful job with photo printing. On our 8x10-inch test photo, the colors were subtle but very natural, and skin tones looked smooth and true, with none of the usual yellowish or reddish patches that we often see in photo printers. Jurors noted a bit of fuzziness around the edges of the test subjects, and some of the finer details didn't show up, but the overall effect was very good--especially for the price.

In terms of speed, the HP Deskjet 3820 doesn't break any records, but it performs adequately for a printer in its price range. It averages 3.79 pages per minute (ppm) on printed text and 4.1ppm on an 8x10 photo. If speed is your main concern, check out the Lexmark Z45 (6.3ppm text and 3.4ppm for photos).

According to our drain tests, the HP 3820 uses quite a lot of ink, so be aware that your consumable costs will add significantly to the low initial cost of purchase.

Given its excellent photo results and attractive price tag, the HP Deskjet 3820 would best serve amateur photographers as an entry-level yet high-quality photo printer.

HP Deskjet 3820
Company: HP Australia
Price: AU$199
Distributor: Selected resellers
Phone: 13 13 47

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