HP Deskjet 450
HP's Deskjet 450 is an attractive ultraportable printer brimming with features and capable of fast quality printing.
HP's Deskjet 450 is an ultraportable printer that in size terms sits inbetween the Canon BJC-55 and BJC-85 lines. At 1.9Kgs without battery or print cartridges, it's also a touch heavier than Canon's ultraportable offerings. Those are about the only concessions that this printer makes, as HP has stacked in just about everything else that you could look for in a full size printer into this much smaller unit.
The Deskjet 450 does makes us ponder what it is exactly that designers get paid for. On the base of the printer, there's a slot that acts as a business card holder. Sure, it's a neat way to identify your personal Deskjet 450 if you happened to be at a Deskjet 450 Appreciation Society Bridge night, but how many potential customers are ever likely to look at the bottom of your printer? It's also only a promotional device; there's only space for one single business card, so it's not as though you could use it as a default holder.
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Introduction |
From a technology perspective, it's hard to look past the Deskjet 450. Legacy users are dealt with via a custom parallel port, standard users can opt for USB (still, sadly no supplied cable) and truly mobile users can opt for a CF Bluetooth solution or good old standard IR. The deskjet can handle up to 1200dpi resolution for photo printing, 600dpi at normal text print quality, which gives it the highest quality range of any of the printers we've examined in the ultraportable class. Like the two Canon printers, you've got the option of a chargeable battery, which does cost extra.
Installation of the Deskjet 450 was the usual business of cartridge insertion and software installation with one notable difference. As part of the installation, users are offered the option to send HP Printer status updates for its own database. We passed on this 'opportunity', which is what we suspect many users will do. Without registering, however, you can't view printing statistics generated by your own system, which could be useful if you share the printer with a lot of people, or just print a lot from a particular cartridge type.
Like the Canon BJC-85, the Deskjet 450 uses its cover as its sheet feeder. The sheet feeder on the Deskjet 450 is rather unusual. Paper sitting in the tray ends up standing almost vertically before actually feeding into the printer. This could be an issue if you constantly only fed in single sheets of a low GSM paper.
In our tests, the Deskjet 450 managed to beat every other printer we've examined, including the two larger models. It shot out an average of 3.5 ppm in greyscale, and this only dropped to 3ppm if we permitted colour printing. The Deskjet 450 uses HP's standard colour, black and photo cartridges, so if you've got other HP equipment cartridge swapping should be painless.
Company: HP Australia
Price: Est. AU$548, $603 with Li battery.
Distributor: Selected resellers
Phone: 13 13 47
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my BJC-55 just can't print in color with my Nokia 9210. I'm using Canon Bubblejet (BJ mode) driver.