Wireless printing with Bluetooth
Introduction
HP is the inkjet printer market leader for good reason -- it builds high quality products that millions depend upon for their printing chores. Indeed, PC Buyer's Guide's workhorse inkjet printer of choice is an old but trusty DeskJet 722c, and we've previously named the DeskJet 960cse and 990cse as our Editor's Choices in high-end desktop inkjet models. As the DeskJet 995c is a close relative to the 990c -- it's basically the same printer, with a slightly different software bundle and the ability to accept print commands wirelessly from Bluetooth devices -- we won't make you wait till the end of the review to find out that, yes, we liked this printer. But will it share the Editor's Choice award with its siblings? Read on....
Bluetooth
We're not entirely convinced that Bluetooth printing is going to be the connection method of choice for most people anytime soon. As we've noted in our editorial entitled Waiting For Bluetooth, the technology is still too expensive (Bluetooth cards for laptop computers currently cost about $200, and this printer is at least $130 more than a similar model without the wireless feature) and, at least in HP's case, suffers from an extremely complicated and error-prone printer driver installation process. As well, Bluetooth suffers from a fairly limited connectivity range (HP lists the reception range as 10 metres), not to mention some nagging interference problems with other 2.4GHz devices (microwaves, mobile phones, etc.). But Bluetooth does make it practical to have your computer in one room and your printer in another.
The installation and configuration process of the Bluetooth driver for the printer is fairly clumsy. The package ships with practically no Bluetooth documentation -- just a page that tells you to go to www.hp.com/support/bluetooth for more information. There, we discovered that our Bluetooth driver needed to be patched (286K), we needed a Bluetooth driver update (12.83MB) for the 3Com Bluetooth cards HP supplied us with and, of course, we had to read the online documentation (another couple of megabytes) on how to install everything. Even after poring over 125+ pages of documentation, there was quite a bit of trial-and-error involved, as the manual suggested that the Bluetooth serial client would be COM3, whereas our PC required us to manually select COM5 as the printer port. On a second machine, also running Windows XP, the serial client ended up being COM9, while the LAN client was listed as COM13 (!). There's no Windows XP-certified driver, but the Windows 2000 driver works under XP.
Anyway, once we got the COM port situation figured out, printing via Bluetooth worked well. When you print a job, a Bluetooth connection dialog pops up, showing the available devices. Once you've selected the DeskJet 995c (or, for that matter, any Bluetooth device), you can choose to make this the default connection.
In our tests, we easily transferred documents from a Bluetooth-equipped notebook on the main floor of a house to another Bluetooth-equipped computer and the 995c printer -- both of which were on the upper floor. When it came to transferring files at this distance, we were surprised that the 3Com Bluetooth cards proved to be significantly more reliable than a pair of Orinonco 802.11b cards, which tended to have problems related to poor reception at this range. Although tests show that Bluetooth performance drops off as the distance between nodes increases, we didn't notice a significant decline in reliability when transferring large files or documents in our floor-to-floor tests.
Wireless transfer speeds depend on the distance between the devices. Bluetooth is most efficient at close range. You can expect transfer rates of around 60K/sec at a range of one metre or so; at 6 metres, the speed drops to about half that speed. Of course, if the idea is for you to walk up to the printer and hit a "print" command on your Bluetooth-enabled PDA or laptop, well, then this feature's just the ticket.
For those without a Bluetooth-capable PC or PDA, the printer also includes an infrared port, for "line of sight" wireless printing.
"The print head design significantly reduces long-term hassles such as clogging, streaking and text quality deterioration. "
Test Results
The DeskJet 995c supports Windows XP (all versions), Windows Me, Windows 2000, Windows 98 (all versions), Windows 95 and Windows NT 4.0. PC Buyer's Guide tested the 995c under Windows XP, using the drivers supplied on the CD included with the unit. As we noted in our review of the 990cse, the drivers are a welcome improvement over older models that forced the user through a clumsy Setup program. These programs launch and load right from the CD as soon as the USB cable attached to (and included with) the printer is connected to the computer.
The HP Printer Assistant program that helps you set up the printer provides further evidence of HP's new style user interface sensibilities -- also in evidence in several of the company's other recent products. Imagine windows with overly rounded corners and fat gray borders, big, roadsign-styled icons and generally austere Swiss typography and you have the overall idea.
The DeskJet 995c supports print resolutions up to 2400 x 1200 dpi (about 2.9 megapixels) on photo paper and delivers resolutions up to 600x600 on other types of paper. HP's so-called "PhotoREt" photographics resolution enhancement technology does some clever "unsharp mask" sharpening of images and lays down multiple layers of transparent inks to further enhance print quality.
The 995c accepts the most economical of HP's black print cartridges, (#45) and can accept either standard or large-size Tri-color cartridges.
The company claims print speeds up to 17 pages per minute in black and 13 ppm in colour. As is usual for such claims, these numbers reflect plain text documents at the lowest possible quality settings.
In our tests, a typical web page with a small red-and-black banner (15K in size) and a couple of highlighted links took 32 seconds to print in standard mode, and a page of plain black text took 20 seconds to finish. Even a page with only 9 lines of text and two tiny icons took 9 seconds to print. A three-page, text-only HP press release sent to us in Microsoft Word format took 52 seconds to finish printing in standard quality. The first page alone took 27 seconds to finish. Even in lower-quality draft mode, this page took 16 seconds to print. "Best" mode is even slower.
As we noted with the 960cse, which uses a similar (but slightly slower) print mechanism, we found no appreciable difference in quality between "Standard" and "Best" modes on plain paper. HP's photo-mode output quality on plain paper is far superior to that of Lexmark's competing (but, at US$199, substantially less expensive) Z65, reviewed elsewhere in this section. However, the Lexmark Z65 is faster, yet it still manages to produce better-looking text.
The most worrisome aspect of our tests was the 995c's decidedly dodgy text output on plain paper. Particularly in draft mode, it suffered from moderate to severe ghosting, especially at smaller point sizes. In the 600-dpi scan of a 12-point, 600-dpi print sample shown here, a lot of spurious ink spray can be seen around the lower edges of the text (despite appearances, there was no text on the other side of the page). Most fonts don't look this bad; it's interesting that this is a font HP chooses to print as its sample page.
Our tests on glossy paper also produced some interesting results. At the highest quality (2400x1200) resolution on HP Premium Photo paper, the unit's output displayed consistently smoother dithering than Lexmark's Z65 printer. However, on some images, the Lexmark unit's output just looked better. One of our test images, in particular, looked great on the screen and virtually identical when output by the Z65. However, the HP printer added an odd blue cast to areas that should have been white -- effectively spoiling the printout.
On the other hand, we printed several images in which the HP's output excelled, despite sharing the Lexmark's propensity to favour the red end of the spectrum (see the "red shadows" in the samples below). In general, the glossy photo paper output quality of both units was very good -- and fairly close in quality. On less exotic paper stocks, the HP's output is clearly superior -- as it should be, considering the significant price delta between the units.
Ink Costs & Cartridge Considerations
Ink costs per page work out to about to about 15 cents (CDN) per text page, assuming an approximately equal balance between plain text and colour image printing. That's not bad, considering that Lexmark's Z32 printer ends up costing around 42 cents (Cdn) per page under the same conditions. If you print a lot of pages per month, this really adds up. Those aiming to save even more money on ink costs should check out Strydent Software's Inksaver, an inexpensive utility that works with 900 series DeskJets and most other models from HP, Epson and Canon.
HP's print cartridges, unlike those from Canon or Epson, contain a print head. Thus, you pay a little more for the cartridges, but you are in effect getting a whole new print head with each one. Over the years, our experience with HP printers employing this system, has proven that the print head design significantly reduces long-term hassles such as clogging, streaking and text quality deterioration.
As is the case with Lexmark's printers, HP uses a single three-colour cartridge instead of separate color-ink cartridges. This contributes to wasted ink and extra costs, should you run out of one colour before the others are used up. It does, however, make buying and installing ink a little simpler.
Conclusion
Although we've received a number of reports from users who say HP printer quality has gone down the tubes over the last few years, we haven't seen first-hand evidence that this is the case. Either we're very lucky, or the 900 series printers are indeed better built than 600 and 800-series DeskJets. At any rate, the 995c comes with a 1-year express pickup and delivery warranty.
Selling at a street price around C$550, the DeskJet 995c is essentially an HP990cse (C$420) with the addition of Bluetooth. However, the rough state of the Bluetooth driver does little to change our opinion that Bluetooth still isn't ready for prime time. We're also dismayed at the unit's relatively poor text quality on plain paper. These negative attributes prevented the 995c from earning a place alongside the 990cse and the C$299 DeskJet 960cse (another close cousin, in which the paper duplexing feature is optional) as one of our Editor's Choices in photo-quality ink-jet printers, despite its excellent photo-printing quality on plain paper. Still, it's a good colour printer for those seeking a wireless printing solution for the home or office.
For Further Reading
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