HP OfficeJet Pro L7780

Review: The HP OfficeJet Pro L7780 All-In-One

I'll start by saying this: the HP OfficeJet Pro L7780 All-In-One looks good on my desk. With the black and silver motif, the curved lines, dimensions of about 21 by 19 by 17 inches, and 47 buttons on the front control panel, it's an impressive desk ornament for about $400. But it does more than look pretty. In addition to printing, faxing, scanning and copying, the L7780 has some unique features that I really like.

This printer is networkable, which means you can plug it directly into a network router and print from any computer on your home or business network. But it's also wireless... which means that you can put it almost anywhere and send print jobs from your desktop or laptop. It doesn't have to be within three feet of your computer or the router. And if you like the idea of a paperless office, the Digital Filing feature can scan documents, create searchable PDFs, and store them on your hard drive or a network share folder. Wirelessly, if you like. I thought the wireless feature would be tricky, but to my surprise, it displayed a list of available wireless networks on the built-in screen, prompted me for the password, and that was it!

I found it fairly easy to set up the printer and related software applications. When selecting a location for your HP OfficeJet Pro L7780 you need to leave a buffer zone around the machine to allow for air flow, and easy access to the machine's doors and paper trays.

Printing Specs and Speeds

The HP OfficeJet Pro L7880 All-In-One has the capability to operate in color, or in black and white. In black and white mode, this machine can produce up to 35 pages per minute with a resolution of up to 1200 x 1200 dpi. In color mode, the print speeds are just slightly slower, up to 34 pages per minute with a resolution of up to 1200 x 1200 dpi (4800 x 1200 optimized). An automatic duplexing option is also available, which makes printing two-sided copies much simpler.

Photo Printing

If you are a photographer then you will appreciate the special photo printing options offered by the HP OfficeJet L7780 All-In-One. First of all there is a direct photo printing option. This allows you to select to print directly from your memory card or use the PictBridge slot to connect your camera directly to the printer. This OfficeJet L7780 supports memory sticks, xD-Picture Cards, CompactFlash Type I and II, and Secure Digital/MultiMediaCard/Secure MultiMediaCards.

The control panel sports a 2.4-inch color display where you can preview and edit photos. You can even zoom out to a 9x9 image view to scan the contents of the memory card quickly. I love being able to print a scannable photo proof sheet. If you've never seen this in action, it's very cool. You select photos by shading in the little circles on the proof sheet, indicate how many copies, and select a layout. After making your selections, you scan the proof sheet, and the machine will print your photos. Borderless photos can be printed in sizes up to 8.5 x 24 inches.

Making Copies

The HP OfficeJet Pro L7780 All-In-One is a versatile copier. You can select from a number of paper sizes -- letter sized, legal, statement sized, executive, envelopes, 8 by 10 inches, 4 by 6 inches, and a bunch of others. The primary paper tray can hold 250 sheets at a time while the optional second paper tray is capable of holding up to 350 sheets. I bought the second tray so I can stash an entire ream of paper in the machine. Copying options for this machine include collating, duplexing, as well scaling options that range between 25 percent and 400 percent. And again, the color display on the control panel helps you choose the options you want.

Faxing and Scanning

This machine is unique in that it can send and receive both black & white and color faxes. The average fax transmission speed is about 3 second per page, with a maximum fax resolution of 300 by 300 dpi. The incoming fax memory can handle about 125 pages at a time.

This machine offers both flatbed and automatic document feeder scanning, with a maximum scanning surface of 8.5 inches by 14 inches, which is fairly standard for this type of machine. The scanner has a 48-bit depth and has an optical scanner resolution of up to 2400 dpi and an enhanced scanner resolution of up to 19200 dpi. The sheet feeder can also be used to fax or scan multiple page documents. That's a very nice feature if you typically work with more than one page. The ReadIris OCR software can be used to convert scanned pages to machine-readable text, and you can scan directly into the installed programs on your computer, such as Word, PhotoShop or your email program.

Earlier, I mentioned the Digital Filing feature, which lets you scan directly to a shared network folder. This is especially handy in an office environment where there are multiple users. The five Speed Dial buttons on the control panel can be used to select a destination folder for the scanned document or image.

Pros and Cons of the HP OfficeJet L7780 All-In-One

Overall, I can enthusiastically recommend the HP OfficeJet L7780 All-In-One printer, fax, scanner, copier. It offers a very nice mix of consumer and office applications, with the convenience of one machine to print, copy, scan and fax. It's fast, the print quality is excellent, and economical to operate. According HP it'll cost about 1.5 cents for a black page and upwards of 6 cents for color pages, depending on the complexity. The direct photo printing capabilities are great for both office and home user, and if you do a lot of printing, or if you need to print two-sided copies then this is a fabulous machine. The wireless capability and digital filing are just the icing on the cake for me.

On the other hand, there are some potential drawbacks. The photo menu is not always intuitive, and some of the options could be re-arranged to fix this. Some customers report that they've experienced paper jams when doing high-volume copying. But I've never used a *copier* that didn't jam on occasion. And because this is an inkjet, not a laser printer, it uses ink cartridges instead of toner. This means that you'll have to stay stocked up on the black, magenta, cyan, and yellow ink cartridges. Yes, toner is generally less expensive over the long haul, but the trade-off is that color inkjets cost about half the price of a color laser.