HP Officejet J6480

The HP Officejet J6480 is relatively large (18.7 inches wide by 18.6 inches deep) and heavy (16.87 pounds), but it manages to keep a low profile by standing only 10 inches high. The large footprint plus the fact that the trays don't fold into the body mean you probably won't move it around the office very often. However, the combination of matte white and gray panels and the glossy black cockpit should blend well with the rest of your decor.

At first glance, it seems that the J6480 has a lot going on, but the buttons are organized in such a way that makes navigation fairly easy. The front panel houses a series of shortcuts for the scanner, the printer, the copier, and the fax machine, with the numerical keypad and faxing buttons occupying half of the console.

There's also a small, two line LCD screen to quickly access system preferences and tools to maintain ink cartridges and the printer nozzle, but there are only three auto dials for the fax machine most AIOs have at least four, if not eight one touch buttons. The front panel also has an external card reader (supporting xD, Memory Stick, SD, and CompactFlash) and a wireless On/Off button.

Unfortunately, the J6480 does not have a PictBridge port for transferring images directly from a digital camera.

We understand the redundancy in including both a media bay and a PictBridge port, but PictBridge is quickly becoming the de facto standard for direct printing, and we wish HP would have considered this in the printer's design.

The 250 sheet input tray has an adjustable arm to fit any paper size we like that the tray is actually fixed into the machine and made of a sturdy plastic, as opposed to other printers that employ a flimsy tray to corral paper.

The printer also has an auto document feeder for scanning and or copying as many as 35 sheets at a time, as well as an auto duplexer for double sided printing, accessible through the driver settings. Finally, HP rounds out the device with built in wireless 802.11g networking. We followed the on screen instructions and successfully paired the J6480 with our desktop computer in less than 10 minutes.

From there, we connected satellite computers to the printer by simply installing the driver onto the other desktops. The process of setting up a wireless network with your printer is typically painful, requiring special network configurations and system changes, but the J6480 slowly guides you through the setup with on screen instructions that we found easy to follow and troubleshoot.

In addition to the drivers, the J6480 also ships with HP's Photosmart Essential and Solution Center software. The former allows you to import, organize, edit, and share your digital photos, while the latter helps you fax and scan documents as well as order additional supplies to use with your printer.

The J6480 has a two cartridge bay with one single black cartridge ($15) and another tricolor cartridge ($18) for color prints. We ran low on color ink during our testing, so we suggest that you purchase the XL cartridge that's available on the HP Web site for $35. They're double the price of the standard cartridge but offer three times the page yields in both black and color.

HP Officejet H470wbt

The print quality is also unsatisfactory, which wasn't a surprise but disappointing nonetheless. We wish we could speak better of the H470wbt, the highest end model in the line, but this new model is an unimpressive update you'd be better off purchasing its previous incarnation, the HP Deskjet 460c, at a discounted price. The casing of the Officejet H470wbt is almost identical to the 460c, but this time HP went with a matte black finish instead of silver.

Aesthetically, we really enjoy the design of the H470wbt. The corners are contoured and the flaps all neatly fold into the body. When everything is closed, it looks very rugged if Batman needed a mobile printer, his search would end here. The printer has most of the necessary ports, like PictBridge USB, standard USB, and a SD, miniSD, MMC slot, but lacks the older model's Compact Flash port.

This isn't a big issue since most digital point and shoot cameras use SD or Memory Stick media, but users with DSLRs that use CF cards should look toward a more photo specific traveler like the HP Photosmart A826. The Officejet H470wbt is compact and only slightly smaller than a normal desktop printer, measuring 3.25 inches high, 13.4 inches wide, and 6.45 inches deep.

At 4.5 pounds, it's portable enough to fit into a carry on bag or a briefcase, but you won't want to carry it around all day. The most expensive model in the series also includes a protective sleeve made of vinyl with cutouts for the various ports, but there's no handle or a place to store the cables. There are a total of three models in the Officejet H470 series, and each price jump adds more hardware and versatility.

HP omits an IrDA port from the H470s, but if you're dead set on traveling without wires, you can also purchase an 802.11 b/g adapter from HP (since it's not included in the series). To accommodate this option, HP built a network switch onto the back of the unit that's useful for people who constantly travel between their home, office, and remote networks.