Hewlett Packard OfficeJetV40

The days of the cobbled together multifunction printer are thankfully long gone. While the old adage 'Jack of all trades, master of none' hasn't been totally shrugged off, the latest specimens of this hybrid breed are really quite good. What makes the OfficeJet V40 special is its price: at under £200, it's one of the cheapest on the market.

The list of functions is par for the course: it's a 600dpi colour inkjet printer, a 600dpi 36bit TWAIN-compliant colour scanner and a colour fax machine all rolled into one.

A fourth copier function results from linking scanning and printing. Although it needs a PC to get the most out of it, the V40 will work perfectly well as a standalone fax/copier machine.

Setting up the OfficeJet V40 is a doddle: you install the software first and then plug the V40 into the PC. This is a USB, PC-only device. Infuriatingly, Hewlett Packard doesn't include a USB cable in the box so you have to fork out for a cable. At this rate it wouldn't surprise us if ink cartridges become optional extras.

The V40 comes with reasonable paper documentation but the attention paid to the key grouping of the keypad on the V40 makes this documentation almost redundant. A two-line, 16-character LCD status panel tells you what's going on. The paper input tray holds up to 150 sheets, while the scanner/fax has a 20-page document feeder on the top.

A useful feature is a 'Photo Fit to Page' button, which lets you automatically blow up a snapshot to, say, A4 size. The print engine delivers good-quality images, especially when used with glossy photo paper.

On the downside, we couldn't select landscape mode for printing, and the driver would often claim to lose its printer connection. The speed of the V40 proved mildly disappointing, too. On text, up to 8ppm is promised: in reality, text output is precisely 4ppm with the first page being delivered after 24 seconds. Copying a page of text took 41 seconds to duplicate, an A4 colour copy took 74 seconds.

CONTACT: Hewlett Packard
08705 474 747
www.hp.com/uk

See also:

Sharp AJ-1805

Sharp's newly styled inkjet printer has the largest on/off button in the history of buttons.  31 Mar 2003

Brother MFC-590

An all-in-one inkjet printer, scanner, colour copier and plain-paper fax  26 Feb 2003

Hewlett Packard Officejet d155xi

A great device that challenges the category's reputation for compromise.  23 Jul 2002

Lexmark X63

The ideal multifunction device for those on a small budget.  18 Jul 2002

Canon SmartBase MPC600F

A capable and low-cost colour scanner, inkjet printer and fax machine.  12 Jun 2002

Samsung SCX-1100

All-in-one printer, scanner and copier.  31 May 2002

Canon CanoScan N670U

The CanoScan N670U is perfect for home or office use.  26 Mar 2002

HP unveils multifunction printers

Copy, scan, fax, print and email. But can it make the tea?  14 Mar 2002

HP ScanJet 4400c

A top-quality scanner from HP.  19 Feb 2002

Epson Perfection 1250 Photo

An easy-to-use scanner for the small office.  19 Feb 2002

Lexmark X83

The latest and highest-spec multifunction device from Lexmark.  27 Sep 2001

Brother & Xerox Multifunction printers

The MFC-860 from Brother and Xerox's WorkCentre M950 go head to head in this battle of multifunction devices.  23 May 2001

Multifunction Madness

Multifunction devices are the hottest thing to hit the paper output market - or so the vendors would have us believe. Danny Bradbury delves underneath the marketing hype to find out whether print/scan/fax combinations really deliver on their promises.  28 Jul 1998

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