Positioned as an economical alternative to low-end colour laser printers for workgroup use, the HP OfficeJet Pro K5400dtn includes Ethernet and USB interfaces.
Rated at 7,500 pages per month, this is a workhorse rather than a personal printer.
The charcoal and silver finish is quite striking, but it is on the bulky side for an A4 inkjet. Not only is it around 2.5 times the width of an A4 page, it’s more than twice as deep as that same page is tall. Some assembly is required: the duplexing mechanism clicks into place at the rear of the main unit, and then the printer must be positioned on top of the auxiliary 350-sheet paper feed tray. The external power pack is an issue for those who like to turn devices off overnight, and while the low-voltage cable is a decent length, the mains lead is less than 40cm long.
The software takes a surprising amount of time to install (especially as there are no bundled applications), so be prepared for a tea break once it’s kicked off. A related issue is that it takes the best part of two minutes for the printer to initialise after it is switched on. Drivers are included for Windows 2000 and XP, and Mac OS X 10.3 and 10.4. The user manual is supplied as a Windows help file, but can be downloaded as a PDF from HP’s web site.
Nominal print speed is 15 ppm for normal-quality colour docs. We recorded 20 seconds click-to-drop (from idle) for the first A4 page, with the second page emerging eight seconds later. Duplex printing increased the total to 45 seconds. Printing in monochrome draft mode reduced these times to 18 seconds (single-sided) and 26 seconds. Colour printing is vivid, but not excessively so. Business graphics look good on plain paper, though you may want to fine-tune the settings for printing photographs on photo paper.