9 July 2009 12:00 GMT / By Paul Lester

There are reams of cheap and cheerful printers doing the rounds at the moment and if you’re in the market for a low-yield device for home use, HP’s range has plenty to offer.

The Officejet 6000 is a colour inkjet that promises to make short work of photos and text printing with fast speeds and high-quality results, and also tips its hat towards the eco-friendly market by allegedly consuming 40% less energy and costing 40% less per page compared to colour laser printers.

Considering the single-use nature of the device, it’s a little more bulky than we’d expect and we weren’t overly enamoured by the dull grey and black colour scheme, which comes across as rather dated. It’s also a bit of a pain to set-up, with a rather lengthy software installation that threw up a few errors that, while eventually resolved, seemed needless considering you’re basically setting up a printer driver. Once past the rather underwhelming start, HP thankfully makes up for these issues with some impressive results when it comes to performance.

The Officejet 6000 is indeed pretty fast compared to similar inkjets, and in our tests it was capable of hitting 20 pages per minute on draft setting for text prints. A4, full-colour photos are printable in around 20 seconds at default settings and though this takes over 2 minutes at the highest quality, we didn’t notice much of an improvement and for most, the standard print options should do fine. Luckily, quality is impressive across the board; letters were sharp and clear and colours vibrant and accurate enough to satisfy amateur photographers.

While HP gets it right where it matters with the Officejet 6000, it is a rather basic device that seems clearly oriented towards fast, no-fuss printing. There’s nothing wrong with this per se, but considering rivals are available at around half the price, we’d expect at least a smattering of bells and whistle here to help justify the expense.

There’s no dedicated photo tray, for example, and while 6 x 4-inch prints can be managed, paper will need to be manually aligned in the main tray. There are also no wireless capabilities built-in, though an Ethernet port is present for those requiring network access, and useful extras such as duplex printing, a colour display and USB port for PictBridge support or direct printing are conspicuous by their absence.

Verdict

Despite HP’s solid performance in terms of speed and quality, there’s nothing particularly special about the printer and precious little to distinguish it from cheaper and equally capable devices in this market. If you’re after a fast, no-nonsense printer it shouldn’t disappoint, but there are better looking and more versatile alternatives available for less.

Score

Review Recap

Made by

HP

Price as reviewed

£102

The good

Fast speeds, impressive print quality for text and photos

The bad

Lengthy set-up, lack of extra features, bulky, uninspiring design, rather pricey

Quick verdict

The Officejet 6000 is a solid enough offering, but for this price we don’t think it offers enough to compete with rivals

Score

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