CNET editors' review
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CNET editors' rating:
stars
Good
Detailed editors' rating
- Reviewed on: 05/17/2005
The black-and-silver 9800d needs ample work space, as it measures 22 inches wide by 19 inches deep when set up for letter-size paper and 10 inches deeper when you fill its protruding input tray with medium-format paper. We liked the sturdy construction of the Deskjet 9800d, which comes equipped with heavy paper supports and a steel base panel.
The Deskjet 9800d is a switch-hitter: it ships as a basic wide-format inkjet, but add color- and grayscale-photo ink cartridges for $25 each, and it becomes a digital photo lab. An articulating plunger shepherds postcard-size media into the paper path's grips for small photo prints. Unfortunately, with only two ink cradles for four ink cartridges, you'll have to swap the tank cartridges when you switch between printing different kinds of documents.
You can add the HP Deskjet 9800d to a small network by plugging a print server into the 9800d's USB port. Devices that will do the trick include HP's $299 JetDirect EN3700 print server or the $199 JetDirect EW2400 802.11 b/g wireless print server.
HP estimates that its Deskjet 9800d will print text at 8 pages per minute (ppm), but in CNET's tests, it performed just shy of 3ppm--ultraslow even by inkjet standards. Three other inkjets by the same maker--the HP Deskjet 2800, the HP Business Inkjet 1200d, and the HP Deskjet 6840--printed text more than twice as fast.
The HP 9800d spent 3.75 minutes to print our 8x10-inch test photo on HP's Premium Plus glossy photo paper at default settings. This is slow, but not as achingly plodding as the 11.72 minutes per page taken by the HP Business Inkjet 2600. The HP 9800d's speed fits within the realm of low to midpriced photo printers, such as the $180 Epson Stylus Photo R320.
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
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