Get 3% cash back with Chase Freedom
CNET editors' review
-
CNET editors' rating:
stars
OK
Detailed editors' rating
- Reviewed on: 08/09/2006
- Released on: 05/31/2006
The adage "you get what you pay for" applies to the Deskjet F380. The body of the light-gray-and-white printer is boxy and made of more lightweight plastic than HP's more expensive printers, such as the HP OfficeJet 5610 or even the basic Deskjet 6940. The printer measures 16.8 inches wide, 10.2 inches deep (with the paper tray folded in), and 7 inches tall, and weighs a light 10.3 pounds. Still, it feels well-enough constructed, though the glossy white scanner lid is a bit wobbly and flimsy. The scanner lid's hinges don't lift to accommodate thick materials, and A4-size paper (slightly larger than letter size) is the largest that fits on the platen, or scanner bed.
A transparent blue-plastic tray in the front folds out to serve as both the input and output tray. The input tray can hold up to 100 sheets of paper, and a paper guide slides smoothly to hold the pages in place. The printed pages drop down on the pages in the input tray, which can make refilling the input tray in the middle of a large print job awkward. (You should pause the print job if you need to refill the paper.) A flap folds out of the tray to help corral longer sheets of paper. There's no door in the back for straight pass-through, so heavier media such as cardstock might prove problematic.
Along the left side of the printer's top sits a row of off-white buttons that comprise the very limited control panel. You can key in multiple copies (up to nine), indicate whether you're using plain or photo paper, initiate black-only or color copies, and trigger a scan job. A power button, a cancel button, and two indicators (paper jam and low ink) round out the control panel. You won't find more advanced features such as an autoduplexer, a PictBridge port, or an LCD on this printer, but again, you're only paying $80 for it. (Keep in mind, you still have to buy a USB cable for the printer.)
Once you open the paper tray, you can flip down an internal panel to expose the printheads and ink tanks. The HP Deskjet F380 ships with two full ink tanks: one black and one tricolor (CMY). Replacing the ink tanks is a simple task: just push down on each tank until it snaps out of place and pull it straight out. Reverse the process to replace the tanks. For six-color photo printing, you can replace the black tank with a tricolor photo ink tank. The ink costs are fairly reasonable: the black tank costs $14.99, the regular tricolor tanks costs $17.99, and the photo tricolor tank costs $24.99.
Setting up the printer is fairly simple, though installing the drivers and software from the included CD takes a few long minutes (most of it is hands-off). Once prompted, connect the printer to your PC via USB cable (not included). The printer can be used with Windows 98/98 SE/2000/Me/XP PCs and Mac OS X versions 10.3.9 and 10.4. HP includes its Photosmart Essential software, which helps you organize, edit, print, and share your photos. It even has templates for creating products such as photo album pages and online projects. You can initiate print, scan, and copy jobs from the printer itself or from HP's Solution Center, which lets you tweak settings for each job individually. The F380 has the basic features you'd expect from this printer: borderless printing (up to 4x6 inches), multiple copies (up to 9 pages), and copy scaling. More expensive printers will let you do automatic double-sided printing, make hundreds of copies, and print straight from cameras or media cards.
Continue readingMost helpful user reviews
- Average user rating: 2.5 stars out of 20 reviews
- My rating: 0 stars Write review
-
Showing 3 of 20 user reviews
-
3 out of 4 people found this helpful
"Medicore overall, Drivers Buggy, Nice Look, Scan/Copy work OK, Ink is a joke"
-
2 out of 2 people found this helpful
"You get what you pay for and for $65 dollars it's pretty good."
-
1 out of 1 people found this helpful
- See all 20 user reviews Write review
Submit your review
