Hewlett Packard Deskjet | Ricoh G500, G700 specs

Hewlett Packard Deskjet 3845

The HP Deskjet 3845 is included in this review because it is representative of conventional inkjet printers found in SOHO and personal environments.

At $69.99 the Deskjet 3845 is certainly affordable and provides acceptable output speeds. It offers USB 2.0 connectivity and is rated for volumes up to 1,000 pages per month. At this level of the market (read: consumer)

specifications like controller type and first print speeds are of minimal importance—all the customer wants to do is plug in the cables, load the driver on the connected Windows or Mac computer, and begin printing. The standard 100-sheet paper supply is sufficient, networking is not required, duplexing is not supported, and the high monthly print volume is not necessary. This class of printer is best suited for home and photo printing.

The best way to illustrate the difference between Business Inkjet and Personal Inkjet is by examining print cartridge type and yields:

Each print cartridge measures yields in the thousands of pages; the Deskjet 3845 uses a tri-color print cartridge that delivers 190 full-color prints at 5% image coverage per color for $21.99, (15% image coverage total) and a Black cartridge for $17.99 that yields 220 prints at 5% image coverage.

Those prices put the Black CPP factor at over 8¢ per page, the 3-color CMY CPP at almost 12¢ per page, and four-color printing at 20¢ per page—many times that of CPP factors. Further, these cartridges would have to be replaced once per week if the Deskjet 3845 were being pushed to the limits of its volume capacity. Clearly, the Deskjet class of inkjet printer is not meant to support true business printing applications.

Even at more reasonable volumes of 200 pages per month, the customer would have to buy a new set of print cartridges for $40 each month. After one year they would spend more on consumables than the cost of a new G700 that supports higher volumes, faster speeds, greater yields, larger paper supplies, network connectivity, and duplexing. If your customer is considering going the cheap route, do the math and show them the big picture costs of supporting personal inkjet technology.

The Deskjet 3845 also has the ability to accept a third Photo Ink cartridge that retails for $24.99 on the HP website to boost image quality when printing photographs onto special glossy paper stocks. These costs were not included in CPP calculations.