HP PSC 2110, the First 4800 dpi All-In-One — THG.RU

HP PSC 2110, the All-In-One for Everyone

The PSC 2110 has a 4800 dpi printer and 600 dpi scanner, so it works as a black-and-white or color photocopier too. Its compact size makes it attractive for the home and small businesses, but it is not suitable for high output needs. Its prints are as costly as they are handsome, due to the as ever over-priced hp cartridges. It is high time HP, like Epson and especially Canon, took a step in the direction of money-saving.

Main Details on the PSC 2110

The PSC 2110 is the new arrival and replaces the PSC 750. It makes the PSC 950 look a bit dated, so this should soon be on its way out too. The big change is the cartridges. The PSC 2110 uses the same ones as the deskjet 5550. The set delivered in the package (black plus three basic colors) means you can work in PhotoRet III quality, i.e. 3500 shades of the basic colors. If you replace the black cartridge by another optional one called photo, you get six instead of four basic colors and you can reduce the size of the drops from 5 to 4 picoliters and print in PhotoRet IV with 1.2 million shades available. Maximum resolution is also higher, now being 4800 dpi instead of the 2400 on the PSC 750.

But, however impressive these new features are, it’s a pity that HP has gone back to a system that has been abandoned by other makers because it is too burdensome. Having to switch back and forth between the photo cartridge and the black one is very time-consuming. At its worst, you have to realign the heads each time, validate with the Enter key, run a test sheet, validate it and lay it on the scanner window and validate again! It’s all far too long.

Compared to the PSC 750, the 2110 prints better, but that’s not where our main complaints applied. We think that two other points should have been improved: the over-priced cost per page and the scanning quality. The PSC 750 cartridges were incredibly expensive. HP has done a bit about this since, and the PSC 2110 cartridges are on the whole 15% cheaper to buy than the previous ones. As for the scanner, the earlier version had no moirй elimination function and the quality of its 600 dpi and higher prints was not up to scratch.

Ergonomics

The PSC 2110 takes up scarcely more room than a printer. Compared to the PSC 750, it is five centimeters lower in height. It is still as good-looking as ever. At the back, you’ll have no trouble in finding the connections, there are only the main supply and USB inputs. The buttons at the front are quite clear. There are fewer of them than on the PSC 950 and you can bypass the PC and use them to run 1 to 50 black and white or color photocopies and choose the print resolution from three levels. Forget the instructions, using this all-in-one is as easy as pie. Apart from that, some of the details are disappointing. The parts used for the feed and output trays are not too strong. We found that one of the parts, which HP had assembled the wrong way, was actually broken when we unpacked the machine.

Still in the list of grumbles, as was the case for the deskjet 5550, the insertion/ ejection system is not well designed for regular black and photo cartridge switching and their fool-proofing device is not very efficient. You may quite well put one in the wrong way round, and mind your ears if you do.

Last point, the PSC 2110 is a basic all-in-one. It has no color fax, document feeder or memory card reader. On the other hand, it is autonomous: it can do black and white or color photocopies, even when the PC is off.

To sum up, it is easy to use and compact, but basic.

The Printer

We were hoping for progress in the cartridges but were definitely in for a disappointment: the PSC 2110 costs as much to run as the PSC 950. If you print more than 10 pages a week, look elsewhere, ink for the PSC 2110 is far too cpst!

With the standard set of cartridges, text pages and combined documents (text plus illustrations) print as quickly in color as in monochrome. The characters are well-defined, blocks of color bright and even and the black very dark. On the other hand, photos tend to be reddish and, when viewed from less than 40 centimeters away, the drops of ink are visible. If you change the black cartridge for the so-called optional photo one (EU: 32.50 euros, US: $25) results are much better. The blue leaves something to be desired, but the dots have gone. Colors overall are also truer. So much so that it takes a trained eye to tell the difference between one of these prints and a professional lab one.

So there are many similarities with the deskjet 5550. But there is one big difference: the PSC 2110 does not have the paper type detector the printer has. You have to adjust the print settings yourself via the driver and that’s a pity.

Even though the price of cartridges has dropped, the cost per page in standard resolution is as high as ever. The cartridge life expectancy has dropped at the same rate as the price. So these new rates which are supposed to be more attractive are by no means a giveaway, just a mathematical adjustment. The color cartridge only prints about 180 pages, where the PSC 950 did 220. Fewer pages = cheaper cartridge. That’s all. Except we reckon that’s not all. But as we already pointed out here, if you don’t want to pay more than US$100 in ink per year, you’ll have to print less than 10 pages per week. If you want to print more, then you’d better go for another model, such as the Canon SmartBase MPC400 / F30.

With the costs per page measured, you can work out how much 3000 pages (purchase price + 1500 monochrome pages + 1500 color pages) comes to: $798 in the USA (before tax) and 946 euros in Europe (including tax). So the rates are very similar on both sides of the Atlantic. There are no favorites, we all pay the same price, far too high in our view. In comparison, printing with a PSC 2110 works out to be 40% more expensive than with the SmartBase MPC400 / F30.

The Scanner

The scanner on the PSC 2110 is as good as it is bad. The good news first. The driver is the same as on the latest HP scanners. It is more straightforward, more ergonomic and much more complete than the earlier scanjets. A window on the right gives immediate access to a wide range of settings: resolution, sharpness, colors, etc. One oversight has been remedied so there is now a moirй elimination function which the previous HP multifunction devices did not have. Beyond that, the news is bad.

The scanner is three times slower in preview mode and low resolutions than the PSC 950. Likewise, color fidelity is not as good. The default colors of the PSC 2110 are brighter (too much so) and untrue, with a definite dominant of red. Yet, as you can see below from the example in 600 dpi, both scanners seem the same. It may only be a question of adjusting the default colors, so it’s best to decide for yourself what color settings to work with. Using the tools provided in the driver, we found we could improve things by raising the blue level quite a lot, the green a bit and extending to the full the range of output levels which, if you leave the default settings, the scanner is inclined to reduce, especially in the light shades, and then you get results that are too bright.

Scanner tests were done with the default settings.

The Photocopies

Though the scanner is not as good as a dedicated device like the scanjet 3750c, its photocopies are perfectly satisfactory. Color copies are slightly better than the monochrome. Definition is finer and there is more detail in the illustrations, but pages in color take twice as long to come out.

In top resolution, you can quite well use the PSC 2110 to reproduce and enlarge photos, provided you use the control panel to tell it what sort of paper you are using. Results are fairly good, but the same remarks on scanner quality apply here too: too bright and dominated by red.

Conclusion

The PSC 2110 is compact and easy to use, but the cost per page, which is too high, spoils an overall good impression. If you switch the black and photo cartridges around, as HP would like, then the prints are better than they ever have been. Photos printed with the photo cartridge are dot-free and hard to distinguish from a developed photo print. Another good point is the scanner driver which is more straightforward and complete than before. We only wished the new default settings for scanning did not make the colors too bright.

Main details of the PSC 2110:

• Cost per page in color: US$0.25/ 0.32 euros
• Recommended volume printed per week: less than 10 pages
• Functions: printer, scanner, color photocopier but no fax