EXCLUSIVES

HP Officejet 7130 All-in-One
Words by Scott Dewbre
February 2004

Hewlett Packard's latest all-in-one device, the Officejet PSC 7130 ($499, HP) is something of a paradox - it's too big for the home and too small for the office.

Typically, all-in-ones combine a printer, scanner/copier and fax into a single unit. The 7130 adds an automatic sheet-feeder to the mix, making it much easier to copy, scan or fax lengthy documents.

For print quality and scanning features, the 7130 ranks among the best in its class. However, our tests uncovered a couple of problems that would be showstoppers for some users.

Features: Easy scanning, beautiful prints

The 7130 builds upon tried-and-true HP technology, and nowhere is that more evident than in its printing capabilities. The 7130 uses the 14 series print cartridges and four separate print heads. Despite a fairly light 32MB of memory, the 7130 can print up to 4,800 x 1,200 dots per inch (dpi) optical resolution at speeds up to 18 pages per minute (ppm) for color documents and 22 ppm for black-and-white documents.

For scanning, the 7130 uses two charge-coupled devices (CCDs) to generate an optical resolution of 1,200 dpi that can be enhanced up to 9600 dpi. The scan bed on the 7130 can accommodate up to legal size (8.5" x 14") documents. ReadIRIS 6.5 comes bundled with the 7130 drivers, providing optical character recognition (OCR) capabilities right out of the box.

The sheet feeder atop the 7130 can accommodate up to 50 documents at a time in sizes up to legal. For copying pages out of a book, the copier lid adjusts to close over an original that is an inch or two thick. For larger originals, the lid can be swung back out of the way.

In keeping with the business nature of the 7130, it contains several faxing features that would only be of interest to the business user, such as broadcast faxing, color faxing, delayed fax sending, speed dial groups, and a fax junk mail barrier.

We should mention that the 7130 also comes with a set of memory card readers that can accommodate CompactFlash, SmartMedia, Memory Stick and Secure Digital memory cards. The card readers work with a built-in photo printing application that turns the 7130 into an in-home Photomat, all the way down to ordering double prints.

Test Results: Picky sheet feeder, scan problems

The first thing we noticed about our test unit was its weight - the 7130 tips the scales at 32 pounds, which is light for a large capacity laser printer but quite hefty for an inkjet. Not only is it heavy, but bulky as well. The 7130 is almost two feet wide, and it needs at least two feet of vertical clearance to allow for the copier lid to open fully.

Once the included print drivers were loaded on our test Mac, printing went flawlessly from Word and a variety of other applications. While the manufacturer promises print speeds as high as 18 and 22 ppm for color and black-and-white documents respectively, that applies only to the printer's lowest print quality setting. Running our tests with the print quality set to Normal, we found the 7130 is quite a bit slower than those numbers would lead you to believe. Printing a variety of Word and PowerPoint documents at normal quality, the 7130 turned in print times that averaged 5 ppm for color and 7 ppm for black-and-white.

If the print speed of the 7130 was a letdown, the scanning features made up for it in a major way. While a typical scanner might let you scan a document in as an image, saving it for OCR via a separate application, the 7130 lets you scan and OCR a document directly into Word - with the touch of a single button. Or, you can scan an image directly into Mail or Entourage, where it shows up as an attachment.

As we examined some of the images scanned on the 7130, we noticed an irritating little problem with all the scanned images. In the top right corner, the pixel alignment was off just enough that a horizontal line would appear broken about an inch from the right margin. While such a small distortion would not be noticeable by most users, this would make the 7130 totally unacceptable for use in a graphics shop. We contacted HP about this problem, and they responded that a driver update to fix the problem was due to be released soon and would be available for download through their website.

Another problem we noticed was with the sheet feeder, which proved to be picky about what kind of paper it would feed. While standard grade paper would feed just fine, we learned that if we wanted to feed glossy or photo-type papers through the scanner, we'd best do it by hand.

Bottom line

Even though we knocked the 7130 on print speed, its print quality is outstanding. In fact, with its print output set at the highest setting and using special photo quality paper, we obtained some of the best prints we've ever seen out of an inkjet.

Overall, we expected more considering the 7130's comparatively high price tag. If you need to print 5,000 or so copies a month, plus you need to run multiple page scans and have frequent need of one-touch scanning and OCR, the 7130 would be an excellent choice. If you don't need to print that much but still would like to have desktop scanning and copying capabilities, check out the HP PSC 2210, which we reviewed last year.

Item: Officejet PSC 7130 All-in-one >Manufacturer: HP > Price: $499 MSRPPros: High quality print output; sheet feeder makes multiple page document scans easyCons: Possible firmware problem affecting scan accuracy; sheet feeder jams fairly easilywww.hp.com