Review: HP Officejet X576dw

Introduction and design

Sometimes, you have to reinvent the wheel to get better results, and that's what HP has done with its new inkjet print technology. The HP Officejet Pro X576dw ($354, £232, AU$497) is a wireless multifunction printer that defies conventional wisdom, proving that inkjet printers can deliver faster print speeds, more cost-effective print costs and match the quality of laser printers.

The HP Officejet Pro X576dw is priced at the premium end of small business printers. In addition to the multifunction capabilities, wireless connectivity and cloud-connected print apps place the Officejet Pro X576dw in the same category as workgroup inkjets like the Epson WorkForce Pro WF-4630 ($200, £130, AU$253). However, its performance is more in line with laser printers, like HP's Color LaserJet Pro MFP M277dw ($429, £273, AU$528).

Design

In addition to class-defying 70 page-per-minute print performance, HP is also changing the way you view inkjets. Unlike the company's own Color LaserJet Pro MFP M277dw, the Officejet X576dw is not a boxy affair, and it's minimalist design makes it feel more like a sculptural technology accent.

The Officejet X576dw comes in a matte black color with dark grey accent, giving it a professional look. Even though black is supposed to be a slimming color in the fashion world, the darker color makes the Officejet X576dw look hefty. I would have preferred a white color option, like the Color LaserJet Pro MFP M277dw, to match my office design.

The printer weighs in at 53 pounds (24kg), making it heavier than the 35.9-pound (16.3kg) Color LaserJet Pro MFP M277dw and the 31.3-pound (14.2kg) WorkForce Pro WF-4630. At that heft, the Officejet is similar to bigger enterprise-class printers, like the 73.6-pound HP Color LaserJet Enterprise M553X.

Small business owners will likely want to place the Officejet on its own printer stand. Measuring 26.7 x 26.4 x 20.3 inches (67.8 x 67.1 x 51.6cm) with the paper trays extended, the Officejet will likely engulf your workspace if you place it on your desk.

The dimensions make the Officejet 10.2 inches (25.9cm) wider, 10 inches (25.4cm) deeper and 7.6 inches (19.3cm) taller than the comparable LaserJet Pro MFP M277dw. Compared to the WorkForce Pro WF-4630, the OfficeJet is 0.9 inches (2.3cm) wider, 8.3 inches deeper (21.1cm) and 5.2 inches (13.2cm) taller. This places the size of the Officejet within range of the 27.5 x 18.9 x 22.9-inch (69.9 x 48 x 58.2cm) Color LaserJet Enterprise M553X ($1,315, £864, AU$1,650).

Even though the Officejet is large for a printer of its class, it doesn't feel too large, thanks to an open design with a floating print output tray on the right side. This "airy" design is also replicated by Dell on its laser-class SMB printers, but HP did a better job in providing more open space to give the printer a minimalist and clean design, despite its large footprint.

Most of the printer's internal components, including the compartment to load the ink cartridges, are located on the left side in a tower. On top is a 50-page automatic document feeder. The 4.3-inch articulating touchscreen is found right below that, along with a single USB input port. Just below that is the ink compartment.

A 500-page paper tray is located at the bottom, and businesses with larger print needs can add a second, optional 500-page tray underneath the printer. On the bottom left side there is a flip down tray for special paper, like photo paper or labels.

Should you need to move the printer, there is a lip just underneath the scanner that makes this somewhat easier.

Not only is this design visually appealing, as it's not boxy like a traditional printer, it also makes grabbing your prints easier, ensuring you don't have to lift any components or risk getting your hand caught when you're trying to retrieve your completed print job.

Print performance and cost

The real magic of HP's design engineering is internal. The Officejet is able to achieve print speeds up to 42 pages per minute thanks to HP's PageWide print technology. On the Officejet, HP employs a fixed print head that spans the width of a page, rather than a motorized and belt assembly.

As the print head doesn't have to move back and forth to cover the width of the page, print speeds are vastly improved. This gives the Officejet the speed of a laser and the color reproduction of an inkjet.

HP also claims that the technology uses up to 50% less energy than a comparable laser printer.

Performance

I found HP's claims to be fairly accurate. After spending 30minutes setting up the printer, downloading the appropriate drivers and installing the cartridges, black and white print jobs were speedy. It took approximately 10 seconds for the first page to come out from when I hit print on my Windows 10 laptop, and the Officejet can churn out roughly 38 copies of a single-page text-only Microsoft Word document within 60 seconds.

There is a small door that opens when the printer is printing. This door allows paper to exit the printer and onto the floating paper output tray. Likely, the purpose of this door is to keep dust out.

If you're looking to turbo charge your printing to meet deadlines and don't mind slightly degraded print quality, you can switch into General Office Mode using the on-screen menus on the 4.3-inch touchscreen panel. With this setting, I achieved speeds close to 70 pages per minute. Impressively, even in this conservative setting, text still appears sharp, and the pigment-based ink dried quickly, delivering laser-like quality. In this mode, print jobs finish three times faster than the HP Color LaserJet M277dw, which delivers 19 pages per minute speeds. This also makes the Officejet X576dw six times as fast as the Epson WorkForce WF-4630.

For those who prefer higher print quality, prints with Presentation Mode will look better, but print speeds will be slightly slower. I averaged around 37 pages per minute under Presentation Mode, and text appeared slightly sharper than the normal mode. For mixed media content with text and images, image quality is crispy under Presentation Mode.

Printing a simple brochure containing both text and small images, the Officejet delivered 30 pages in 60 seconds.

For photographs, print speeds were considerably slower, but quality was surprisingly impressive for a workgroup printer. Printing a 4 x 6-inch color photograph took less than 30 seconds. On general copy paper, blacks weren't quite as rich on photos, and colors looked a bit more muted than the original image, but when using photo paper, photo results were excellent, matching what you'd get from a photo kiosk at a retail store. This performance is impressive, considering that many office printers aren't tuned for photo reproduction.

Print costs

The Officejet Pro X576dw uses four pigment-based inks. The standard black ink cartridge ($74, £48, AU$103) is good for up to 3,000 pages, while the standard cyan, magenta and yellow cartridges ($78 each, £51, AU$109) can last for up to 2,500 pages. The print cost is roughly 2.5 cents for black-and-white print jobs, and color costs 11.8 cents per page with standard ink cartridges.

HP also sells larger capacity ink cartridges, which requires a larger initial investment, but will reward you with lower per-page print costs. The high yield black "XL" cartridge ($119, £78, AU$167) can deliver up to 9,200 pages, or more than three times the yield of the standard cartridge. Similarly, the high yield magenta, yellow and cyan cartridges ($119 each) are good for up to 6,600 pages. This equates to a print cost as low as 1.3 cents for black-and-white and 6.7 cents for color.

These costs are the lowest we've seen for an inkjet printer. The Epson WorkForce Pro WF-4630 comes in slightly higher at 1.6 cents for black-and-white documents and 8.2 cents for color using high capacity cartridges.

In fact, the Officejet's per-page print cost is half as expensive as HP's Color LaserJet MFP M277dw. With high yield toner, the LaserJet's print cost is three cents for black-and-white and 15.9 cents for color.

The low per-page print cost delivered by the Officejet makes this printer a top contender for a small business environment, and users with moderate to high printing needs will save money by investing in the high yield cartridges.

Scanning and connectivity

Scanning and copying speeds don't quite catch up with the Officejet's excellent print speed. Using the 50-page capacity automatic document feeder up top, I notice that single-sided scans are zippy, but duplex scanning and copying took more time than anticipated. This is because the Officejet doesn't come with twin scan heads, and double-sided jobs require three passes per sheet, which takes up time.

If you don't want to use a laptop or PC, you can use the touchscreen to select scan and copy options. For scans, you can either scan to your cloud storage service, like Google Drive, to an email account or to a USB drive that you can plug into the port mounted on the side of the touchscreen panel.

The Officejet can also scan documents into searchable PDFs, which is great for archival purposes. With searchable PDFs, the scanner employs an optical character reader (OCR) technology to identify the content that's scanned. Once you're on your laptop, you can go through a multi-page PDF and search for keywords in a document.

Whereas the scanner can't keep up with the printer in terms of speed, the scanner outpaces the printer in resolution. The Officejet can scan images and documents at a resolution of 1,200 dpi, but prints and copies come out at 600 dpi.

Prints and copies come out on a curved arm that makes the output tray appear like it's floating. I found that the open space underneath could be used to stack an additional ream of paper.

Connectivity

The Officejet comes with ethernet and phone ports along with built-in Wi-Fi, allowing users to print from their desktops, tablets, laptops and smartphones. Even though the Officejet comes with a direct USB port, HP did not include a cable for use.

I didn't find this to be a problem, given how easy it is to set up the printer using Wi-Fi. Since my router supported WPS, it took less than two minutes to get the printer connected to my home office network. If your router doesn't support WPS, you can also use the virtual keyboard on the touchscreen to manually enter your network credentials.

Once this was completed, I connected my Windows 10 laptop to the same network, found the printer and added the device. Windows 10 downloaded the required files and drivers, and I was able to print wirelessly.

Additionally, smartphone and tablet owners can also print directly to the printer using Google Cloud Print or Apple's AirPrint. For devices that don't support wireless printing, you can setup the Officejet with its own email address. This way, you can email documents, PDFs and images to the printer's email address for printing, allowing the printer to even work with Windows Phone devices.

Remote printing and scanning is also supported through HP's ePrint app. The remote capabilities are useful for entrepreneurs and small business owners who find themselves working away from their office printer. For example, a small business executive in need of a contract can have their assistant scan the document directly to the cloud. Similarly, if you're working on a presentation at lunch, you can print the PowerPoint before you head back into the office, and the printed slides will be ready for you when you return.

The Officejet also comes with apps, delivering more value to users. For instance, you can schedule for a printed copy of the daily news every morning, or students can even print lined paper or graph paper.

Verdict

Often times, choosing a printer means making tradeoffs between print speed, quality and cost. Laser printers generally deliver lower costs per page at faster print speeds, but can sometimes sacrifice quality when printing photos or images. On the other hand, most inkjets deliver better image quality, but at the cost of higher per-page prints and slower print speeds.

Fortunately, if you're willing to make the initial up-front capital investment in acquiring the Officejet X576dw, HP will reward you with incredibly fast print speeds, beautiful print quality and a very low per-page print cost.

We liked

HP's laser defying Officejet X576dw is an inkjet printer that combines the best of inkjet and laserjet print technology. HP advertises that its Officejet delivers up to 50% better energy efficiency than a comparable laser, but the selling point for many small business and small workgroups will be the device's extremely affordable print costs.

With black-and-white jobs costing 1.3 cents per page and color prints priced at 6.7 cents, the print costs delivered by the Officejet is only 50% of the costs of HP's already excellent Color LaserJet MFP M277dw. Both printers are targeted towards small workgroups and small offices, but the Officejet manages to edge out the laser in key areas, delivering better image quality and faster print output at a more economical cost, making the total cost of ownership cheaper the more you print.

Wireless printing, cloud support and remote print and scan capabilities all add to the Officejet's versatility and value.

We disliked

You'll really have to be picky to find any fault with the Officejet. For those moving from larger enterprise-class office printers, you won't find small amenities on-board, like a document stapler, which comes in handy if you're trying to collate multi-page jobs.

The printer's size may also be a stopping point for smaller offices, but if you can afford the space, the Officejet X576dw will work hard for you.

Those who do a lot of scanning may find scan speeds a little slower due to the fact that the Officejet X576dw doesn't come with twin scan heads. Single-sided scans should be fine, but double-sided jobs are completed at slower speeds than scanners with dual scan heads.

Final verdict

For many small businesses, more affordable print costs alone should be enough to make the Officejet X576dw a top contender when shopping for a new printer, but this inkjet delivers exceptional performance at tremendous value, if you can afford its high up-front cost of ownership.

Setup is a breeze thanks to the touchscreen control panel, and wireless capabilities make this printer a useful tool for small businesses with multi-computer setups.

The Officejet X576dw's price is comparable to many workgroup printers. The PageWide print head technology and new fast drying pigment inks mean faster prints at a much cheaper cost than even laser printers offer.

We found the per-page print cost of the Officejet X576dw to be the lowest of any inkjet or laserjet that we've tested in its category, and this print costs on this printer are 50% of the costs delivered by HP's comparable Color LaserJet MFP M277dw. Your total cost of ownership goes down with each print you make.

You really can have it all with this Officejet: fast print speeds, great print quality and low print costs.

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