HP OFFICEJET PRO L7590 ALL-IN-ONE PRINTER

Small-Office Champ

The features that distinguish an office inkjet all-in-one (AIO) from a home model are all represented in the L5790. You get an Ethernet connector; an automatic document feeder (ADF); and the ability to print, scan, and fax over a network, send e-mails with scanned attechments, and make photocopies. But his model's print engine sets it apart as a truly office-centric printer. The L7590 prints text surprisingly well for an inkjet but falls short with photos, The result is an AIO that's truly focused on office use, and squarely targeted at the small and home office.

The L7590 weighs 34.3 pounds, which is on the heavy side of an inkjet but still light enough for one person to move around. A potentially more troublesome issue is the size. At 14 by 20.7 by 18.4 inches (HWD), it's larger than I'd want to have sitting on my desk. More important, it's large enough that you may have trouble finding room for it in a small office where space is tight.

Its bulkiness, however, does not slow it down in text print speed. I timed the L7590 at a total of 9 minutes 14 seconds for our business applications suite, which is significantly faster than some more expensive models and just a touch slower than what has been our Editor's Choice in this category, the HP Officejet Pro L7680 All-in-One. Such speed does not extent to photos, unfortunately. In my test, the L7590 averaged 2:30 for each 4-by-6 and 5:21 for each 8-by-10.

Output quality for the L7590 was impressive for text and graphics. More than half the test fonts were easily readable, and graphics came out better than most inkjets can manage. The photos, however, wre barely true photo quality, with some having colors that were far too punchy and others in which the whole image was darkened. On the plus side, the cost per page for this printer is also an extraordinary low 1.5 cents per black-and-white page, and 6 cents per coor page.



Overall, the L7590 is a close match to the L7690 at a substantially lower price, making it easy pick to replace the L7680 as Editor's Choice for a top-of-the lines small and home office AIO.-M. David Stone

PC Magazine November 2008

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