Dan Littman

HP Deskjet 940c Color Inkjet Printer

The Deskjet 940c printed narrow lines well, and gray-scale images looked wonderful in our tests, even on ordinary paper. Graphics and glossy photographs retained fine detail and texture, but graphics had too much cyan and glossies were somewhat dark. A superb online manual includes informative animations. The driver's handy graphics mode makes graphics legible for copying or faxing.
HP provides a miserly 90-day limited warranty with only 30 days of telephone support and no toll-free number. We rated the printer's speed as average, at 4.7 ppm for text and 0.7 ppm for graphics in tests. Output text looked grayish, and large letters showed minor hatching around the edges.
An $80 duplexer lets you print on both sides of a page. HP's black ink costs a steepish 6 cents per page; color prints are a reasonable 13.8 cents each.
The $149 price is right, and performance and print quality are fine, but a chintzy warranty gives us pause.

Buying Information

HP Deskjet 940c Color Inkjet Printer Rated 12-ppm monochrome/10-ppm color, 2400-by-1200-dpi maximum resolution, 150 sheets input, 50 output. $ 149 Rated 12-ppm monochrome/10-ppm color, 2400-by-1200-dpi maximum resolution, 150 sheets input, 50 output. http://www.hp.com 888/999-4747