Dan Littman

Hewlett-Packard DeskJet 5550

The Deskjet 5550 turned in top-notch print quality for gray-scale images, with smooth textures and excellent detail. On glossy photo paper, high-resolution color prints showed natural skin tones and more detail than our original image did. HP throws in some extras you wouldn't expect to find in a $150 printer. An automatic alignment feature helps you avoid printing out a page of alignment calibrations, then making adjustments on-screen manually and printing out another page to make sure everything lines up. Instead, a light inside the printer illuminates the alignment page as it prints, while a lens reads the page and automatically adjusts the printheads. The 5550's paper-type sensor, another automatic feature, should eliminate the need to choose a paper type in the driver. And HP's installer software walks you through the installation process and shows animations of how to insert the ink tanks, the USB cable, and other components at the appropriate times. One more plus: The 5550 comes with a full-year warranty, unlike HP's Deskjet 3820 printer.
The 5550's text quality didn't impress us: It was bold and dark, but we saw some feathering. The 5550 prints somewhat slowly, too, turning out text at 4.8 pages per minute and graphics at 1 ppm. It printed our 5-by-7-inch test photo at 0.4 ppm. Gradations in our test photo were quite rough.
Ink costs run just a bit below average for the ink jet printers we've tested, at 4.4 cents per page of black text and 13.1 cents per page of light color graphics. Color cartridges cost $35 while black cartridges run $20 apiece. For $80, you can add a duplexer that lets you print on both sides of the page without having to remove pages and guess how to flip and reinsert them. Like some older printers, the 5550's external power supply plugs directly into a socket and is so big that it could block other sockets on your power strip or wall plate.
The Deskjet 5550 fits well in the family room or the home office, printing attractive graphics and quotidian text at somewhat pokey speeds.

Buying Information

Hewlett-Packard DeskJet 5550 Rated 6 ppm for text/4 ppm for graphics (normal mode), 8MB of RAM standard, 1200-by-1200-dpi maximum resolution, 100 sheets input, 50 output $ 150 Rated 6 ppm for text/4 ppm for graphics (normal mode), 8MB of RAM standard, 1200-by-1200-dpi maximum resolution, 100 sheets input, 50 output http://www.hp.com 800/752-0900