Customer Reviews

HP DeskJet 6540 Color Inkjet Printer

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

HP Deskjet 6540 [PC Pro]
COMPANY: Hewlett - Packard
DATE: Nov 04

Verdict: Excellent text quality, high speed, expandability and smart styling aren't quiteenough to make this basic printer competitive.

The 6540 is the first unit we've seen from HP's all new Deskjet line-up, a range that's been home to several Recommended and A-List award-winners.

Compared to Canon's Pixma iP3000, the 6540 is a fairly basic unit - there's just a single printer tray, no duplex or CD printing, and no direct-print-from-camera functions, yet it still manages to be almost £30 more expensive. In terms of build quality though, it's streets ahead of the Canon. The dapper metal shell of the HP is much slicker than the iP3000's silver plastic, and the whole unit suffers from much less rattle. The lid is even geared so that it closes softly rather than slamming shut.

This attention to detail is carried over to the button panel on the left; the keys have a positive clicking action and are smartly lit. The bottom button switches between printing modes (draft, normal and best), though the printer software can override this if you'd prefer. Paper follows the traditional HP U-feed path - not a problem unless you want to print on non-standard or thicker media - and there's the usual slot for feeding envelopes. You'll also notice the inclusion of an upstream USB port on the front - not for connecting a camera, but as an easy way to connect a laptop. We're not convinced it's a must-have feature, but it's there if you want it.

In testing, text documents were near laser-quality, with crisp, black and well-formed characters on default settings, while draft mode only added slight feathering. Print speeds aren't staggering, but with our 25-page text document taking four minutes, six seconds to run through on draft mode, and only a minute more for default, the Deskjet 6540 should be fast enough for all but the most demanding users. For extra speed, we found fast draft mode to yield an impressive 21.4 ppm, with still reasonable results.

Photo printing is slightly more disappointing. Though prints are delivered in a timely fashion - one minute, 54 seconds for a best-quality borderless 6 x 4in photo - colours are a little washed out, and detail is softer than we'd like. Some prints also exhibit a slight embossed effect, with ink appearing to sit on top of the printed surface.

The black cartridge can be swapped for a photo cartridge to turn the printer from a four- to a six-colour device. Results were certainly smoother, and though colours still lacked punch and the detail was a little fudged, photo prints of this quality are uncommon in a sub-£100 printer. An additional grey cartridge is also available for smooth monochrome prints. On the plus side, it means you can choose how much to invest in the machine as a photo device; we just wish there was somewhere to put whichever cartridge you're not using.

It isn't just the ink that's modular. HP offers a range of accessories, including an automatic duplexer, complete with separate small paper sheet feeder. There's also an additional 250-sheet paper input tray. Compared to what the Canon iP3000 is offering, however, these aren't cheap, costing another £40 each.

If you're looking for a cheap workhorse inkjet, the basic model is a good choice. Its photo printing is respectable for a printer at this price, and when you add to this smart styling, low running costs, and superb build quality, the Deskjet 6540 deserves a PC Pro Recommended accolade. For sheer flexibility and value for money, though, the Canon is a better choice.

By Christopher Phin


Hope this helps you out.

Summary:
Excellent printer, highly recommended for printing text and documents in a flash. While standard photo settings lag behind other printers, spending an hour or so learning how to use the Printer Properties will enable you to come up with spectacularly colorful prints, lacking only minor detail. If you're going to be primarily printing photos, get something else, otherwise, the HP 6540 is at the head of its class!

Pros:
- Borderless photo/all purpose printing is VERY useful when you can't quite get the margins small enough... and you don't have to print them at "Best" photo quality.
- Durable build with a geared metal cover which closes softly instead of crashing when closed.
- Unbelievable speed for an inkjet. In Fast Draft mode (which is perfectly fine for text), the printer actually pulls the second sheet in before it has completely finished the first, adding to the speed of the printhead.
- Quiet operation even during Fast Draft mode.
- Easy, responsive print cancel and quality buttons, although no LCD... if the printer has a problem you have to go to the computer to see what it is, which could be a problem if the computer and printer are not near each other.
- Use TONS of different kinds of media, except really stiff stationery which may have a hard time navigating the printer's tight paper path.
- The entire finished paper tray lifts up and out easily to expose the paper load tray beneath... just lift it out to help a paper jam or to feed custom size paper.
- It's just fun to watch.

Cons:
- Large blocks of solid color (like backgrounds) print striped on Fast Draft, Fast Normal, and sometimes even Normal.
- Unless you like playing with the Printer Properties options, photo presets have bland colors.
- "Maximum DPI" setting looks the same as "Best" quality, which is a bit fuzzy on fine details, colors can be very vibrant on normal non-photo cartridges if you spend an hour to learn all the settings.
- Expensive ink cartridges which aren't yet available through remanufacturing vendors. See the recommendations below.
- No "auto-on" feature... when you send a print job, the printer will not wake up, you have to press the power button. Again a problem if the printer and computer are not nearby.
- If you forget to pull out the paper stop, you will have a floor covered in papers at the end of a print, the tray is not long enough to catch the papers without pulling out the paper stop.
- When printing a photo, if ink volume is above the middle range, the print will have a minor raised ink look, which in some applications is not a good effect.
- If you like all the gadgets offered on other printers - card readers, LCD's, juice machines... this isn't the printer for you. It's strictly computer-to-printer and I like it that way - HP concentrated on what was really important!

Recommendations:
- First thing you do, in Printer Properties, click the "Basics" tab, then the "Advanced Features..." button. Put the ink volume down to Light. Even in Fast Draft mode on Light ink volume, text is quite black and easy to read.
- Next, on the "Color" tab, check "Print in grayscale" and then "Black print cartridge only." Just remember when you want to print color to change this, but I like to have it set as default so it doesn't mix in color with the black, which is completely unnecessary.
- Don't pay more for a printer with wireless capabilities, you can share the printer easily through your own wireless (or wired) router.

I'll start by saying that the reason I purchased this printer was that in an issue of Consumer Reports, where they rated photo printers, this one came out #1. Normally I'd never buy something like this over amazon, but they did have the best price for this machine.

Photos:

Without question, this printer, using PHOTO PAPER, mind you - don't complaint about photo quality when you try to print on paper, prints the BEST photos I've ever seen come out of a printer. I took my digital camera (Canon PowerShot A75) on vacation to New Hampshire in the spring, and got some amazing outdoor photos. The colors came out vibrant and rich, and I ended up framing some of the ones I printed.

Various photo projects over the course of the last 6 months have all yielded the same results - high quality, top flight prints on photo paper.

It's a little slow on text, but who cares? As a home printer, I can't ask for more. It's reasonably economical on toner, and takes the very common HP number-coded 96 & 97 Black and Tri-Color cartridges.

Bottom line, if you've got a nice digital camera, and want prints that are comparable to anything you could get from a lab - get this printer! Feel free to come to my house and I'll prove it to you! :)

This printer has some strengths, but some serious weaknesses as well, particularly given the price of the unit (some 130 US, give or take).

It is great for printing text; the quality of the text output is certainly very good, and the printer is remarkably fast. In addition, economny is acceptable--it's not bad, but not outstanding either. Further, the printer is both attractive (a minor consideration) and sturdy (major consideration). You can realistically expect speedy printing of almost anything; photos, graphics, text, what have. It'll be a fast printer, and with the text and graphics, output ranges from acceptable to great.
Also, you can do duplex (that is, two sided) printing, which can be nice to have in some limited circumstances.

However, the photos are simply atrocious, particularly for the price of the printer. My three+ year old Epson C84 (which was a hundred dollar printer three years ago--that's 30 bucks cheaper folks) prints far better photos.

The issue isn't so much the color; there are actually some good color management features in the software. It's just that it doesn't seem to produce sharp photos; details are fuzzy, the picture pixilated, etc. It's truly dissapointing, particularly because I'd wanted to like this printer, given it's capabilities at printing documents. But honestly, it looks like someone used to much digital zoom when they took a photo if you print it off on this printer. The ONLY exeptions are really simply photos; ones without detail.

Photos aside, the software is ghastly, in true HP fashion. Changing all the settings anytime you want to print something else (labels, photos, different paper sizes, etc.) is a real pain in the butt.

(...).

I run a small dental office. Over the years I've owned about ten inkjet printers - my office uses four printers at a time. Recently we've been using the dependable HP Deskjet 932C and two older printers - HP the Deskjet 882C. I always buy Hewlett Packard printers because I've been happy with the performance I've gotten...until now.

Last month we decided to replace our two oldest HP printers because of their slow print speed. The May 2005 issue of Consumer Reports rated the HP Deskjet 6540 number one with a very fast print speed. I bought two and gave away the old Deskjet 882C's.

I wish I had the old ones back.

If you print on standard 20-pound paper this printer will be fine. And if you're printing on a single sheet of glossy photo paper you will be happy with the quality of the print.

But if you print on thicker paper such as Hewlett-Packard Bright White Inkjet Paper, which is 24 pounds, you're in for a world of trouble. The printer regularly picks up a stack of 5 pages at once and jams. And if you print mailing labels such as the Avery 5160, be prepared to feed the sheets one at a time - by hand! Otherwise the printer picks up 3 pages and jams too.

I've changed all the printer settings and nothing helps. I Goggle searched the web for help, but I've found none.

This is a good quality printer. We needed something that would spit out pages quickly, and this printer doesn't dissapoint. Also, it seems to be a well built unit. If you're wanting something that will print out text real quickly, and do some fair quality color images in your print outs, then I'd recommend this.

For those that are complaining about the photos, I have a suggestion - purchase a true photo printer. I'd recommend Canon over HP in that department.

As long as you buy your cartridges mail-order rather than locally, it's not too bad. Black cartridges cost me about 3.5 cents per page, and the color cartridges about 7 cents per page. By comparison, my Samsung ML6060 laser printer costs about 1.7 cents per page for toner, about half the per-page cost (which is typical for a laser printer).

We put this thing onto a factory floor because the HP flatbed feed mechanism is bullet-proof and it's fast. We did not put a laser printer there because we are feeding glossy pre-printed sheets into the thing and a laser printer would have melted the coating on the glossy sheets (this thing basically is printing serial numbers and activation keys onto jumped up warranty cards). I looked at buying one for my house, but I'm not sure that the low quality of the photo printing will be acceptable to me. I need to replace my (basically disposable) Epson C84 printer because it's started spewing black ink everywhere, and while I tried to clean out all the various sponges and wipers and such that are supposed to wipe the black print head's nose, it's still dropping globs of ink at random on my pages. I've never had any problem of that sort with an HP inkjet printer. They're solid and bulletproof. So if I can't manage to get my C84 working again, I may end up getting an HP inkjet after all, despite my reservations about their photo printing.

I bought this printer in hopes that I could replace my old Epson 870 in my graphics department. I thought, with all the printers available, anything would be better than my outdated one, I was wrong.

For printing from Word, the text looked great, but when it is given jobs from Adobe, there are problems. Photoshop seems to print okay, but I typically edit in photoshop and print from page layout applications. In Adobe Acrobat, a basic pdf printed out fine, but given a complex pdf file using lots of photos with clipping paths got the printer spitting out skewed images, in black and white when I set it to color, diagonal lines, and "noise". Furthermore, in InDesignCS, no matter what I did, anything using black ink came out dark gray, not the strong dark black in the printer test page or a word file.

I'm sending this printer back, and getting a Canon i9900, which I'm hoping will be a better fit for my purposes. I think this HP must be a great little printer for someone's home office, printing letters, labels and photos, but anything more than that, and this printer gets confused - which is surprising because my only problem with the 4-1/2 year old Epson 870 were print nozzles getting clogged, not interpretting data like the HP 6540.

This printer lasted and did a good job until it came time to change cartridges. I changed both color and black, but the black never worked again. The black cartridge status light keeps blinking indicating a problem with the cartridge - which was new. I read the manual and it said replace cartridge or clean. So, thinking I may have gotten a bum black cartrige I wasted another 21 dollars on another black cartrige, but the light keeps blinking. I even cleaned the new cartridge as indicated in the manual.

If printer manufactures are going to make junk printers to sell over priced ink then they should make them to last at least one cartrige change.

This printer will go into the garbage. I guess I will try a Cannon next, since within the last year I had to dump an Epson because it was hopelessly clogged. I wish I had my old ten year old inkjet printer that just kept plugging away. I changed out for speed, but instead got one of the new throw-aways.

This printer does a good job like all the HP Deskjets I have owned. No problems there. My other HP Deskjets would start up automatically but this one? Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. Tech service was no help. My biggest complaint is the ink! The cartridges for this thing are the most expensive HP offers and there are no generics out there yet. To make matters worse it drinks ink like a fish! I think HP is trying to make too much money on the ink these days. My next printer will not be an HP.