Envy 5540 By HP: Peculiarly Appealing
The Envy 5540 provides a printer, scanner and copier in a compact unit that measures just 156mm high, 454mm wide and 410mm deep. The black plastic box does not look specially exciting, but HP has managed to squeeze in two paper trays the main tray holds 125 sheets of A4.
The Envy 5540 manages a respectable 10 pages/minute for text documents, but text and graphics pages were more sluggish at around 4ppm. Photo prints also came out very well when using glossy photo paper, and took a reasonable 65 seconds for a postcard print.
Nevertheless, the Envy only prints with four colored inks cyan, magenta, yellow and black so serious photographers may prefer to opt for a dedicated photo printer that uses additional inks. The Envy 5540 is complicated by the fact that the printer performs both standard and high yield XL (extra large) size cartridges, as well as three different subscription options for HP’s Instant Ink scheme.
The standard size black ink cartridge costs £10 and lasts for just 200 pages of mono text, while the 3 color ink cartridge costs £15 and manages only 165 pages. It works out at a hefty 5p/page for mono and 9.1p for color.
The XL cartridges are a slightly good, both cartridges cost £20, and you will get 600 pages from the black cartridge and 415 from the color cartridge. It brings the cost of mono printing down to 3.3p/page which is still fairly high while color printing comes down to a quite reasonable 4.8p.
Specifications
- 4 color (CMYK) Inkjet Printer
- Print Res 1200 x 1200-dpi
- Secondary Paper Tray 15 Sheets 10x15cm
- Scanner Res 1200dpi
- Connectivity WiFi, USB, Apple Air-Print
- Primary Paper Trays 125 Sheets A4
- Dimensions 156 x 454 x 410mm
- Weight 6.8kg
Assessment
The Envy 5540 is good value for people who need to create a lot of color documents or photo prints, and provides good quality for such a low cost printer.
