HP DeskJet 1050 Cartridge Review   by Theodore Beach

The HP DeskJet 1050 all-in-one will cost you £29.99. Is it possible to get a workable Printer/scanner combo for this kind of cash?

As you may expect, this machine possesses a really traditional style and design. It is rather simple, yet functions extremely effectively. HP has restricted controls to just three buttons for black and colour copies and to terminate a Print job. A fourth button turns the unit off and on. There’s three orange indicators, one meant for paper out and the other couple for low ink. At the rear is a low voltage socket to attach to the small, black block power supply along with a USB socket, the sole data connection.

Putting in both of them ink and head cartridges, one black and the other tri-colour, is a touch clumsy, because they are fixed quite a way within the unit. The cartridges slide in and click up in to place and closing the cover sets the device going. You have to print an alignment page, which you then scan on the machine’s flatbed to complete the alignment. The scanner is a simple Contact Image Sensor (CIS) device yet, just like the rest of the machine, is actually significantly more than sufficient for simple applications.

The provided CD comes with drivers for Windows and OS X along with a copy of HP Scan, which will take care of scanning to JPG, PDF or TIF. The unit will scan at as much as 1,200ppi.

The 5-page black text print concluded in 52s, providing a speed of 5.8ppm and consequently on the longer, 20-page print, this went up to 6.3ppm. In draft mode, the five-page document clocked up 7.9ppm. These speeds are quite healthy. Printing our black text and colour graphics test created a speed of 2.4ppm, quite a bit slower than the rated speed. A 15 x 10cm picture print required a second more than one minute plus a single page colour copy required 42s, very fair results for this type of product.

You might expect the print quality from the DeskJet 1050 to end up being acceptable at best, yet it’s a good deal better than this. Black text is actually flawlessly readable, whilst exhibiting a little bit of fuzz from ink run. Colour graphics are clear as well as vibrant, while having marginal dither patterns. A colour copy revealed certain degradation of the image, however the colours by themselves were very close to the original. The picture print was in addition fair, although a little light in comparison with a number of its competition and spoiled by scuffmarks.

The two HP DeskJet 1050 printer cartridges can be purchased in standard and high-yield variations.

It’s fairly exceptional to find an all-in-one machine for £30 and just as uncommon to get one which generates very acceptable print quality at a realistic speed not to mention without emptying your wallet by means of excessive ink costs. There’s not much in the marketplace that could touch the DeskJet 1050 at the price.

HP DeskJet 1050 printer cartridges are to be found here.

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