Ok, ok. So I know I said that I was going to make this be a financial blog and here I am doing a product review for my very first blog. But hey, it’s late at night and I just wanted to put something simple up on the site.
A few years ago (2005) my absolutely terrible Dell (DELL) all in one printer finally gave up. Nevertheless, school carried on and I was forced to purchase a new printer. Generally before I make a fairly major purchase I like to research all of the available products to see the pros and cons of each one so that I can make an informed buying decision. In this circumstance I didn’t have a whole lot of time for research, and I soon found myself staring at the vast printer selection at the local Best Buy (BBY). It was at this point that I started to think about manufacturer specialties. I know that probably isn’t the correct terminology for what I am talking about, but you know what I am talking about. Essentially what this means is that you would not go to a Chinese restaurant and order a hamburger. Some people still do this, but you shouldn’t expect a Red Robin (RRGB) quality hamburger here. This is the same sort of reason why my Dell printer fell apart on me after a few years. Dell does not make printers. Dell makes computers. This printer was Dell’s version of the Chinese hamburger. After realizing this, I decided to buy a printer from a manufacturer who specialized in printers first and computers second.
Hewlett Packard (HPQ) has always been a printer company in my mind. Only recently have they started to make computers, and to be honest their computers are actually pretty good. I ended up finally going with the HP PSC 1510 All-in-One model. At the time I think I bought it for about $110. Since this is a few years and many prints after the fact, I feel that I can give a fairly accurate review of this model.
The 1510 is very sleek, stylish and compact. It fits nicely on my desk and doesn’t take up much room at all. My old Dell printer would have taken up half the desk! The printer as a whole is quite intuitive and friendly. The buttons are simple and easy to press. Print quality is excellent, and the $15-$20 cartridges seem to last quite some time as well. Since I have purchased this printer I have moved at least three times, and it still looks brand new out of the box.
I do have a few gripes about this model though. First of all, there are buttons on the outside of the printer for scanning. One would think that if you pressed the scan button it would scan, but it doesn’t. The power light just flashes a bunch of times and nothing happens. Instead, you have to go into the poorly designed HP program and go through a series of steps for each time that you want to scan something new. It does not work well at all. My other gripe with the printer is that every time it is plugged in it has to print a test sheet. This just seems like a waste of paper and ink to me. There should be a way to override this. Besides these two minor flaws, this is a great printer for the price and would definitely buy it again.
Ratings:
Appearance: 5/5
Value: 5/5
Ease of Use: 4/5
As a final note, the author does not have any monetary investment in Hewlett Packard, Red Robin, Best Buy or Dell at the time this article was written.
Reviews
electronics, HP PSC 1510, Reviews
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