HP Photosmart C3100 Ink Cartridges

HP C3100 Printer Review

The HP Photosmart C3100 offers all-in-one capabilities including a copier, a scanner and a quality photo and text printer. The device estimates a maximum print speed of up to 30 pages per minute for monochrome projects and 24 pages per minute for color. With its satisfactory speeds and basic range of features, this multifunction inkjet unit should be a good fit for standard home printing and scanning needs.

The scanner comes with an image editor and optical character recognition software that can easily allow users to turn paper documents into editable text documents. The scanner has a size of 8.5x11.7 inches, contributing to the machine's overall size of approximately 7x16x10 inches that will fit nicely on most desktops. The copier has fit-to-page technology for adjusting documents accurately to paper sizes and is capable of producing up to 9 duplicates from a single original document. Projects can be copied with the precision of the original and a resolution of 120x1200 dpi using black Photosmart C3100 printer ink.

The printer comes with drop-on-demand technology that is capable of printing a range of projects from vivid photos to graphics with and a resolution of 4800x1200 dpi using color HP C3100 printer ink. For amateur home photographers, the unit provides support for media cards like Memory Stick Duo and CompactFlash, which allows for direct photo printing. The device also accepts a number of different premium photo paper sizes like 4x6 inches and 8.5x11 inches. The single input tray can support up to 100 pages of plain paper or 20 pages of specialty photo paper.

The unit uses color and black HP C3100 ink cartridges, including a tricolor supply with a yield of 220 pages and a photo supply with a yield of 130 pages. The black Photosmart C3100 ink can last approximately 220 pages. With such low-yielding HP C3100 ink cartridges, users may wish to purchase compatible replacements that are less expensive than OEM versions, for a more cost-effective solution.

As it is missing some elements such as an automatic document feeder for scans and duplexing for two-sided printing, this is one of the simpler multifunction inkjet units in its class. However, its speeds, quality output and flexible photo printing features make it a nice addition for homes.